Attracting Restaurant Customers: Finding and Identifying Your Customers Online

by | Content Marketing, Marketing Tools for Restaurants, Restaurant Digital Marketing Trends, Restaurant Marketing Opportunities

Have you just opened your restaurant? Or are you looking for ways on how you can boost your existing restaurant business to learn new strategies and attract new customers? Whatever the reason may be, attracting customers is a big deal.

 

The internet is a big space and there are lots of potential customers out there. But how do you find the right people? We’ve listed down the process to help you identify and locate the right audience for you so you can craft the best marketing strategy, get leads, and convert them into restaurant visits.

 

Identify Your Audience

In identifying your audience, you can seek the help of social media. If you already have an existing customer base, you can start analyzing them into categories of information: demographics and psychographics.

Determining that information will help you narrow down the types of people that would be interested in your restaurant.

 

Demographics

 

Demographics help you identify people. They’re the facts about your customers (or the people you want to target) and they include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geographical location
  • Education level
  • Income level
  • Marital status
  • Employment/industry

Knowing the basic information about who your customers help in identifying potential customers for your restaurant.

Psychographics

Psychographics describes the interests and preferences of your target audiences. For example for your restaurant, some interests may revolve around food and drinks:

  • Food
  • Wine
  • Beer
  • Hamburger
  • Cheese

You can also consider pop culture interests as this can help you determine whether an upcoming event in your restaurant is something that might be of interest to some people.

Benefits/ Problem Solving

Finally, it’s important to drill down the benefits you are providing for the people you want to be your customers. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is different in my restaurant compared to others?
  • What problems in the food industry am I trying to solve?
  • What solutions/answers are they looking for?

Asking yourself these questions will help your better filter your demographics and psychographics requirements. By the time you’re done with these three, you’ll have a good persona of the audience you want to reach.

Find Your Audience Online

Now that you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to go looking for them.

There are multiple methods available to find your audience. Let’s start with social media, an extremely useful tool to connect with your target audience. Using demographics can help you identify the sites where your audience is most likely on.

  • Facebook is the largest social media site. 69% of Americans have a Facebook account and a majority in every age group use Facebook.
  • Instagram attracts a much younger audience than Facebook, with approximately two-thirds of Americans under the age of 30 active on it – and more women using the platform than men.
  • Twitter users comprise only about 22% of the US adult population with more men using the platform than women. Users tend to be urban and educated when compared to other social media platforms.
  • Pinterest is dominated heavily by female users and tends to be affluent and educated. They encompass every age group.
  • LinkedIn users tend to be under the age of 65 and highly educated. They live in cities and suburbs and are more likely to be looking for professional services and products than consumer goods.

You can also try considering the type of food you’re offering and where people are likely looking for it.

  • Facebook users look for all types of goods and services, ranging from consumer goods to business products and services at every level.
  • Instagram is likely to be most useful for selling products although some services can lend themselves to Instagram as well. Instagram is perfect for restaurants showcasing their food.
  • Pinterest users are accustomed to finding products on the site and often “Pin” products for later purchase.
  • LinkedIn users tend to be professionals and are most likely to search for business products and services.

Given this data, it would make sense for a restaurant to look for audiences on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is helpful to local restaurants with features of reviews allowing your restaurant to generate buzz or PR.

Search Engine Marketing

You’ve found your audience, now it’s time for you to make your restaurant as visible as possible so your potential customers can find you. This is where search engine optimization and marketing come in. it’s designed to help people search for you.

SEO will help you have a properly-optimized website and a well-established online presence. You just need to target the right keywords and search terms that your potential customers will most likely use in searching for a restaurant like yours.

As a local restaurant, you must also standardize your online listing and claim them on review sites such as Google and Yelp. Most people go online to search for restaurant reviews before actually dining in so reliable information about your business would be very beneficial in terms of visibility.

For every restaurant, it’s important to understand who your audience is and where to find them so you can have an understanding of how you can reach them and then fine-tune your marketing to convert them into customers.