Making Paid Ads Work for You
Maintaining active accounts, responding tactfully to criticism, and engaging users on their favorite social media platforms all go a long way in building relationships with your community and attracting new customers. Still, unless you're also investing marketing dollars into paid social media marketing for restaurants, you're likely missing out on a good deal of business.
Recent data shows the average adult Facebook user checks their social media feed at least once per day (and 51 percent of users admit to logging on multiple times), while businesses exchange more than 20 billion messages per month with customers on the platform's messaging service. YouTube, Tiktok, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat all boast high levels of frequent engagement, as well, with over 50 percent of each platform's users reporting they log on at least once per day to check for updates or share a post.1
Compared to the scattershot distribution model of traditional media, such as television, print, and radio, social media makes it easy to connect with a targeted audience of users in real time and offers the potential for a robust return on your investment dollars.
Does Paid Social Media Really Work?
If you're intimidated by the thought of sinking money into paid social media ads, you can relax. Restaurant social media marketing isn't as complicated as it might seem – and it works. Studies show paid social media ads generate 25 percent more conversions than organic ads, making paid content a vital component of a robust, multifaceted social media strategy.2
Facebook didn't attract more than 2.9 billion users3 and become more valuable than Exxon4 by relying on intuition when placing ads. The ad-targeting methods Facebook and the other social media giants use are based on highly sophisticated computer and social science. Setting up an effective campaign can be as simple as providing an image or a message to promote, along with a few details about your target audience and business goals.
The same is true of all popular social media sites. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and has since grown to over 900 million5 monthly active users. It now shares Facebook's ad platform, making it easy for business owners to reach users of both services. Twitter, another social media juggernaut, allows advertisers to target users based on many of the same criteria as Facebook, including age, gender, location, and interests.
Follow these tips to make the most of your social media advertising campaigns.
Cater to Your Demographic
Social media services provide you, a business owner who wants to reach customers, with several ways to home in on your target market and ensure you're not wasting resources displaying ads to customers who are unlikely to pay a visit. By taking a few minutes to establish viewing parameters for a paid post, you can guide a social media advertising algorithm toward your ideal customer, netting better results and making your ad dollars go farther with each post. The first step is to identify and then define your audience.
Tips on Tailoring Audiences
Age may play a part in determining whom you'll want to see your ads. Trendy tapas bars that target younger adults can set ads to be shown to individuals younger than 30, while a local buffet advertising an early bird senior special can aim for individuals 65 and older. Family restaurants can target parents by narrowing the age range to exclude those who are less likely to have kids at home, such as consumers younger than 20 and older than 45.
You can choose to display your ads to one specific gender, as well. An establishment advertising a mother and daughter brunch can set that campaign to target only women, for example. Choosing an ideal audience based on gender can be tricky, but when utilized at the right time, this kind of criterion allows you to narrow your target audience even further.
To avoid wasting advertising dollars on folks who live nowhere near your restaurant, set your advertising campaigns to display ads only to people who are physically in your area. Location specific ads and coupons targeted to a certain region, city, or neighborhood are especially effective for location-based services such as restaurants. If a consumer is located 50 miles from your venue, they're unlikely to stop by for a meal, whereas local patrons in the area may easily be swayed to visit a new eatery by flashy ads featuring images of delicious food.
On some channels, paid ads can even be tailored to reach certain demographics based on their income range. For example, a fine dining venue hosting a charity event at $250 per plate will need to target their ads to a different income level than a local taco shop advertising a "2-for-1 Taco Tuesday" special. Although income demographics may not apply to all products and services, there are times when establishing a general income range for your ideal customer can help social media algorithms pinpoint the viewers most likely to respond to your ad.
Ensure your ads are being shown to the right customers by getting familiar with social media tools designed to refine your target audience by age, gender, location, and even income level.
Know Your Customers' Interests
Another powerful marketing strategy for restaurants is to learn about your customers' specific interests. If you have an idea of what your guests like to do in their free time, that knowledge can go a long way in reaching them.
If your eatery is near a golf course, consider setting your ads to appear to people in your area who are interested in playing golf. Sports bars will benefit from serving ads to customers who show allegiance to the popular sports teams in their areas. If being a family-friendly place to eat is part of your brand, consider showing your ads to people who have children and express an interest in visiting local family attractions.
Likes and dislikes are another good way to target paid content. People who have liked pages and joined groups aimed at dog owners are more likely to respond to gourmet dog treat ads, while people who follow pages dedicated to wedding planning are more likely to be interested in custom wedding cakes or event catering services.
