Why Is Internet Marketing Important For My Restaurant?

The National Restaurant Association has compiled many influential statistics demonstrating that consumers actively use the Internet in order to find out information about restaurants.

The simple fact is that millions of people are using the Internet every day, and the amount of people visiting restaurant information directories is always growing.

Another valuable asset this technology provides, and CouponCuisine employs, is the ability for real-time marketing strategies where the results of your efforts are instantaneous compared to offline advertising.

There is no other media format that allows restaurant owners to update marketing campaigns instantly. And the Internet allows us to give you live feedback on what’s happening with your coupons. There’s no being “in the dark” with the Internet – you quickly see how many people are looking at your advertisementsments, and how many intend to act on them.

Top 10 Web Site Mistakes That Restaurants Make

Many independent restaurants miss out on the great opportunity that the Internet provides for their business by making costly blunders with their web sites. Let’s take a look at ten common mistakes frequently encountered at restaurant web sites.

Hide and Seek

For some unknown reason, there are restaurant sites that hide their contact information. This really is lesson number one when building your website. Have your contact information in very easy places to find. Your full address and phone number should be on the top or bottom of every page. You should also have a special “Contact Us” page with more details including maps, directions, hours and other pertinent information. Hide and seek is a fun game when you are a kid, but not on a website.

What’s on the Menu

Your menu is the number one thing that customers look for at a restaurant web site. Are you taking full advantage of posting your menu online? Is it the full menu with appetizers through desserts? Do you include your wine list? What about beer and specialty drinks, and even the kids menu? Prices should be included and there should be a printable version of the menu available as well, perhaps in a PDF format. Exceed your web site customer’s expectations by posting the most effective menu presentation possible.

Lack of Photography

Nothing else can convey the brand image of your restaurant better on your site than quality photography. There is no reason for your web site not to have a variety of beautiful four-color photographs especially since there are no real size constraints with a website like there are in traditional advertising. Photos of your food, your interior and exterior, as well as your people can make a major impact.

Who Works in Your Restaurant?

Time and again, I encounter restaurant sites with no evidence that any real people work there. This is amazing to me because your people are your restaurant. Show them off - especially for independents because this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the chains and highlight the brilliant and passionate people that make your restaurant special. Who’s in the kitchen, the front of house, and who are the owners. Include pictures and bios of as many people as possible. This makes a difference.

Hello?

You’ve got to think of your website much like the telephone at your host stand. Your goal may be to answer every call within two rings. Likewise, your goal should be to answer every email inquiry that comes into your restaurant within 24 hours (or sooner). Emails, like phone calls are business leads, and customers taking the time to email are serious about contacting your restaurant. Respect this and take advantage of prompt follow-up to win business. Is someone dedicated to responding to incoming email messages? If not, go disconnect your phone as well -it’s really the same thing.

No Email Communication

If your restaurant is not using email to communicate with customers, then you are missing out on a big opportunity to promote your business and build a loyal customer base. At minimum, you should have a form on your site for customers to sign up for a newsletter or event information. Follow up with regular, timely emails to your list. This is perhaps where many restaurants stumble, yet this is precisely where the most opportunity exists. Contacting your customers on a regular basis with information that they have requested is one of the smartest marketing moves that you can make.

Happy Valentine’s Day

This may be a big event for your restaurant with a special menu, music and maybe even flowers. I don’t want to read about it in April though! Your Events or What’s New page needs to be fresh and relevant. This area of your site should be a tool to actively promote your restaurant and drive business in, and having old information here is a web site sin. This is one of the easiest mistakes to avoid, so don’t let it happen to you.

Design and Brand Disconnect

Upscale food, but low scale graphics and site design. It happens all the time on the web. Your cousin’s friend could build your web site 10 years ago, but not today. Your web site is an extension of your brand, and if your brand concept is an upscale French bistro, then it is important that your site accurately captures that feeling. Likewise, if you have an irreverent and fun BBQ joint, then that personality needs to come through in your restaurant’s site as well. In simple terms, make sure that your web site creates the correct expectation of the dining experience.

