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Video Marketing Example for Restaurants

Video Marketing Example for Restaurants

We are always looking to find ways to use video for restaurant marketing.

Each video has a common goal which is to highlight that which makes the restaurant unique, and when you use video to market your restaurant you should do the  same. Where video stands head and shoulders above the other mediums you may choose is the human aspect, you get a feel for the person in the video and that is a key part of connecting with your audience. I have said this before but you can not be marketing the fact that you have food and drink. If you are doing that you are wasting your time. Most likely there is a subway or other processed food vendor that is selling cheap calories somewhere around you.

They have food and drink.

Your restaurant marketing should be about the things that set you apart, the one of a kind things that make your restaurant a unique destination and a value to the community that it is in. One thing that makes it that way is the people who make and serve the food and drink, it is their passion for the process and the end product that is of interest and value to the audience. Your restaurant marketing should be highlighting these things, and naturally the food and drink will be noted.

Here is and example of Video Marketing for Restaurants:

As you can see, this is as much about Lindsay, and the Process, as the product. It is an invitation to come see her and the rest of the staff. Video allows a window into what it would be like to sit at the bar and have Lindsay make a cocktail for you, it is personal and only possible in person or on video.

Have you used video for your business marketing or are you thinking about it? If you want ideas for how it could work for your particular business, just ask, its what I love to do.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.
Filed Under: Local Market Strategy, Restaurant Marketing Tagged With: , ,
Restaurant Marketing Cheat Sheet

Restaurant Marketing Cheat Sheet

Here are some quick hit tweaks to your online presence that will get you found:

  1. Info people want should be front and center: Menu – Hours – Address – Phone Number. All on mobile ready pages. Get it done.
  2. Check your info on the big referrers, Google Local, Yelp, etc I recently found one of my places had a wrong phone number on Yelp.
  3. Think like a customer when you write blog posts, what are they looking for when they search? “Rehearsal Dinner Locations in Malden”
  4. Photos have been shown to drive trafic and are particularly powerful with Food. Always Use them.
  5. Talk about why you love what you do, not how cheap you are willing to sell it.
  6. Make sure your brand has a message and stick to it, don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be your brand.
  7. Respond to customer requests and issues, make them right, let them and others see you are responsive.
  8. Monitor your reviews for fake competitor driven ones, Yelp is particularly bad for this.
  9. Share whats new on a regular basis, don’t put a hard sell on it, just share it.
  10. Remember that you are not just selling food, you are selling a social experience and/or a service just as much.

You can get a lot of bang for your online marketing buck (and time) if you use these tweaks to adjust what you already do. It doesn’t all have to be technical and complicated, its still human interaction.

@spirocks on Twitter 

I am Spirocks on Twitter.
Filed Under: Mobile, Restaurant Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With:
Restaurant Marketing: Image Tip

Restaurant Marketing: Image Tip

Restaurant Marketing is image centric, it is more effective when pictures of food and drink are used to communicate the food’s style and the skill with which it was put together. It is easy to copy some text from a menu and put it on yours, but much more difficult to actually reproduce the food that a skilled restaurant kitchen can make. Therefore showing the food you make in your restaurant marketing via photographs is an obvious step that nearly every restaurant employs. From their print ads, to their websites, it is ubiquitous.

How do we stand out?

We make the photographs better in our restaurant Marketing. This should be one of the restaurant’s primary marketing goals, and today I am going to share a scientifically proven tip to help make that happen. When photographing the food you should place a utensil in the photo, and not just anywhere. Always place the utensil on the right-handed side of the plate.

Studies show a nearly 29% increase in the likelihood that a person would want to buy the item than if the utensil was on the other side. Incredible. (source)

The reason is that seeing the utensil on the side of the plate that they would use helped the viewers to visualize themselves picking it up and eating the dish, which increased their intent to purchase.

Now what about the lefties? Well sorry but with the number of right-handed people potentially as high as 90% of the population it is clearly a no-brainer to take the 29% increase by tailoring the restaurant marketing messages to them.

I believe the reason for this also has to do with the identification that happens between a person and the message that the (correctly aligned utensil) plate of food delivers. Which is: “This could be mine” as opposed to a (no utensil plate) that delivers: “This is a photo for advertising” and an (incorrectly aligned utensil plate) which delivers “This is someone else’s food.”

In any event the fact remains simple to execute. In your restaurant marketing photographs align the utensil where a right-handed person would use it.

