I’ve seen it happen before. It’s the mistake that many restaurant and cafe owners make. The failure to acknowledge the importance of marketing.
Marketing is what determines the survival of a good restaurant. Even when you have a three star Michelin Chef, raving reviews for your food from around the world, and some of the best service in the city, your restaurant can still close. This was the case for the now defunct, but famous restaurants, Lumiere’s and db Bistro Moderne in Vancouver, Canada which was run by world famous chef Daniel Boulud.
What was interesting was that once people knew it was closing down, people I knew were talking about it on Twitter, Facebook, and spreading the word about it virally, including local TV personalities. Strangely, they received a lot of publicity and marketing, but at too late of a stage and for the wrong reasons.
So how do you prevent yourself from getting in the same situation? What can you do to market your restaurant so that customers think of you when they want a place to eat? Here are three social media tools to help market your restaurant so that customers always think about you.
Social Media Tool Number 3: Facebook Fan Page
I’m not going to go into the details of how to create a fan page. But I will tell you the one key ingredient to Facebook marketing. Interaction with your online customers.
It’s actually possible that a customer will “Like” your restaurant and never see messages you post again on their Facebook news feed, and that’s because of EdgeRank. Edgerank is a formula that Facebook uses to calculate how important you are to be on a Facebook user’s newsfeed when the user logs in. If EdgeRank thinks that your restaurant isn’t important to their user, then it’s not going to show up high on their news feed. Continue reading Top 3 Social Media Tools to Market Your Restaurant (Part 1/2)