Not For Sale

Your restaurant’s web site should sell for you 24/7 with no breaks. Many restaurant sites make the mistake of solely being a content site - i.e. name, menu, phone number. The best restaurant web sites look at their Internet program as an integrated marketing and sales tool. They do things like take reservations, sell merchandise, help book private parties and catering, and promote gift cards. Is your site selling for you? If not, then you’ve got some work to do.

Now Hiring

Throwing a big bright orange “Now Hiring” sign in your front window can be a bit tacky for sure. Having an Employment Opportunities section on your website is not tacky in the least. Take advantage of your website to spread the word about what a terrific place your restaurant is to work by posting open positions with detailed job descriptions. Build an online job application form, and include information of how prospective employees can best submit their information. While there are many recruiting tools and strategies available, ignoring your own restaurant web site as a source of leads is a foolish mistake.

An effective Internet program should be a key element of a restaurant’s marketing budget and strategy. A strong Internet program can boost sales while helping to lower promotional costs. It should also help increase customer loyalty and retention as well as be a tool to drive first time trial.

If you are looking for strategies to incrementally increase your business, then take a good look at your web site to ensure that you are not committing any of these web site sins. These ten mistakes are all easily avoidable and must be reconciled in order for a restaurant to successfully capture business from its Internet efforts.

- Jaime Oikle, Restaurant Report

Restaurant Business: Open The Pizza Box

Whenever I order from Pizza Hut, they open the box to show me what I ordered and ask “how does it look?”… all before I pay.

This is a stark contrast from what most pizza places do when I pick-up the order. (The same goes for any other restaurant for that matter.)

The action shows me:

1. That the restaurant is proud of what they’ve prepared
2. They want to make sure that I’m happy with the food

What it also does is remove the possibility of guilt from the restaurant if I leave without complaining. Think about it: if you approve something, then pay and then leave… the possibility for errors and complaints regarding that order are automatically reduced.

It’s like if you went through a drive-thru and the window opened the bag for you and said “please check your order, we want to make sure we got it right and that you’re happy”.

Every Restaurant Needs A Customer Database - Part 2: Systems

Every restaurant operator needs to have a systematized method of gathering customer names and contact information. This concept is rarely a problem - most business owners understand they need a database. The issues arise when they fail to create a SYSTEM that operates with very little, actual work.

Building a database for a restaurant is not that hard… after you get the operations in place. (That goes for most anything, doesn’t it?)

It’s really a matter of deciding HOW you want to get customer information. That effort then needs to be maximized so that it creates real, physical, monetary value that the accountant can see.

As with all things, I recommend developing a specific “roadmap” that describes what the task will look like. And before creating any map, I have to know my destination… my goal. For a customer database, I need to determine exactly what information I want.

At the beginning it’s not very important to know exactly why I need the information. This might seem odd, but with technology developing like it is, I tend to settle with getting as much information as I can so that if a way to use it becomes available, I will! The one caveat is to not get so personal that your customers think you’re crazy (ie. don’t make the comment card look like a loan application).

When “contact information” is mentioned, it isn’t necessary to limit that to an e-mail address. E-mail is great because it’s basically free and allows restaurant owners to contact several hundred people simultaneously… but it’s also limited for several reasons… one of them being the competition in the Inbox (more on that another time).

I usually ask for First and Last Name, Address, City, State, Zip Code, Phone Number and E-mail address.

Depending on the types of promotions a restaurant intends to do, other useful information would be Birthday, Wedding Anniversary dates, and even the Birthdays of children if the restaurant is family oriented.

After deciding what information will be collected, I sit down to brainstorm the number of tactics that can be used for getting it. Let me clarify that: I literally sit at my dining room table with a piece of printer paper and my favorite pen and write out my intentions. Putting thoughts onto paper helps me think through the system I’m about to develop.

When brainstorming I don’t limit myself to what marketing strategies are currently available — I consider all those that are possible, even if they’re out of my budget at the time.

The next part of the system creation is determining how the processes will be handled. Who will collect the information? Who will put it into a database format? What steps can be removed to make the process quicker? These are just a few questions to consider, and I’ll talk about more in the next article for this series.