6 musts of restaurant marketing - dallas seo & … · 2018-02-22 ·...

6 MUSTS OF RESTAURANT MARKETING globerunner.com 1

6 MUSTS OF RESTAURANT MARKETING

THE DIGITAL PLAYBOOK FOR 2016


TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 3

Local SEO 5

Mobile optimization 8

Content marketing 10

PPC, call tracking and remarketing 13

Usability testing 16

Marketing automation 18

Conclusion 20

About Globe Runner 21


Introduction The US restaurant industry is booming and there’s no slowing it down. In 2015, total restaurant sales will top $709 billion – an output larger than 90% of the world’s economies1. There will be 1 million restaurants and foodservice locations in the country, which are 100,000 more than there were in 20052.

The economic ripples this largesse creates can’t be ignored. In 2015, one in every 10 working Americans – 14 million – will be a restaurant employee3. Restaurant industry employment is projected to hit 15.7 million in the next decade, or 1.7 million new jobs by 20254.

All this activity creates opportunity for restaurants; at the same time it ups the already heated competition for diners’ stomachs and wallets. What restaurateurs may not realize is that the battlefield has already been drawn in a non-‐physical location. The war to get customers starts online.


In servicing our restaurant clients, we found out the hard way what works and what doesn’t. This white paper covers the 6 digital essentials we now mandate our clients to practice because a) they can be measured, b) they work together beautifully and c) they produce outstanding, quantifiable results:

• Local SEO • Mobile optimization • Content marketing • PPC, call tracking and remarketing • Usability testing • Marketing automation


Local SEO Customers now search online for dining options, and being found via search engines is – or should be -‐-‐ a critical objective for anyone in the restaurant business. Yet many restaurants still downplay the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), particularly local SEO, in their marketing efforts.

Research shows that 64% of local customers use search engines and directories as their main way to find local businesses5. Local SEO is a specialized subset of search engine optimization that enhances a business’ presence in local search findings, making it easier to be found by local customers.

The elements that go into good local SEO vary, but in our experience these are among the basic building blocks in creating a more robust local presence online:

Citations are mentions of the restaurant’s name and address on web pages such as directories, chambers of commerce, even local search engines. Citations tell searchers that a restaurant is not only a legitimate business, but also a vital member of a local community.


Social media presence, once considered a frivolity, is now a search necessity. Social signals account for 5.8% of local search rankings according to one study6, and if that doesn’t convince you to go on social, Google now indexes tweets.

Reviews on Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor and other similar platforms account for 9.8% of local search rankings in the same study we quoted above7, a rather unsurprising factoid given that 85% of consumers in 2013 reported that they read online reviews8.

There are other factors of course but the three we mentioned are definite must-‐haves for any business, not just restaurants that are serious about local SEO.

How would a restaurant know that it is succeeding in local search? The ideal outcome is a result like this one for Liberty Burger when ‘Dallas burger joints’ is searched. Their Google+ Local features prominently on the right margin and their website ranks first on the page. It’s enormous real estate taken up on the right, and one that is hard to ignore.

Social s ignals now account for 5.8% of local search rankings, making social media a must


Mobile optimization Adding an extra layer of complexity (or opportunity, however you wish to view it) is the fact that search has now shifted from desktop to mobile. 69% of consumers have ordered food from a mobile device while nearly 90% of all mobile restaurant searches lead to conversions9.

Restaurants have been slow to respond. Another study shows that only 32% of the top 50 restaurant sites examined used responsive web design, only 40% have a click-‐to-‐order or click-‐to-‐reserve button, and none passed a page speed test10.

The reluctance to go mobile can usually be attributed to the investment poured into a restaurant’s website which, if created years ago, now needs more funding to become optimized for mobile.


We always remind our clients about lost opportunity costs if they continue to hesitate. For clients who have the luxury of building a new site, today’s website themes are responsive and automatically resize for any device.

Design and opportunity costs aside, there is a third compelling reason to optimize for mobile: Google. In April 2015, the search engine emphasized mobile friendliness as a critical ranking factor.

This mobile optimization tool by feedthebot makes it easy to plug in a site URL and determine areas of improvement. In addition, we strongly recommend usability testing to further smoothen out any rough spots in design and functionality. We will cover usability testing in a separate section.

69% of consumers have ordered food from a mobile device, making mobile optimizat ion a necessity for any restaurant


Content marketing If there is anything that consumers are voracious for, it’s content. 81% of consumers go online to start their research, and spend an average of 79 days gathering information before making a major purchase11.

If 79 days sounds a bit much for someone just looking for a burger tonight, consider this: A 2013 survey showed that nearly 50% of avowed foodies supplement word-‐of-‐mouth restaurant recommendations with additional research like consumer generated review sites, restaurant sites and blogs12.

Smart restaurants know that they have little control over newspaper food critics or restaurant food bloggers’ restaurant recommendations. What these restaurants can control is their website content which constitute 5.2% of factors influencing diners’ decisions.


So one of the first things we ask a new restaurant client is the state of their blog. Do they even have one? How often do they post? What do they write about?

A blog is more than just an affectation or a waste of time. Google favors businesses with fresh content, and a blog is a low-‐commitment way of keeping a restaurant’s site current and its rankings healthy.


Blogs are also an effective method to pump fresh keywords, allowing a restaurant to ride the zeitgeist of whatever cuisine, cocktail or dish is making the rounds of the web.

Content marketing is much more than just blogging. As a process, it should include a disciplined routine of auditing and repurposing what has worked in the past; producing; distributing content to media; and finally, measuring.

Content marketing also extends beyond the written word to encompass multiple formats including social media, newsletters, infographics, videos, podcasts, native content, quizzes and more.