Check out groups and pages that may be relevant to your restaurant, such as those dedicated to fancy cakes and cookies, hunting down food trucks in your city, or comparing the burgers at one restaurant to another. Monitoring these pages and groups gives you a free window into your customers' minds and can help you create ads they'll respond to.
Gather Feedback
Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, as well as other businesses with successful or unique social media feeds you'd like to emulate. Keeping tabs on other businesses' content can help you stay on top of trends and capitalize on successful marketing strategies while avoiding the unsuccessful ones. Pay attention to what potential customers are saying about these businesses and how they're interacting with those social media feeds to glean insights on building rapport and increasing engagement on your own feed.
For your own business, listen to what your customers are saying. Track mentions of your venue and products and parse the sentiments being shared. Social media monitoring is an easy, free way to gather valuable feedback from consumers without bothering them with texts or emails. Positive mentions double as potential post fodder, as sharing consumer-generated content is a valuable way to connect with your followers.
Maximize Ad Reach
Once you've come up with a great idea and decided to make a paid ad, you want to make sure your post is getting the maximum visibility possible. Here are a few things you can do to increase the amount of traffic your posts get:
Schedule Posts: Scheduling posts helps keep your social media feeds active, even when you and your staff don't have time to update. Businesses can have brainstorming sessions once or twice a week to come up with new post ideas, then take their time creating the posts and scheduling them for times when traffic is high to maximize potential engagement.
Cross Promote and Collaborate: Network in your community and find neighboring businesses, charities, churches, or activist group events to support or attend. If your restaurant specializes in healthy food or smoothies, for example, you can approach local gyms about co-hosting an event, posting about your business on their feed, or providing coupons for them to distribute to their customers.
Peruse social media and identify influencers who speak to an audience of followers who are likely to buy your product and are located near your venue, and offer such influencers free product in exchange for a review.
Link your social media pages and share posts between them to increase following/engagement across all platforms. If a consumer is already following you on Instagram, you want them to follow you on Facebook and Twitter, too!
Don't overdo it. Make sure you're posting to social media every day, but limit posts to each channel to 1 or 2 high-quality posts per day. Inundating your followers with posts dilutes the impact of each post and can quickly lead to oversaturation and losing followers.
Set your paid ads up for success by scheduling them to post during high-traffic hours, getting online collaborators to share them, and linking content between social media channels.
Drive Engagement
Post content that asks questions, solicits input, or offers rewards. For example, a post inviting followers to vote on a potential new beverage or dessert flavor, a humorous image with "caption this," or a picture of some delicious food with a call for viewers to like and comment for a chance to win a free meal. These are all examples of content that encourages viewers to interact with the post and offers some type of reward, whether social or monetary, for doing so.
Invoke Action
Advertising that your restaurant exists and you have tasty food is one thing, but a great way to offer an incentive for customers to actually visit your business is to post coupons for discounts and free items on your social media pages. Such incentives are a good way to increase the effectiveness of a call to action in your ad. Both Facebook and Twitter allow customers to run campaigns specifically intended to encourage guests to redeem such offers.
Go Beyond the Sell by Adding Value
Social media marketing for restaurants should go beyond simply convincing people to buy your products. Companies can establish brand recognition and trust with their customers by offering content that entertains, inspires, or informs. Consider posting on topics that celebrate your local community. Mixing your ads with feel-good content can be a reliable way to give back and establish trust with potential customers.
Remember, people don't get on Facebook to check out ads; they're there to see what's going on in the world and connect with friends and family members. If all they're seeing from your business are ads every time they log on, it won't take them long to unfollow. To keep them engaged, offer them content they value – industry news, behind-the-scenes looks at how the restaurant operates, glamorous food shots, and content from other customers are all types of content that make people feel connected to your establishment, and building that connection through unpaid, day-to-day posts is what keeps them interested in your ads.
References
- 68 Social Media Usage Statistics for 2021: Time Spent & Impact on Health. Finances Online. Accessed November 2021.
- Why Do You Need to Run Restaurant Ads on Social Media Platforms? RestroApp. Accessed November 2021.
- Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 3rd quarter 2021. Statista. Accessed November 2021.
- Facebook Is Now More Valuable than Exxon. Fortune. Accessed November 2021.
- Number of monthly active Instagram users from January 2013 to June 2018. Statista. Accessed November 2021.