Here is the point and shoot I would recommend for its low light ability, manual adjustments, and image quality.
Canon PowerShot S95 10 MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD

What do you think? Give me some feedback in the comments, and find me on twitter @spirocks

 

I am Spirocks on Twitter.
Filed Under: Restaurant Marketing Tagged With:
Social Networks (Share on Them) But Host Your Own Website

Social Networks (Share on Them) But Host Your Own Website

Why Host Your Own Website, Social Networks Host a Page for You for Free? 

Today Posterous got bought by Twitter, and likely will fade away and be shut down in the not too distant future. It follows a long line of other social networks, some alive but irrelevant like MySpace, and others that have been shut down completely.

The image above is from The Next Web delivering the news today, and those who have built their web presence around a Posterous space are now left to either try and move it or start anew. I am here to explain why you cshould choose a wordpress sefl hosted site over other social networks.

This moving around could all be avoided, and should be avoided at all costs, by any business who wants an online presence. You need to create and host your own content, on your own website, and it is easy and not that much money either.

I host all my sites (15+) on one Bluehost account which runs about $5.95 a month, then I build them on wordpress using the genesis framework of amazing WordPress themes. You can check them out here: StudioPress Themes for WordPress, by using wordpress I can log in from any browser and post/edit/manage my website without needing any software on whichever computer or device I am using. I can also use the wordpress app on any iOS or Android device to make the edits. It truly is as simple as can be imagined for a self hosted website. I am an affiliate of both of these companies and you can see them in action here on spirocks.com, I love using them.

But You Want to Be on these Social Networks

You can be, in fact you will get more out of social networks this way. Here is how the workflow goes:

  1. Create Content for your blog. Video, Text, Photos, etc.
  2. Share the link to that post on your Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr, Pinterest, Etc…
  3. When people click on those posts they are led back to your website/blog and you get a chance to show them more.

Now in this scenario if Posterous is gone, all you lose is the links from your blog that you shared there, not the actual content that you spent time, effort, and money creating.

It is clearly the way to go, and sooner or later there is always a new popular site, and a fading older one, so why not be a part of them while they are vibrant and not lose anything when they fade away?

What are your thoughts?

Find me on Twitter and say HI here: @Spirocks and be sure to subscribe to my updates above.

Your Blog is Your Online Foundation

 

I am Spirocks on Twitter.
photo by: WSDOT
Filed Under: Just Think, Tools Tagged With: , , , ,
Financing and Marketing a New Bar

Financing and Marketing a New Bar

Guest post by Sara Mackey

Just about every adult aged social drinker has sat around a table with a group of friends and talked about how fun it would be to start their own bar. No doubt about it, it would be fun, but in today’s economy it is harder than ever to get financed for a new bar. Bars are considered a high-risk industry and most new bars fail within a very short period of time, but there are business financing options available.

It is nearly impossible to get standard small business loans through a bank or lending institution for starting a bar, so one of the best options is to look at alternative business financing such as equity financing. Equity financing is funding received in exchange for equity ownership.

The Bank of Family and Friends

While family loans are not typically in the amounts available through traditional small business loans, starting a family business is one of the hallmarks of small businesses in America. While there is not a lot of legal hassle associated with a loan from your friends or family, it should still be treated as a professional loan to avoid problems down the road. Hire a lawyer to draw up the papers and have all parties present when they are signed.

Angel Investors

Angel investors are private entrepreneurs who fund small businesses that they are familiar with and in an industry in which they have experience. Angel investors earned their name by being a friendlier version of an investor. They invest their own funds and bring experience and an already established network in exchange for their part in the ownership of your bar.

Venture Capitalists

If you already have a successful and established bar business and are looking to expand your current bar or open additional bars in new locations, venture capitalists may be just what you need. Venture capitalists are also private entrepreneurs, but rather than invest their own money, they invest their client’s funds in businesses that promise to yield a high return on the investment.

Once you have secured business financing for your bar, the next step is to develop a great marketing strategy. In order for your bar to be a success, you need customers. In order to get customers in your bar, you need good marketing. The best marketing campaigns target a niche market, and you need to know which niche your bar fills so that you can focus on that market. There are many low cost ways for a bar to bring in new and returning customers from social networking, your own website for your bar and more. Research and understand your market, this will allow you to strategically capitalize on targeting your customer.

Starting your own bar can be a dream come true, but it takes time, commitment and diligence. Do not be discouraged if you cannot obtain financing on the first try, there are many available options to get you from talking around the table at a bar to starting your own.

More Restaurant Marketing Ideas

I am Spirocks on Twitter.
Filed Under: Restaurant Marketing, Tools Tagged With:
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