Are You Maximizing the Marketing Potential of your Restaurant Website?
June 18, 2009
There’s a post over at Synergy Restaurant Consultants’ blog, suggesting that restaurants resist the temptation to simply slash prices to battle the sluggish economy, but instead offer an alternative value proposition to attract potential diners. We couldn’t agree more and would add that once you settle upon your tactic, employ the most powerful marketing tool in a restaurant’s arsenal to get the word out: your website.
In the not too distant past, restaurateurs would rely upon ads in local newspapers, radio spots or other offline means of reaching their target market. In 2009, successful restaurant marketers will rely upon a blend of website marketing and social media to communicate their unique value proposition to their customers.
There are a handful of restaurants that are successfully utilizing their website’s homepage to promote distinctive offerings. Check out Fuse Restaurant in Dallas, where they are spotlighting a novel feature of their establishment: a rooftop party every Friday evening. Blackbird Restaurant in Chicago devotes prime homepage real estate to their special events, and while you may not have a recent article in a national foodie magazine to tout, you could still take a page from Stephen Pyles’ playbook and incorporate a mention of your unique proposition into your homepage text and graphics.
Another great way to use your website to its full advantage is to add a blog component. There are many choices in blogging platforms; we prefer WordPress for it’s flexibility and the variety of plugins available to accommodate almost any need. The benefits to blogging are many and include the ability to keep website content fresh, the potential to prominently highlight any seasonal or new offerings, and the preference that search engines tend to apply to blog posts in their rankings.
While quite a few chefs are blogging these days, not nearly enough are making sure that their fans can find their blog. If your restaurant or your chef maintains a blog; include a link to the blog on the restaurant’s homepage. L20 in Chicago and Lola in Cleveland are two restaurants that are giving their blogs top visibility on their websites. L20 gives their blog equal billing with their website’s homepage in the intro. We don’t necessarily recommend this design method for search engine optimization reasons, however the prominence of that chef’s blog in their marketing strategy is noteworthy. It’s also interesting to see that Michael Symon’s blog is front and center on the homepage of Lola’s website.
While these examples are good; even these sites aren’t utilizing their blogs to their full potential. TwoTables suggests an integrative approach to get the highest return from your investment. We recommend including recent posts on the homepage and incorporating a blog with other social media sites. Using an application such as Twitterfeed to automatically add blog posts to a Twitter profile and displaying tweets on your blog are two effective ways in which to synthesize these elements of your marketing program.
Weathering the economic storm may not be easy, but implementing some new and innovative marketing tools to set your restaurant apart from the competition is. To get a free analysis of your website’s internet presence, simply complete the online RFP form or call TwoTables Internet Marketing today.
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