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5 Methods to Attract More Customers to Your Restaurant

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | 5 Methods to Attract More Customers to Your RestaurantRunning a restaurant is hard work. It’s not simply a case of cooking up some food, serving it up to customers, and earning a profit. Many different elements need to be considered. This includes everything from managing a front of house team to the logistics of regularly ordering fresh ingredients.

With so much going on, it can be challenging to find the time to actually market the restaurant.

However, adequate promotion is an essential component for your restaurant – particularly if you’re a newcomer to the market. Established, award-winning eateries can get by on their reputation alone, but beginners have to fight for every customer.

If you’re struggling to get people through the door to sample your food, here are five methods to attract more customers to your restaurant.

Place your restaurant details online

As a starting point, ensure your essential restaurant details can easily be found online. This should begin with both a Google My Business and Facebook page, where you can feature details such as the restaurant’s location and opening times.

Also, it’s highly recommended to create a dedicated website for your restaurant. This site can add further information, including your menu complete with prices and exclusive deals.

Speaking of deals…

Run a limited deal

If someone is undecided about visiting your restaurant, there’s one way to ensure they turn up as a paying customer: offering an enticement of some sort.

What can this enticement be, exactly? Well, for one example, it could be an offer where a customer buys one meal and receives another for free. It might be 20% off the total bill or a significant reduction on a set menu.

People love to feel like they’re getting a deal, and this is an effective way of giving them that feeling.

Use PPC advertising

If your restaurant is in a bustling city with a plethora of restaurant options available, it can be challenging to gain any visibility via local SEO means. There is, however, one way of having your restaurant show up in local search results: PPC.

PPC, aka pay-per-click, is a way of placing an advert for your restaurant above organic results in search results. Mostly, if you use Google Ads, your restaurant will appear first in any relevant local searches. For more information, Made by Factory, one of the leading PPC management agencies around, can provide all the help you could need.

Ask for reviews

Reviews are often the lifeblood for any small business. Positive reviews for your restaurant will help illustrate the quality of your food and service. The more glowing reviews you receive, the more potential customers will believe your eatery is the real deal.

As a result, don’t be shy in asking previous patrons to leave a review if they were happy with their visit.

Don’t avoid traditional marketing techniques

Yes, the above tips primarily focus on digital marketing. However, you should never avoid traditional marketing techniques. Leaflets are an excellent method for supplying potential customers with details about your restaurant. Another example would be to run a print ad in a local newspaper.

This Is How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, This Is How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

Facebook ads! They whisper promises of high revenue and ROI until they cost too much. People spend up to thousands of dollars on Facebook ads hoping for the best results, but there is usually more at play on how much to spend on Facebook ads.

In 2019, Facebook ad spend reached $25.56 billion, which was a 107% increase from 2016. As a business, you obviously want to try out Facebook ads for yourself, but the question is, how much should you spend on them?

One of the best things about Facebook ads is that it doesn’t matter how big or small your budget is, and you can spend as little as $1 a day and still get results. However, this strategy doesn’t work for everyone, so we’ll help you figure out how much to spend on Facebook ads for your business.

How Much Should I Budget for Facebook Ads?

There isn’t an absolute answer to this question because so many things are at play. You have to consider the exact costs of the click-through-rate, cost-per-click, cost-per-1,000 impressions, and cost-per-action.

When showing your ads, Facebook considers two things; positive and relevant experience for customers, and value for you as the advertiser and how your ads reach your target audience. You get to reach the people who are receptive to your ads, and users get to see ads they are interested in.

Essentially, this means advertisers with the highest monetary bids win. It means that the advertisers with the best value come out on top, so what you need more than a high budget is valuable adverts.

Factors That Determine How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

There are several factors at play here. You need to consider them to come to a decision about how much to spend on Facebook ads.

Consider Your Bid and How Much You Need to Show Your Ad

Once you create a Facebook ad for your business, you’ll be joining a huge pool of advertisers, some of whom are your competitors. You’ll be competing with multiple businesses for the ad spaces available, and your bid amount will determine how interested you are in getting that spot.

The higher your bid is, the higher the chances of getting that ad space and having your ad shown to your target market. You can set your bids manually, or automatically. Manual bids involve setting a maximum amount of money you want to spend on your ads, and you’ll enter bids depending on how much they are worth to you.

The thing about bidding manually is if you bid too low, you may not get the kind of exposure you’re looking for. You still get what you pay for, even on Facebook ads. When you choose automatic bids, Facebook will decide the bid amount for you and use the entire bid budget to maximize your results.

Consider the Ad Quality and How Interested Your Target Audience Will Be

Facebook determines the relevance and quality of an ad, depending on how it performs. It considers both positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback in terms of video views, clicks, or app installs and negative in terms of the number of people that clicked on the “I don’t want to see this ad” option.

