One of the most significant restaurant marketing problems is obviously getting new people in the door. As many restaurant and food marketers are aware, consumers who use their cell phones to search for food convert at nearly 72%. This is often because when someone is searching for food, they are hungry and ready to buy a meal right away. They also are looking for someplace that is very close to them, which lends itself to Local SEO. With that said, 33% of restaurants say attracting and keeping their customers is their number one challenge.
These two opposing statistics are very telling of a common problem for restaurant’s online marketing. Either the restaurants are not availing themselves to all the opportunities and benefits of hyper-local search engine optimization, or their websites are not designed with mobile users first in mind. These problems are not mutually exclusive, as Google as taken a mobile first approach to how they rank local businesses on their maps and for Geo-Centric search terms.
If I am driving my car in Westford Massachusetts and would like a pizza, I might search “pizza places near me” or “best pizza in Westford” I would then see 3 pizza places come up on Google, that are very close to my location at the time. With that said, it is highly unlikely that a pizza or sub shop whose website is not responsive, (changes its display based on the screen size of a cell phone vs. tablet vs. computer monitor) will come up in that top 3 list. There are also many small things a restaurant can do to their website to increase the likelihood of coming up on that top 3 map view. For example, they can make sure the term, “Westford Pizza” is in the title tag of their site. They can also make sure their site loads quickly, and that images have the same keyword term in their file name and in the Alt Tag, that screen readers use to help blind users. These are just a few onsite changes a food service company might make to their website.
There are also many things that restaurants can do to help themselves form other platforms such as Facebook, Yelp and Google reviews to increase the likelihood of coming up high on rankings and even when they do, getting customers to click on their link. The more reviews from third party sites that show someone had a positive experience at a restaurant, the more likely someone will want to learn more. Remember, when someone is hungry, they are not in research mode, they will look for something that comes up quickly and has good reviews or stars.
For more information on Local SEO or social media marketing, contact a digital marketing agency in your area such as VRG in the Boston area today.