#restaurantmarketingmistakes #restaurantmarketingstrategies #whyrestaurantsfail #startupmistakes #marketingtips
The restaurant business is a tough one to succeed in. No matter how lucrative the restaurant business seems from afar, running a restaurant business is an arduous task.
With lots of competition, high staff turnover rates and low-profit margins, it’s no wonder that most restaurants fail within a year of opening. A restaurant’s failure can be as a result of a combination of many mistakes that go on for too long.
Around 60 percent of new restaurants fail within the first year. And nearly 80 percent shutter before their fifth anniversary. While, the No. 1 reason may be the location, but this is not true all the time. Your restaurant may in a good location – still your business is suffering.
Today’s topic is for Small Restaurant Owners & Marketers. Today I will highlight 5 shocking marketing mistakes restaurants does that lead to their business failure and how to avoid these mistakes to keep your business alive and thriving.
Mistake #1 – NOT HAVING A WEBSITE FOR YOUR RESTAURANT OR HAVING A POOR & OUTDATED WEBSITE
Many restaurants treat their websites as an afterthought. They feel it like an unnecessary expense. This is not true and that’s where they make the biggest mistake.
As a restaurant owner, your No. 1 focus has to be on the food, the ambience, the staff and the menu. But if there are no customers, then the whole thing falls apart.
Online visibility is essential for any restaurant and having a website can alone do half of the job.
Below given are few website/ Tools to create your own Restaurant Website for free, or with minimal costs. Give them a try.
https://www.website.com/website-builder/
https://www.wix.com/upgrade/website
https://www.jimdo.com/pricing/website/
https://www.weebly.com/signup
Mistake #2 – NOT LISTING YOUR BUSINESS IN GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE
In today’s Restaurant Industry, visibility and discoverability are the two major factors that decide the business at your Restaurant. If your customers can’t find your restaurant, they can never reach there.
So, having listed in Google My Business page with all the info Google needs, you not only control the info that appears online, But you actually gain access to the search result that people see on your page.
Your GMB listing is like the fishing bait that helps you hook in new customers. Because by feeding Google with relevant, and helpful information – you’re putting your business in front of many potential customers
Mistake #3 – NOT ENLISTING YOUR RESTAURANT IN DIFFERENT ONLINE REVIEW SITES, OR NOT CLAIMING YOUR PAGES ON THEM
Well, There are so many restaurants up and running well, while they don’t have presence in different 3rd party sites like Zomato, Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Gayot, DineView just to name a few.
Customers now have more options than ever when deciding where to eat. With this many choices, they look to online review sites especially when traveling.
To stay competitive, you must be active on these 3rd party sites and monitoring what diners are saying about your restaurant food and services.
Mistake #4 – NOT PLANNNING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Well, You have your restaurant’s Instagram page, Facebook page, and other social media pages. You are also feeding content in those pages. Everyone does that. But you are not harnessing it the right way, you are not consistent with your brand presence.
You are not maintaining a balance between the posts and planning ahead. And I have seen plenty of restaurant doing so.
That means – they have no defined branding, Posting too less or too much, Posting at the wrong time, Not following Social Media calendar, Posting without any caption, or putting no hashtags or Using irrelevant hashtags, Not responding to customer posts, Not Tracking Analytics, Ignoring or Deleting Comments, Posting content just for the sake of posting, these kind of mistakes proves to be a fruitless effort. And you must overcome them.
Mistake #5 – YOU ARE NOT BUILDING YOUR CUSTOMER DATABASE
No matter what size or type of business you operate, your customers are your number one asset. And not knowing your customers are one of your greatest mistakes.
Building up your customer database is a must for improving your business performance. You will gain valuable insights about your customers and then leverage into sales decisions.
There are number ways you can collect customer data, like feedback card, putting a fishbowl in your POS area, you can collect it thru Social Media, or thru your website. You can even incentivize your customers with a special deal, freebies, or competitions.
On top of this, you can even start your own loyalty program and engage in follower outreach.
Building and maintaining a customer database opens up unlimited opportunities to directly market your business. You can’t ignore this at all.
When you don’t fix all these problems, you’re destroying your bottom line.