They provide a Relevance Score for all ads, and if yours is high, they show your ad more times than those with a low relevance score. Even better, you’ll get to pay less and reach more people in your target market.

Consider Estimated Action Rates

Estimated action rates refer to how likely people are to react to your business ads. Are the people who come across your ad likely to click on it? Facebook makes a determination based on the past actions of your target market and how many times they have clicked on similar ads and purchased products or signed to the services advertised.

Your Target Market

How many people are you targeting? Your target market and the number of people you’re trying to reach will essentially impact how much you spend on Facebook ads.

Your competitors are fighting the same battle and trying to reach the same people, and the more competitors you have vying for the same audience, the higher the cost will be to reach them. Beyond that, the age, location, languages, interests, and behaviors of your target audience may influence your advertising costs.

What Time of the Year Is It?

Certain peak times of the year, more advertisers vie for the same ad spaces, and during such times, the advertising costs rise as well. Some of these times include holidays such as Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

Where Your Advertisements Appear

The Facebook ecosystem is huge, and placement will also determine how much you pay for your ads. Your ads could appear in Facebook’s desktop News Feed, Facebook’s desktop right column, Messenger, Audience Network, Instagram’s mobile News Feed, or Facebook’s mobile News Feed. So, determine which location your target audience is likely to be while making a choice.

What Your Adverts Are Optimized For

Optimization for ad delivery could determine who gets to see your ads. For instance, if you were to optimize your Facebook ads for lawyers for clicks, Facebook will show them to people who are more likely to click on them. This will profoundly influence how much to spend on Facebook ads because any action taken will affect your Relevance Score.

How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads: A Guide

As much as you want to consider how much to spend on Facebook ads, you should also consider your ROI, both financial and social. All these factors come into play when determining how much you should spend on Facebook ads and what you want to achieve.

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How to Reach Your Target Customers More Effectively

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Reach Your Target Customers|How to Reach Your Target Customers More EffectivelyWhen your business is looking to get off the ground and start making sales, it’s essential to think about your target customers and how you’re going to reach them. It’s certainly one of the most difficult tasks you’ll face and there’s no easy way to do it. But there is a wide range of techniques you can make use of and take advantage of when you want to reach the right people. Learn more about that below.

Start with the Process of Defining Your Target Audience

First of all, you’re going to need to define your target audience. It’s impossible to appeal to the right people when you don’t even really know who the right people are. You should try to make sure that you choose an audience that you know is going to be interested in what you’re offering, and you can carry out market research and use focus groups to get a better idea of this.

Consider Direct Mail and Email

A really traditional yet still effective way of marketing to people is to hit them directly with direct mail. This works because it puts something directly and physically in front of your target customers, and it means they can’t really ignore what you’re presenting to them. Email marketing is also something that’s really effective and should be considered.

Use Referral Marketing Techniques

Referral marketing is one of the best techniques to make use of when you’re looking to target specific groups of customers more effectively. Referrals work well because they’re provided by people already in your target market. For example, if you’re looking to target women aged between 35 and 45, the chances are that a customer fitting that profile will refer someone they know that’s also in that same demographic.

Work with Relevant Influencers

If there are particular influencers that you know have an impact on your target audience and that they have a great respect and fondness for, you should reach out to them. See if they might be interested in working with you to promote your product. This kind of paid promotion is much more authentic and direct than simply putting an advert in front of people, so give it a try.

Make Use of Targeted Ads

It might also be a good idea to use targeted adverts to promote your business and the products or services it’s trying to sell. These are more effective than other kinds of ads because they target specific people in particular demographics, and that’s what you want to when you’re trying to connect with a clearly defined target audience. Facebook ads are particular good for their targeting capabilities.

If you’ve struggled to reach the right people so far or you simply want to get off to the right start with a new business, these tips and ideas should help you to reach people effectively and appeal to them directly, so be sure to make the most of them going forward from here.

Fun and Lucrative: 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Podcast

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Podcast|Fun and Lucrative: 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a PodcastThanks to the development of new and innovative technologies, it is easier than ever before to create, manage, and advertise any business; however, new challenges are introduced daily. With this in mind, many wonder how business owners can establish their authority in their particular niche and gain new customers. How will people find the product or service they want when there is so much information “out there?”

An answer to this is with podcasts. Podcasts are a new and popular option for businesses to go where their potential customers are and win their attention and patronage while providing service to the community and establishing their brand. Some of the reasons that making a podcast with the help of experts like Blubrry Podcasting is such a good idea for modern businesses can be found below.

