Social media marketing for restaurants and bakeries is a huge determinant of marketing success in the restaurant industry. Apart from having great menu items, your eCommerce marketing strategy will go a long way in promoting your restaurant brand to potential customers. It's a vital part of efficient business systems.
Successfully opening a bakery, running a restaurant business, and selling the best coffee subscription box in town is a vast gold mine if you have the right strategies. Before opening a restaurant, you need to have a restaurant business plan and a great business process flow.
It would help if you also had restaurant management software to handle daily operations and workflows. These operations include invoicing and payment processing, supply chain management, managing the restaurant POS system, and setting up your eCommerce marketing strategies.
Everyone is on social media these days. So whether it's TikTok or Facebook, there are a lot of untapped opportunities and customers waiting for a bakery or restaurant owner on social media.
As part of your marketing strategies, prioritizing social media marketing will help your bakery and restaurant business stand out. So, where do you start? How do you effectively promote your quick-service restaurant and bakery on social media?
Keep reading to get some insights on the best social media marketing for restaurants and bakeries.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social media platforms to interact with customers and promote a brand. Leveraging the power of social media can increase brand awareness, grow sales, and drive website traffic. It's ideal to find the best eCommerce platform for SEO strategies, too.
Let's talk about some social media marketing statistics to put things into perspective:
- Social media platforms average over 4.62 billion users globally. (SproutSocial)
- An average social media user spends about 95 minutes per day across various social media channels. (Neil Schaffer)
- At least 82% of internet users are on social media–just in the US. (SproutSocial)
- Consumers are six times more likely to purchase from a website with social media pictures. (Neil Schaffer)
- 76% of social media consumers access social media for product research. (Neil Schaffer)
- Online brand discovery comes through social media 52% of the time. (SproutSocial)
- eCommerce videos posted on social media have earned 93% of brands' new customers. (Shopify)
As you can see from the stats above, a comprehensive social media marketing strategy can grow your business. In addition, a robust social network and marketing plan can increase your brand visibility.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to do much to get your target audience to notice your social media accounts. Being creative with your social media posts and sticking with best practices for each social media channel is often enough.
However, before we discuss these best practices for social media marketing for bakeries and restaurants, let's dive into some of the best social media channels for promoting your business.
3 Best Social Media Marketing Channels for Restaurants and Bakeries
Facebook has an average of 2.936 billion monthly active users worldwide. That's a lot of people.
However, your content isn’t relevant to all of these people. Facebook gives you the power to organically promote your restaurant to a broader audience through content sharing and Facebook ads.
Posting high-quality content on Facebook can get the attention of your target audience. This triggers actions that lead to brand awareness, lead generation, sales, or all three.
Facebook marketing is quite simple:
- Set up your Facebook page.
- Post highly engaging content.
- Be consistent.
- Share your content to relevant groups (organic promotion).
- Run Facebook ads.
- Your customers see your content (organic or paid).
- They check out your social media profile.
- Customers may like what they see.
- You get a verified purchase.
- If your strategy is good enough, you also get a referral.
- This cycle repeats.
Facebook also provides an online marketplace to sell your baked goods and food. Integrating your Facebook channel with online ordering systems for restaurants is also a great way to increase sales.
Although the business process flow chart for Facebook marketing looks relatively straightforward, many restaurant owners still fail to get significant results. This is mainly because they do not have access to the best practices we'll be discussing later.
Statistics show that Instagram content has about an 81% engagement rate, compared to Facebook's 8%. With more than 2 billion active users monthly, Instagram is a platform you should explore for promoting your business.
From video reels and Instagram stories to captivating content and shareable hashtags, the audience on Instagram is ready for targeting. You can grab the attention of Instagram users with a high-quality image of your menu options.
To drive traffic or sales on Instagram, you must focus on creating the best brand aesthetics. Your colors, picture quality, hashtags, and the stories you tell with your videos and reels can move your audience to keep coming back for more.
You can link your Facebook and Instagram accounts to run a paid ads campaign and attract a greater audience. First, however, you need to pay attention to the different content preferences of each channel's audience.
Setting up an Instagram account is super easy. Consistency significantly impacts your social media presence and helps your marketing campaign.
TikTok
With over 50,000 influencers and 1 billion active users worldwide, TikTok is a social platform you should include in your social media marketing strategy. But know that TikTok is more than an app where people do silly dances.
You can tell your brand story or showcase your family-style dining menu as video content on TikTok. Users on TikTok are attracted to engaging and shareable video content; take advantage of this!
