3. Exclusive offers and deals

Drive patrons to your establishment, increase word-of-mouth marketing, and get more Facebook Likes by offering deals exclusive to your Facebook Fans.

Set up coupons, group coupons, and referral programs directly on your Facebook page. Arrange it so that people have to like your Facebook page to get the deal, and require them to provide their emails so you can collect email leads for customer nurturing or follow-up. Many coupon and contest apps allow you to set up your offer so that when someone participates, an update about your promotion is automatically posted to your participants’ Facebook wall. Socially based referral programs give patrons incentives to share with their friends.

Loyalty programs can have a big effect on word-of-mouth advertising. Add them to your popular social sites, and your fans can spread the word about you to more friends, and faster.

4. Build a community with interactive content

The point of being on social media is to interact. This is not a place to be pushing out old-school, one-way advertising. Engage, interact, and build a community on your Facebook page.

When planning your Facebook content strategy, think of your fans as customers in your restaurant. Why do people dine at your venue? What are your customers’ lifestyles? What do they care about when they visit you?

Incorporate your patrons’ persona into your Facebook content. Blend it with your restaurant personality. Create tasty update morsels your fans can’t resist.

Ask questions about:

• Lifestyle
• Solutions to common problems
• Food tips

Host interactive contests. Set these up directly on your Facebook page, such as a:

• Vote contest to get your patrons to choose your next new menu item
• Photo contest to get authentic images of your best-selling products
• Photo caption contest to name a new beverage, or just for fun

5. Geo-targeting

A valuable feature of Facebook is that you can “geo-target” highly specific locations. This is true for both Facebook ads and Facebook posts.

To target locations with Facebook ads, choose the country you are targeting. Facebook will then give you the option to target your ad to the province or the city you want your ad to reach. Your ad will show only to those people within that location. (Facebook uses IP addresses and other information to know where your customers are.) You can target Facebook ads by age, gender, interests, categories, education and more.

To target your Facebook posts, use the target button on your update box. Choose to filter by location.

Note: Facebook is constantly updating their targeting features to make the site more friendly for local business. Make your updates visible by the people in your neighbourhood to increase your click-through rates, and the foot traffic to your establishment.

Twitter

Twitter gives you free, mobile-friendly, real-time marketing opportunities. It’s a great tool for customer relations too.

1. Bio and background

Use a branded background, with images of your place or food offerings.

For your bio:

• Keep it short and friendly.
• Add your location, and address – particularly if you’re an independent restaurant or franchisee.
• Include a link to your website, or online menu.

2. Images

Twitter users can now preview photos and videos in their main news feed. Take advantage of this by showing your irresistible food and beverages.

Get creative with your Twitter visuals:

• Show timely food items (both seasonal and strategically throughout the day), with a link to your menu landing page.
• Make a funny video of your chef or staff to promote your restaurant’s personality. Post this using Twitter’s Vine service, which allows for a six second clip.
• Encourage your patrons to tweet their best food photos by hosting a Twitter photo contest.

3. Use hashtags

Spread the reach of tweets by using searchable hashtags, by adding the symbol “#” at the beginning of words. Use location-based hashtags, such as your #city (e.g. #Toronto or #Halifax) or #neighbourhood. People looking for a place to dine will search for their town and they’ll see your tweets.

Establish a company or current marketing campaign hashtag. Encourage your patrons to use it by offering coupons or other incentives. This gets your name marketed to friends of friends.

Follow your customers back on Twitter. Get to know what common hashtags they use. If they fit with your restaurant, use the same hashtags to get on the radar of people with similar likes and lifestyles.

4. Time your tweets

Send out tweets close to breakfast, lunch and dinner times. Unlike Facebook, where updates are delayed on a user’s timeline, your tweets show up in followers’ feeds immediately as you send them.

With real-time messaging:

• Send out exclusive Twitter deals for your followers.
• Use hashtags like #lunch or #dinner or #special – to spread your offers via Twitter search.
• Think like your customer and use that info to connect with people.

5. Geo-target your ads

Like Facebook, Twitter lets you micro-target your market. On Twitter, geo-targeting your ads is very important, as many of your patrons use the platform through mobile. You can target your ads by country and then metro area, similarly to Facebook. Twitter also lets you target by keywords, interests and gender, and even mobile device.

As of this writing, Twitter has been beta testing the geo-targeting of unpaid tweets. For now, the best way to target your regular tweets is to use location-based hashtags.

Like Facebook, Twitter is constantly working to generate more specific targeting options for business. Make sure your message gets to the right patrons in the right location. You might just reach your customers as they are walking by your door!

Like any good marketing plan, you need to monitor your results. Both Facebook and Twitter give you analytics to measure KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). Use them to keep improving your content, and increase sales.

See also: 

About the author

Krista Bunskoek, content marketer at Wishpond, has over 12 years experience in public relations, marketing and social media marketing. She is author of numerous online marketing ebooks, including Influence Marketing: How to Increase your Blog Traffic and Twitter Content Marketing. Vancouver-based Wishpond makes it easy to run social contests and promotions, make online ads, generate leads and nurture sales conversions with email automation campaigns. Visit them at www.wishpond.com.