A restaurant is a place where people pay a price to sit and eat food that is cooked and served by the owners of that place on the premises. COVID-19 has left many restaurants in dire situations economically and socially and that affects the country’s economy as a whole.The growth of the economy is sustained by small businesses and the pandemic resulted in customers asking a lot of questions such as How safe is it to eat at a restaurant during COVID-19 or how safe is it to eat at an indoor restaurant.
If you are a restaurant owner, looking for marketing ideas during COVID-19 to reach your audience and increase revenue . We advise that you keep reading this Digital Marketing Plan and find out how your business can achieve this.
This marketing plan for an existing restaurant will guide you how to create your perfect marketing strategy for your business.
Digital Marketing Plan for Parrots Restaurant
Parrots is a casual dining & contemporary Italian restaurant in Clear Water Mall. It opens from Monday to Sunday at 7am -10pm and offers organic dishes, alcohol as well as vegetarian options. Parrots Restaurant has expanded their brand and can be found in Menlyn Park Shopping Centre, In Centurion and Kolonade Mall, Montana Park.
Table of Content
- Measure your current Digital Efforts
- Identify your Goal
- Competitor Analysis
- Focus on Unique Selling Proposition
- Digital Strategy
1.Measure Your Current Digital Efforts.
It is best to measure your marketing objectives and campaigns because if you don’t, how will you know if they are working or not. After doing this task you should ask yourself these questions. Is your audience engaging with your content ?. Is my website getting enough visitors ?.Should the campaign be dropped or improved?
Example 1:
Objective : Increase Brand Awareness.
Goal : Publish Ten social media posts weekly
KPI : Number of impressions
Result : Five social media posts due to less time to create content.
Example 2:
Objective : Increase Web Traffic
Goal : Increase web traffic by 40% in six months through guest blogging
KPI : Number of visitors
Result : Achieved 10% due to website not optimized for blogging and SEO.
2. Identify Your Goals.
What is it that you want to achieve? Your desired result that you want to work towards achieving is your goal. Every business has a goal and some are short term and others are long term goals.
SMART Goals
SMART Goals are your roadmap to what you desire achieving in your business and will assist you in defining and putting into perspective what exactly you are trying to do.
Specific= Increase new website visitors by 15%
Measurable= Reach 5000 people on Facebook & Instagram monthly.
Attainable= Create content that will attract customers to our site.
Relevant= Budget has been set aside to fund the development of a new website.
Time based= To increase sales by 20% in 3 months after the strategy has been implemented.
Now that you have analyzed your digital efforts and have gained insights. You can set your goals whether short term goals or long term goals. Whether you are starting in your business or have been in the industry for a long time, you can have both short term and long term goals.
Short-Term Goals
- Grow sales within 3 months.
- Add new cocktail flavors in our menu within 2 months.
- Improve content strategy within 5 months.
Long-Term Goals
- Appear on First Page on Google.
- Build following on social networks within 8 months.
- Improve Customer Loyalty.
3.Competitor Analysis
If you want to stay on top of your game you need identify your audience and also analyze your competitors. Facebook Audience Insights is a very useful tool in researching your audience online.
Identifying your audience will start by creating a buying persona.Here’s how you do it.
Buyer Persona
| Age | 18-65 years |
| Marital Status | Single, Married |
| Average Disposable Income | R1000 |
| Average Household Size | One or more |
| Education Level | High School , University |
| Specific Food Trends | Sushi |
| Interests | Live Music, Soccer, Business |
3.Analyzing Competitors
You need to need to answer these questions in order to successffully analyze your competitors.
i)Who are your Competitors Target Audience ?
ii)What is their Pricing Strategy ?
iii)How is their Social Media or Online Presence Like?
iv)What percentage of market share do they own ?
4.Focus on Unique Selling Proposition.
Every business has a unique selling proposition this is what sets you apart from your competitors. You can ask yourself these questions to identify your USP.
How unique is my service ?
What does my business do best ?
Does my audience value my USP ?
What does my competitor do best ?
If you can answer these question you able to able to find your USP and capitalize on it.
5.Digital Strategy
Social Media
Facebook : It boasts about 1 billion users it is perfect for sharing high quality content .What you also could besides sharing posts you can run live cooking shows , and contents.
Instagram : Perfect for aesthetics , pictures create emotional triggers .You can use this platforms to share pictures of some your best dishes and venue.
Twitter : The platform is great for sharing content in real-time. You can choose hashtags for your campaigns to promote your specials.
You must also clearly outline if social media management will be in-house or outsourced and by whom. To learn more about social media trends visit https://blog.thedigitalmarketinginstitute.org/social-media-marketing-trends-to-know-for-2021/
SEO & Website.
Understanding that in order to achieve authority on search engines it requires you to have high quality content and a website that is optimized. The purpose of website for a restaurant business can be to take online reservations, showcase dishes and give more information about the business,.
You can create blogs about how to prepare certain dishes and redesign the website to enable take online reservations, give details about the business, specials and optimize the speed of web pages using Google Page Speed Insights. If you want to learn more about SEO visit https://blog.thedigitalmarketinginstitute.org/what-is-seo-2/
Email Marketing
SEO proves to be the most effective ways of marketing because it can also help you generate leads, that you can use to send information about specials and promotions.
Mailchimp is an affordable tool you can use to create targeted campaigns to reach your customers .
Conclusion
Now that you have learned on how to created a detailed and effective ,you can implement it and see how it will take your business to the next heights. For more info visit : https://thedigitalmarketinginstitute.org/
Written By : Siphelele Mbokazi & Nomalanga Mkhaliphi