What are the Best Practices for Restaurants In Social Media?
Each social media channel has its peculiarities and best practices. However, you should follow some general guidelines to get the most out of social media marketing for restaurants and bakeries.
Let's discuss some of these best practices:
- Set Your Marketing Goals
Before creating awesome social media content, you must set your goals and eCommerce KPIs. Setting goals allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
For instance, the goal of your marketing campaign may be to get your customers to visit your restaurant or buy the best baking subscription box. It may even be to boost mobile food ordering.
Your goals should follow these guidelines:
S - Specific: a 50% increase in restaurant visits or 30 curbside pick ups per week
M - Measurable: increased or decreased engagement rates, number of shared content, total referrals and leads generated, or amount of traffic directed to the website
A - Aspirational: attain 1500 followers on Instagram in one month
R - Relevant: achieving this goal will help increase the number of online deliveries per month
T - Time: this goal must be actualized by the end of Q2
Aligning the SMART formula with your chosen KPIs will bring you tremendous results.
- Tell Your Brand Story
Social media gives business owners the opportunity to tell their brand story to customers. Everyone loves a good story. You can take advantage of this from the very beginning.
Work with a great designer to create the perfect brand identity for your restaurant and bakery. Write out some ideas for your backstory and creative angle and tell it uniquely.
You can create a calendar or an editorial sheet to remain consistent with your storyline. Then, tell this story with every single post.
For example, remember the KFC 5 Spice Girls and six guys named Herb tweet? KFC follows only 11 people and a Twitter user noticed it was about the secret blend of 5 spices and 6 herbs in their recipe.
That's a great way to stick to a storyline. Of course, you don't have to use the same kind of idea. However, this is the perfect example of telling your brand story and being consistent.
- Have a Content Strategy for Each Channel You Use
Not every social media channel is for you. Therefore, realizing which channel has your target audience is essential, and creating a content strategy to drive conversion is necessary.
The type of content you post on Facebook may not work on Twitter. Create a plan that will leverage the power of each of these channels. This will help you get the results you want faster.
21 Tips: Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and Bakeries
- Use a social media content planner to schedule content.
- Mix up your content.
- Use hashtags and social slang that is relevant to the restaurant industry.
- Check out what your competitors are doing.
- Set up a giveaway contest or loyalty program.
- Share user-generated content (UGC).
- Use location tagging on your posts.
- Make your menus visible.
- Create special offers and coupons.
- Be creative with your feed.
- Reach out to local influencers.
- Show behind-the-scenes (BTS) footage.
- Share tutorial videos of a great recipe.
- Don't leave comments hanging.
- Post at the best times–make sure you research what these are before posting.
- Be consistent.
- Take advantage of the latest restaurant technologies and social trends.
- Regularly update your audience on new recipes and menu options
- Post your reviews.
- Try paid advertisements.
- Monitor and track your SMART goals.
Frequently Asked Questions About Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and Bakeries
Social media is a great channel to reach potential customers for restaurants and bakeries. Let's answer some questions bout social media marketing for restaurants and bakeries you may have.
Why Do Brands Need to go for Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing brings brands closer to their target customers. With over 4 billion social media users worldwide, brands can reach their customers and expand their businesses across borders.
In addition, engaging on social media makes it possible for brands to build their image with potential customers and partners. As a result, you can increase sales, grow your business, and build customer loyalty.
Besides Social Media, How Can I Promote My Local Business?
Besides social media, you can promote your restaurant business through other eCommerce marketing channels. For example, you can take advantage of eCommerce marketplaces and eCommerce marketing automation tools.
Here's a list of other things you can try:
- Start a referral program and offer incentives for successful referrals.
- Try content marketing and eCommerce email marketing.
- Attend local events and conferences.
- Use traditional marketing strategies like fliers, billboards, and word of mouth.
How Often Should I Post On Social Media?
The simple answer is to post as consistently as possible. Social media marketing thrives on consistency.
Different social media channels have ideal times for posting content. But, again, you can use your insight tool to check this out.
In addition, if you use a social media planner or automation tool, you can schedule content to be posted at optimal times when your audience will be available.
Get Ready to Go Viral
Social media is a great tool to grow and market your restaurant and bakery business. In addition, social media can get you there if you want to promote your online brand reputation or become a viral household name.
Follow the best practices for social media marketing, create a strategy, and post great content. Make it a priority to add social media marketing to your marketing campaign to begin to enjoy the numerous benefits it brings.