If you have a restaurant it is important to stay on top of the trends when it comes to Hospitality Marketing and promoting your business. It’s a competitive world out there and there are many other restaurants that are vying for the attention of your customers. You will need to be on the cutting edge of trends so that you can keep up with the rest and make your business stand out. How can you use marketing techniques to stay fresh and exciting in the minds of your clients?
Here are some of the hottest trends in the world of restaurant marketing in the year 2015:
Online and Mobile Ordering
One of the hottest trends in restaurant marketing technology for 2015 is mobile and online ordering. Are your customers able to view your menus online and place their orders from their computer, tablet or smart phone? If not, you might be losing business to your competitors. There are many widgets and apps that you can use that will allow your customers to place their order on the go.
Encouraging Social Sharing
It has already become a trend for diners to take photos of their food and post them on Instagram. Many restaurants are encouraging their guests to take photos of their food and then post them online with a hashtag for the restaurant. This is a great way to promote your business and to encourage social sharing. As a further incentive you could even offer discounts or entries into a contest for those customers who post and share photos of their food.
Telling a Story
Another important part of restaurant marketing in 2015 is building your brand by telling a story. Perhaps your business works together with local farmers and producers to make fresh and delicious meals. Or maybe your head chef came over from Greece and he learned many of his delicious and authentic recipes from his grandmother. Maybe the restaurant helps the community by donating to an important charity. These stories are very valuable and they are worth sharing on your social media channels or website in order to build your brand.
Healthier and Better Quality Food
Another recent trend for restaurants has been a focus on higher quality and healthier food. Many brands are realising that their guests are willing to pay more for better quality food. For example, even fast food chains such as Chick-fil-A have been switching to meat that is raised without growth hormones or antibiotics. Carl’s Jr. recently started using all-natural burgers that are free of any antibiotics, hormones and steroids and are grass fed.
If your restaurant is using better ingredients, make sure that you back up these claims in your marketing materials. If you are claiming that your food is locally sourced, organic or better quality you will need to provide evidence that proves those statements. The design of your Marketing Material and professionally taken images can help support this.
Restaurant Apps
Many restaurants now have apps that their customers can download, which can offer a lot of advantages. Restaurant apps can be loaded with content and they can include a lot of great features, including location information, payment features, special deals, promotions, reservation booking abilities and much more. Your restaurant will only be a tap away on the phones of your customers, whenever they want to look at your menu, check out special offers or book a reservation. You can also use the Push Notifications feature to let your customers know about special events and cheap deals.
Integrated Marketing
There are many different tools out there that you can use for online marketing, including Twitter, Facebook, Email and Websites. Integrated marketing means combining them, so that you can make your online marketing campaigns more effective. The same content can be reused across different media channels in slightly different formats, which ensures that more people will see it and it will have a better chance of getting shared. Some messages will work better than others, but the effect will be stronger than it would be if they had only used one social media channel.
These are just a few of the hottest trends in restaurant marketing in 2015. Is your restaurant keeping up with these trends, or is it falling behind? If you find that marketing your restaurant is a struggle, it can be valuable to hire a professional restaurant marketing company so that they can lend their expertise. They will be able to build a campaign that is totally suited to the unique needs of your restaurant.