What are the Benefits of Influencer Marketing for Your Restaurant After Coronavirus?

Influencer marketing for restaurants
Have you heard about more than 70% of newly launched restaurants shut down within the first year? What is the main reason for failure instead of success? The answer to this question is pretty simple: word-of-mouth marketing. Before social media existed, WOM was slightly different and would be limited to endorsing your product or services. But, in the rapidly changing digital marketing world, there are thousands of practical ways to increase brand recognition. 

 

Influencer marketing is one of the great ways to stimulate brand awareness of your restaurant and attract potential customers. Today, most WOM marketing comes from influencers.

 

It is also interesting to note that, COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected restaurants. But some restaurants still try to find ways to stay in their places and service as normal as they can.

Why Is Influencer Marketing Effective for Restaurants?

Influencers are individuals who have achieved a broad audience on social media by sharing photos, videos, or content for their followers which refer to their interests. They have better targeting and higher engagement rates. Social media influencers have already built a high degree of trust and respect among their followers. Loyal followers believe in their reviews and recommendations; that’s why more than 70% of people are attracted to restaurants based on social media referrals. Thus, influencer marketing is an ideal way for restaurants, even for other industries. 

How Influencers Can Help to Attract New Visitors to the Restaurants?

By using influencer marketing for your restaurants, you can reach your ideal target customer. Social media stars can drive thousands of followers into the restaurant by sharing photos and creating content based on their own experience. Sometimes this occurs organically, but more often it happens to depend on paid promotion or partnership between restaurants and influencers. 

Influencer Marketing for your restaurants
The screenshot above is by Instagram influencer Dana Cowin that was paid for by a California based restaurant called Majordomo. She has captured the “roasted duck crispy rice” dish on camera from this restaurant which is one of her favorite visited meals. Then she has created content about her own experience and shared it with her followers, adding some detailed reviews and recommendations. 

In the comments, people seemed very interested, and the majority of them found it credible. It’s merely assuming that the significant part of followers was attracted to this restaurant based on social media influencer marketing. 

Choose the Right Influencer for Your Restaurant

The right influencers can lead your restaurant to be successful instead of failure. The process of finding the right influencers is worthy of notice. First of all, you need to know your audience and determine your goal. Then, you might be searching for the food bloggers, restaurant reviewers with the same or similar audience that can be relevant to your purpose. Try to understand the authority of the influencer you consider that would be appropriate for your campaign. But, you do not always have to start only with food-related social media stars, even if it might be an influencer who engages in to vlog his daily life. It depends on your goals and the personality you would like to demonstrate. 

 

Another significant point of influencer marketing is that the target audience would be located in the same or around the area with the restaurant. Try staying local and matching your demographics. For example, if you have a casual French restaurant in Miami, an influencer who focuses on luxury restaurants in Italy, it wouldn’t be relevant to each other. That’s why restaurants are more likely to work with local stars rather than an international phenomenon. Therefore, you can search for local influencers according to your target audience. 

 

Influencer Marketing is Very Cost-effective

Today, influencer marketing is a powerful and cost-effective way to generate visibility of your restaurant. Social Media stars can charge differently depending on the followers they have. More followers mean that you should be ready to pay more. However, it does not always have to be expensive. If you are on a tight budget, that is not hard to find an influencer at a reasonable price. Generally, influencer marketing can be quite cost-effective when compared to other online advertisements. Social Media advertising is significantly more expensive than Influencer Marketing. If you find the right influencers and make them the right offer, it would meet with your expectations.

 

How to Collaborate With Influencers?

Have you identified the right influencer for your restaurant? Well, that’s time to make a negotiation. It is a great way to write an excellent influencer campaign brief to grab influencers’ attention. This document is sent to the influencers for collaboration which contains the client’s purposes, expectations, KPIs, guidelines, and so on. Additionally, you can offer a free dinner in your restaurant to test and to create content for you. Encourage them to make long-term collaboration with you. If you have reached an agreement, you are ready to launch the campaign. Choose a date for dinner, and get started.

 

Measure Your Marketing Success

Measuring campaign results using the data will help you to draw conclusions by understanding the effectiveness of the marketing and make the right decisions to succeed. Once the campaign lives, you need to measure its performance. Have new people attracted to your restaurant? Have your followers experienced an upward trend in social media? Have more people visiting your website? In terms of your goal, the results should come in fast or vice versa, it may differ depending on a variety of factors. But, there is nothing to worry about. It would take some time to attract more people. Just be patient for the best results. 

 

Build Long-term Relationships with the Influencers

Building loyal and successful relationships take time. Influencer relationships are an essential part of marketing success. The relationship between an influencer and a brand is called a business partnership. Entering into a long-term collaboration has significant advantages. A loyal partnership shows how much an influencer is willing to engage in your brand awareness. Building long-term relationships with your influencers come from trust, collaboration, efficiency, and help to take more advantages. Keep in mind; even small gestures can drive your influencer to make more effort for your restaurant to succeed. 

 

Manage Your Campaign Efficiently

With Keepface you will reach the desired number of influencers that are in good taste with your brand and ready to work with you. Register on Keepface Platform and create your project. Keepface will help you to save time on influencer discovery, build lasting relations with influencers, and get the most out of your campaign. 

 

What  Restaurants Future Will  Look Like After Covid-19

We have pointed out how restaurants are important for influencer marketing but yet we have not to beat the COVID-19. As it’s been said this virus is not going anywhere it is here, with us and that’s why we need to find ways to live with it. As restaurants and bars reopen to the public, it’s important to realize that eating out will increase your risk of exposure to the new coronavirus.

At that moment two problems occur. First, it’s hard to eat or drink while wearing a face mask. Second, social distancing is difficult in tight spaces normally filled with back-to-back seating and servers who weave among the busy tables all evening long.

There are different approaches to this challenge all around the world. 

Amsterdam Restaurant
There is a vegan restaurant in Amsterdam, called Mediamatic, and it raises all the social distance views to a completely different level. The restaurant built small greenhouses for diners to enjoy a meal while social distancing.

 

Hong Kong, on the other hand, has made different approaches to the problem. Dining in restaurants at breakfast and lunchtime has returned from July 31, but the number of people at a table has been restricted to two. Additionally, restaurants are limited to serving takeaways only between 6 pm and 5 am.

 

Some describe this crisis as a tunnel and everyone assumes we see the light at the end of it but we can not expect everything to go normal all of a sudden. Bad news, it is not going to be normal, everything changed, so we need to be keen to change our mindset and have faith that things are going to be a new normal. 

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