Restaurant marketing is no easy feat. After all, how do you effectively advertise a product when the primary selling point is its taste? Let’s run through three smart marketing strategies that will help you ensure your food or drink products appeal to all the senses. Offering actionable advice on both online and offline marketing tactics, here’s how to ensure your tasty treats stand out in an increasingly saturated industry
Find your USP (and emphasize it)
No matter if you’re a microwave meal manufacturer for large-scale grocery stores or a grower of fresh produce for local establishments, your specialist sector is likely to be inundated with food and drink manufacturers offering the same product—so how do you ensure yours is noticed? The answer: find your USP (unique selling point).
What exactly this unique selling point is very much depends on your product type. For the best success, keep an eye on the latest restaurant and industry trends and try to align your USP accordingly. For example, with sustainability becoming an increasingly popular consumer preference worldwide, look to heavily emphasize any product that is sustainably sourced as a key characteristic.
To reinforce your USP, look to adopt a focused SEO (Search Engine Optimization) digital marketing strategy. Carry out keyword research surrounding your USP (using the aforementioned example, you may research around ‘sustainable food’ as a starting point), optimizing the page content and blog posts on your website for terms with substantial search volumes. This will help your brand website rank higher in Google search positioning, increasing organic traffic and subsequent brand and product exposure. And the best part? That organic traffic will be in the form of consumers specifically searching for products with your USP, meaning you’re more likely to see conversions in the forms of purchases as a result.
Get social media savvy
After taste, undoubtedly the best sense to target with a food marketing strategy is sight—as what better way to advertise your product than a mouthwatering picture that instantly gets the consumer’s taste buds tingling? With this in mind, look to capitalize on the popularity of visual content on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
Take pictures of particularly aesthetic foods such as the tantalizing melted cheese on a scrumptious burger, using this as the basis for a social media post or advertisement. Instagram and Facebook both offer great targeted advert options that enable you to narrow down your desired reach by demographic, so consider who your audience is and target them accordingly. For instance, if you’re a local food or drink retailer, consider a social media advertising campaign that’s tailored to people within your area. Assuming your food looks the part, you’ll no doubt see an influx of engagements, hopefully driving conversions as a result. As an added incentive, why not pair your advert with an exclusive discount offer to really get people talking?
Network, network, network
In today’s digital age, it can be all too easy to get caught up in the world of online—but this isn’t to say that traditional marketing tactics can’t still pay dividends.
Networking is one of the oldest tricks in the marketing book—and for good reason! Look to network with anyone and everyone as a means of promoting your food and drink business. There are always plenty of events both locally and nationally, so keep an eye on industry calendars and get involved – think pop-up markets, industry showcases and everything in between. And the best part? You can utilize your trump card—taste. Offer free samples and giveaways and allow your food or drink to speak for itself.
With the right know-how, there’s an array of channels you can explore to effectively market your food and drink products. For the best success, look to utilize both digital and physical marketing strategies—as long as it tastes good, you’ll find customers coming back time and time again as a result.
Jon Leighton is the Director of Land Digital, a full-service digital agency providing made-to-measure marketing, design and development solutions to help businesses in the UK solve their commercial problems.