AUDIT PRODUCE DISTRIBUTE MEASURE


PPC, cal l tracking and remarketing While SEO’s objective is to enhance a site’s organic rankings, it is a strategic play that bears fruit after six to eight months. PPC, call tracking and remarketing are tactical measures that can be deployed immediately to augment a restaurant’s SEO efforts.

For newer establishments earning their stripes with Google, PPC can fast-‐track awareness and start generating leads. It is also cost-‐effective – a business only pays for the clicks it receives – and it enables a restaurant to gauge the effectiveness of campaigns with hard data, allowing a business to refine its strategies and implementation.


With the ascendance of mobile as the primary device for search, it makes sense for restaurants to look closely at mobile PPC. Google allows advertisers to create mobile preferred ads, and landing pages can be designed expressly for mobile users.

The three factors required for a successful mobile landing page are load speed (measure yours via Google’s helpful tool), easy-‐to-‐read content that gets to the heart of the matter, and a clear call-‐to-‐action (CTA).

Call tracking is PPC’s best friend. In call tracking, unique phone numbers can be assigned to each campaign, allowing a restaurant to determine which keywords spurred a booking. This data enables a restaurant to improve its PPC efforts by honing in on keywords that perform well.

Remarketing (Google’s term, elsewhere it is called retargeting) involves the serving of targeted ads to visitors of a restaurant’s website or landing pages based on their activity.

Most people unfamiliar with advertising have focused on the seeming creepiness of remarketing ads following them around on the Internet. Remarketing has many more applications beyond stalking diners who failed to book. Creative restaurants have used remarketing to offer seasonal promotions to visitors up to a year later or connect with people who clicked on their social media accounts13

Can these paid methods replace SEO? On occasion a restaurant may be tempted to ditch SEO altogether and just concentrate on, say PPC and call tracking. Our experience with our restaurant clients has shown that marketing results are better with a multichannel approach. Ranking organically for desired keywords


lowers advertising budgets; strategic advertising provides a more robust showing on search engine pages.


Usabil ity testing A restaurant can pour all its energies into creating the best content, employing SEO best practice, and augmenting these activities with PPC, call tracking and remarketing. But all of these can’t make up for a site or landing page with poor user experience.

Conducting usability tests is a smart money move – before investing in features or functions that can add to the expense of development, it helps to know what users want when searching a restaurant’s site.

Website usability testing covers a wide range of elements, and involves a number of methodologies ranging from eye tracking to qualitative in-‐depth interviews. Among the many questions a good usability test should answer are:

• How quickly does the site load? • How easy is it for visitors to find what they need?


• Is navigation logical? • How readable is the typography? • Does the site encourage sticking around?

Given the preponderance of mobile search for restaurants, usability testing on mobile is a valuable part of the process. A 2012 revealed that 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company14. It certainly helps to explore the nuances in mobile UX that are not present in website UX.

The former is a vastly improved affair compared to how it was 10 years ago, thanks to responsive web design. Work however is still needed to determine how to structure content for mobile. As pointed out by experts, the fold still exists, even on a smaller screen15.

52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less l ikely to engage with a company


Marketing automation Earlier on, we had mentioned the value of a multichannel approach to restaurant marketing. The sixth spoke of this wheel is marketing automation, or technologies and software that enable restaurants to communicate to customers throughout various stages of the purchase cycle via various touch points. Many of the processes are automated not only to expedite the process but also to leverage data and measure results.

Traditionally championed by B2B marketers, marketing automation has seen adoption by B2C. One study’s findings show that B2C marketers who take advantage of marketing automation – which includes everything from cart abandonment programs to birthday emails – have seen conversion rates as high as 50%16.

Restaurants that have adopted marketing automation have seen improved business because their data now works harder for them. Automation has enabled


them to do a number of things not possible before with a plain email list and social media accounts, such as:

• Create, customize and automate communications for diners, whether it’s a newsletter, a social media offer or a text message reminder

• Track the journey of prospects as they click on PPC campaigns or call unique tracking numbers, and serve them with retargeting ads that enhance the likelihood of them converting into loyal customers

• Use big data to flesh out the profile of a prospect or customer in order to create highly personalized messaging and build better profiles for sales efforts

• Nip customer dissatisfaction in the bud with pre-‐set responses that flag incidents for quicker handling

• Tie marketing initiatives and performance to revenue

B2C marketers who take advantage of automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%


Conclusion With restaurant sales expected to top $709 billion in 2015, enormous opportunity is offset by fierce competition to have a bigger slice of the pie. Restaurants risk being left behind if they do not adopt and strengthen these 6 key elements in their digital marketing toolkit: Local SEO; mobile optimization; content marketing; PPC, call tracking and remarketing; usability testing; marketing automation.

Used individually, these tools are remarkable; blended together into a cohesive whole they create measurable, outstanding results for restaurants looking to improve their marketing performance and tie this activity to sales.


About Globe Runner Globe Runner is a Dallas-‐based digital agency that has delivered digital marketing goodness since 2008. It has 70+ clients in both B2C and B2B across four continents. Globe Runner’s work has been featured in Forbes, the Dallas Morning News and AdWeek, among others. More information about Globe Runner can be found on globerunner.com.


1 National Restaurant Association 2 National Restaurant Association 3 National Restaurant Association 4 National Restaurant Association 5 BrightLocal 6 Moz.com 7 Moz.com 8 BrightLocal 9 MediaPost 10 The Search Agency 11 Retailing Today 12 Angelsmith 13 The Raven Blog 14 Google Think Insights 15 Nielsen Norman Group 16 eMarketer

6 musts of restaurant marketing - dallas seo & … · 2018-02-22 ·...

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