Building Relationships Is Central To Marketing Success For Restaurants In 2022

Digital sales are expected to make up 30% of all sales in restaurants by 2025. And restaurants are changing how they reach customers in response.

No marketing strategy is a one-size-fits-all, and even within an industry, individual businesses need nuanced plans for creating new growth. But in the restaurant industry, there are clear trends that offer a path to owners wanting to gain market share.

As referenced above, there has been growth in online ordering, and it was making major moves even before the pandemic. Since 2014, there has been a 300% increase in digital ordering compared to dine-in sales. Here are a couple of ways that restaurants are interacting with that trend to create new marketing techniques:

Go Social

Restaurant owners know that the days of traditional-only marketing are in the past. Consumers no longer want to receive ads that tell them how great a product is; they want interactive relationships with the brands they choose.

Restaurants are making the most of this trend by engaging on social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram, which make up 91% and 78% of all social engagement for restaurants, respectively. Instagram use by restaurants has particularly increased, with only 24% of restaurants using it just a year ago.

And restaurants aren’t just using social media to trumpet their latest promotion. They’re using it to genuinely build relationships, with 23% saying that when they see negative feedback, they reach out directly to the individual to try to remedy the situation.

They’re also changing the context of how social media posting happens. Instead of showcasing a particular product or talking about their brand, they’re making sure the restaurant is doing something worth posting about, and the post is secondary to the actual events happening there.

Be App-etizing

Many restaurants are finding it beneficial to have their own app. It allows you to directly reach out to customers and offer them personalized deals and information. The focus is on building relationships that are rewarding for the customer, just like with social media.

With an app, restaurant brands can build loyalty programs and include customers in the culture you are building for your brand. But restaurant owners should have a clear idea of the ways they will build value for their customers into an app while creating new growth, because investing in an app can be costly.

If your restaurant is looking for new ways to engage with potential customers in digital channels, contact us at DirectMail.io. Our all-in-one automated marketing platform streamlines your marketing activities so that you can focus on your core business.