6 Online Restaurant Promotion Channels, Do Them All for an Endless Stream of Visitors

If you are a restaurateur, think about how disappointing it would be if you invested in a new restaurant and came up with some tasty recipes, but nobody knows your restaurant, just because you don't have a good promotion channel. On the other hand, imagine just how disappointing it would be if you've opened your restaurant for a long time in a good location, but you don't attract new customers and your existing customers start to go eat at reviewed restaurants just because you don't have a good promotion channel, even though their locations aren't better and might actually be worse than yours. Yes! You will be very disappointed, and you might lose the investment that you saved up to open your restaurant just because you failed to promote your restaurant. Now that you know how important it is, let's take a look at some channels you can use to promote your restaurant. If you use them all, we guarantee that you will attract an endless stream of visitors. Just wait and see!

1. Facebook One benefit of using Facebook to promote your restaurant is that your restaurant will have an identity on the most popular social media in Thailand with over 45 million online accounts. Even cooler, strategic use of Facebook is an excellent way to build the brand and credibility of your restaurant and attract long-term regular customers. For example, you could start by taking pictures of the atmosphere at your restaurant and post them on a Facebook fan page to let people know how beautiful, attractive and decorated your restaurant really is and invite them to try out your restaurant. And you can also post attractive pictures or videos of tasty-looking food to improve the chances of people deciding to try out the food at your restaurant. Moreover, you could organize fun activities on your fan page or release promotions to give special privileges to your customers. In particular, for customers who eat at your restaurant and feel impressed by the experience, you could organize an activity to ask customers to write reviews on your fan page in exchange for discounts, which will help you attract even more customers. Last but not least, you could also broadcast live shows to present everything in your restaurant to your potential customers.   

   

 | 2. Line@ Over 44 million people are LINE users in Thailand. This is a highly popular chat application for every gender and age group, so don't lose your opportunities here! You should have a LINE@ account for your restaurant. Otherwise, you could be giving this space away for free to your competitors or other restaurants that promote themselves on LINE@.   Many people ask this: But can't we just use LINE?   The answer is yes, but LINE@ has many functions that are more suitable for business than regular LINE. For example, LINE@ allows up to 300,000 followers, but LINE only allows up to 5,000 people. In addition, LINE@ also allows you to add up to 100 admins, and you can broadcast messages to your followers all at once, while regular LINE doesn’t let you do that.   Furthermore, you can use LINE@ to announce your promotions and use the E-Coupon function to distribute discount or redemption coupons. And you can also use reward cards that look similar to membership cards to allow customers to collect points. It's a great way to maintain your customer base and turn your irregular customers into regular customers.   If Facebook serves as your frontline for promoting your restaurant, LINE@ is like your reinforcement. If you haven't tried it, you should.

 | 3. Google My Business You will lose huge opportunities if customers search for restaurants on Google but your restaurant isn't listed. This is because potential customers would be eating at other restaurants that they do discover.   You have to know beforehand though that Google's services are deeply and inseparably integrated to the daily lives of people in this 4G era, so you absolutely must not miss opportunities to promote your restaurant on Google My Business. That's because Google My Business gives another channel for customers to more easily find your restaurant. For example, you will be listed on Google Maps or be listed near the top of Google's search results.   You can also add your restaurant's telephone number, opening and closing hours and pictures of food and atmosphere inside. One great function of Google My Business is that it allows customers to review and rate their impressions of your restaurant, making it easy to attract new customers. Additionally, Google My Business allows you to post your restaurant's news and activities, so it's quite comprehensive.   If you use Facebook and LINE@ as your offense in finding customers, your restaurant on Google My Business will be like a great defense.

| 4. Lineman x Wongnai When people don't know what to eat, what do they do? The answer is people will generally search for reviews on the internet to find restaurants with great reviews. One of the well-known websites that gather all of these reviews is "Wongnai". Now try to imagine how many opportunities you will lose if your restaurant isn't listed on Wongnai.   When people want to eat at a restaurant, but it's not convenient for them to drive through traffic, what do they do? The answer is they order food to be delivered to their doorsteps. A very popular service provider that delivers food to homes is Lineman. Try to imagine how many opportunities you will lose if your restaurant isn't listed on Lineman.   You should quickly begin promoting your restaurants on these two channels if you don't want to miss out on the opportunities we stated above. Besides, it's extremely convenient for you nowadays because Wongnai and Lineman have entered into a business partnership, so you can register to promote your restaurant and sell food all at the same time. Currently, Wongnai x Lineman have a database of over ten thousand restaurants in Bangkok and over 8,500,000 food orders per month. Customers could search for restaurants nearby or based on popularity and reviews on Wongnai. In addition, when customers order food, Lineman's service will find a sender nearby to deliver food to your hands without having to head out and face heavy traffic.   Accordingly, Wongnai and Lineman require you to enter information such as the menu items that you want to promote, each item's price, the restaurant's location, telephone number, order-taking and closing times and pictures of your food, so it's everything that any customer could want.

| 5. Instagram It's impossible to deny that Instagram is a popular application that people like to visit to upload and look at pictures. So if you want to show off attractive pictures of your food or short video clips about how tasty your food is, Instagram should be one of the channels that you use to promote your media.   Offering promotions and organizing activities are things that you can also do effectively. In particular, you could give promotional discounts to users who tag your restaurant on Instagram. It can help increase your following and raise awareness. You can also repost pictures posted by your customers to enhance your credibility and draw in more customers.   But, importantly, your pictures have to be sufficiently attractive and appealing; don't forget that only beautiful pictures attract attention on Instagram.

| 6. YouTube One important question that restaurateurs ask is how to convince people to want to eat our food before actually seeing it or, simply put, to rouse a mouthwatering desire to taste.   One effective method that you can employ is publicize through video media. This is because this form of media is best for telling stories and offers both visual and audio content by which movements serve as the best stimuli when compared to texts and still images. And the best video media platform is no other than YouTube. YouTube allows people to post comments on and like videos. And because YouTube is owned by Google, videos uploaded to YouTube receive the advantage of being listed on Google Search.   However, what really makes YouTube the best channel for videos is because the people who visit YouTube are already looking to watch videos.  Therefore, even though your videos might be longer than others, if your content is interesting, it won't be hard for your videos to become highly popular.   As a way to promote your signature dishes, you might start by uploading simple videos like videos of picking up steaming and appetizing food and convey customers' feelings after eating. Otherwise, you could record how food is prepared in the background to show the meticulousness involved in ingredient selection and methods of preparation.   All of these are the six restaurant promotion channels every restaurateur should study. This is because they will help in making the right decisions about which channels to invest in. Nevertheless, it is also important to know who eats at your restaurant in order to ensure that you choose channels appropriately for your restaurant's target groups. For example, if your restaurant targets mainly elderly people, but you promote your restaurant on Instagram, you won't get appropriate results.   In addition, before promoting your restaurant, you should manage all of the main variables related to your restaurant, well, first because you could do more harm than good if you promoted your restaurant when the food at your restaurant isn’t tasty or lacks consistent flavors. Additionally, you should allocated a budget for each channel as appropriate and prioritize all of them well. If you can do all of that, you will surely receive an endless stream of visitors.   Want to learn more about online marketing tools for free in the course "Promote Restaurants Online for 10 Times Increase in Sales"?  Just register for your membership at Makro HoReCa Academy to access free courses by clicking this link!  https://makrohorecaacademy.com/en/courses/promote-online-store/