Influencer marketing is constantly yielding businesses big revenue. Influencers build a bridge between brands and consumers, bringing the product closer to the audience. Especially in the food and beverage industry where the experiences matter and people want to hear from regular people just like them.

This is something that restaurant owners should consider. Here are some of the ways restaurant business owners could leverage influencer marketing:

Product reviews

Influencers have always done an amazing job at promoting brand products. When they represent something to the public, the reaction is much stronger than it would otherwise be if the brand promoted the product themselves.

In this case, the product is food. For instance, a restaurant could work with an influencer in order for them to showcase a new meal on their blog and social media profile. As a result, more people will be willing to try the meal later on.

Brand ambassadors

In order to increase brand awareness, restaurant business owners should know that influencers do an amazing job. They have large followings across the web and this makes them perfect for widening a restaurant’s reach. This role has many forms—creating content, hosting events, and so on but in essence of this kind of cooperation is revenue increase based on raising brand awareness and spreading the word on restaurant’s behalf.

Sponsored posts

This type of influencer marketing requires less maintenance but it’s still an effective approach. This allows restaurants to work with different influencers—both big and small. It’s a great way to raise brand awareness, get their product in front of people while still not commuting to a long-term relationship with an influencer.

Hospitality reviews

Food and beverage industry takes on many forms nowadays. There are coffee shops, clubs, pubs and so on. Businesses can use the influencer strategy to connect with influencers who will review and share about their business to the local community. If their brand fits this mold, this is definitely something they should do. It will allow them to build a good reputation in their area where the majority of their traffic comes from.

Interviews

People love stories. They want to hear all about your success, but more importantly, they want to hear all about your obstacles, fails, and anecdotes. To harness this, a restaurant owner should ask an influencer to conduct an interview with them. They should share some of their stories or ask the influencer to come up with interesting questions that might engage and resonate with the readers

Family experiences

These experiences actually mean allowing the influencer to experience the brand—food, hospitality, atmosphere, and processes, and so on just like any other person would. This creates a good image of the brand and exposes all points of difference between a real experience and public image of what is happening within an establishment. While this is a popular technique in the tourism industry—inviting influencers to try the service themselves and write and share about it at the same time—it’s slowly moving into the food and beverage industry as well.

Sponsoring a cookbook

Food bloggers are often great cooks themselves and this is why this could be a great opportunity for restaurant businesses to widen their reach but also set up an authority over their competitors. While sponsoring a cookbook is not a cheap ordeal, it can be done with some clever techniques and a good cooperation between the business and the influencer.

Create content

“Brands often use influencers for this purpose. While people love to see what businesses have to say, they are much more interested in seeing what an influencer in the branch has to say. This should not be limited to blog posts but it should rather translate into the social media where the influencer could share photos of a fun night in a restaurant or something similar. Influencers could also create email marketing campaigns for the brand where the Influencer could send personalized emails to the users,” says a content manager from Writemyx and OriginWritings, Susanne Sheldon.

Appearances

A restaurant could connect with an Influencer in order to have them appear at their restaurant on a special occasion and mingle with the users. This is a great technique because it attracts more people to the restaurant and it could drive more traffic on the appearance nights. Everyone wants to meet someone famous and food bloggers tend to have quite a large following.

Events

Restaurant brands could host events with influencers. For instance, recipe share night or live cooking nights and so on. This is a good technique because people are interested in doing fun things and enhancing their restaurant experience while the influencer could spread the word of an event much faster.

Affiliate marketing

“Affiliate marketing is a good way for a brand to get in front of an audience with their links and promotions. This is quite a common technique and it’s quite basic when it comes to the level of engagement with the influencer but it’s nonetheless effective,” says Sidney Molinski, a marketing manager at 1Day2write.

Food Bloggers are Your Best Influencers

Everyone loves and reads about food bloggers. Restaurants should do their best to start a conversation with them and build a relationship that could yield great results for both. Hopefully, some of these influencer strategies can be useful to brands.