1. Share Expertise

A business owner along with their business has something unique to offer the world. It could be knowledge about frugal living or even a team of comedians -; there are people out there who want to know what you have to say. They are out there looking for it and waiting for it.

A business owner should think about all the resources they have at their disposal and the things they may have taken for granted. These are the things that can be shared to help others. What is a business owner able to give back to help contribute to the conversation that is going on? Building thought leadership and authority within the business realm is the best way to reach the top in any field. Podcasts offer businesses another way to build brand awareness and this should be something any business owner uses.

2. Build the Brand

Building a brand is about much more than just picking a web design, logo, and motto. When someone is searching online, they will find an array of companies offering identical products or services. How can they tell which is best? A podcast can help a business owner set themselves apart from the crowd. It will also help customers see that the business owner truly cares and knows what they are doing, which will build trust.

3. Gain and Retain Customers

All businesses must be able to gain and retain customers. Keep in mind, keeping a current customer costs less than getting a new one. By providing quality information on a regular basis, a person can keep customers coming back. This is key to retention and ongoing business success.

4. Networking Benefits

Podcasts are the ideal medium for interviews. While solo shows are great, any conversation can help make it more engaging. Many successful podcasts have guests from a related field that can provide valuable content for people listening.

5. Save Money and Time

Podcasts are extremely affordable compared to other forms of advertising. This means it is something that anyone can afford to do, even startup companies with a limited marketing budget.

Creating a Podcast

Remember, before starting a podcast, a business owner needs to make sure they have something of significance to talk about. This will help ensure people are actually interested in what is being said. take some time to think of a direction for the podcase to achieve the best possible results for the marketing method.

How to validate your blog post ideas

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Blog Post Ideas|How to validate your blog post ideasThe cold, hard truth in the world of writing is that no matter how well you research a topic, and no matter how much passion you pour into content creation, a piece can (and will) still fall flat if there was never enough interest in the topic to start off with.

There’s nothing quite as disheartening as spending hours upon hours writing a blog post (the average one takes roughly 3 and a half hours from start to finish), only to find that it was never going to drive traffic due to minimal search volume.

Fortunately, there are data-driven ways you can validate your blog ideas before you dive into the creation process.

Take stock of these simple steps and work them into your blogging process. You’ll soon find your content marketing is performing far better than you imagined possible thanks to spending these few extra moments on validation.

Use Google to Assess The Competition

One of the most powerful tools at your disposal for validating a blog post idea is actually one of the most common: Google.

By searching your proposed topic or title, Google can give you a strong indication on whether or not you have any chance or ranking with that title and therefore whether writing content on that topic will drive traffic to your site in the long term.

Before you write a post on a given title, put that title into Google and see what comes on the first page.

Google gives preference to bigger sites with more traffic and a stronger presence on the internet generally. Therefore if you see the first page of Google dominated by the websites of big companies and global news sites, you should narrow down the topic that you are writing about.

Ideally, when you search your proposed title in Google you want to see posts on the front page of companies your own size or smaller. Having social media and forum pages on the first page of Google also confirms that you have a good chance of ranking your post, even if your website is still small.

Ask your current audience what topics are of interest to them

Another way to gauge interest in a potential blog topic is to ask your existing customers whether they care about the topic in question.

After all, the whole point of a blog is to engage with your current audience and encourage new leads to interact with your brand; what better way to find out what your customers want to hear about than to simply ask them?

There are a couple of simple ways to do this: if you have an active social media following, you can create an easy Yes/No poll asking whether or not your audience would be interested in reading about a specific topic—Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are ideal venues for this sort of outreach.

If you’re lost in the ideation process and could use some direction, send out an email blast giving your audience the opportunity to call out the topics they’d most like to hear about. You’d be surprised by how many of your followers will respond with ideas they’ve been itching to learn more about.

Another effective, yet easily overlooked way to choose blog topics with the help of your customers is to simply jot down the most common questions you receive on a daily basis and use them as inspiration for future posts.

Use forums to find “low competition questions”

Forum sites like Quora and Reddit can help with validating a blog topic idea because the presence of conversations around your topic both indicate a level of interest in that topic, as well as a lack of answers on the internet on that topic.

This latter point is particularly important. People often ask questions on forums when they have Googled a question but not found a satisfactory answer. Therefore if you see a question being asked regularly on forum sites, it is well worth seeing what comes up when you Google it.

If you feel that you can answer the question better than what is currently on the first page of Google, and that question is being regularly asked in forums then you have an excellent chance of creating a post on that topic which will bring in traffic (and leads) for years to come.

Take Note of Fruitless Searches

It’s important for every content creator to always stay vigilant for topic opportunities; that way, you won’t be found wanting when it comes time to choose a topic to write about.

One of the best ways to validate a topic is through personal experience—if you’ve searched and searched for information on a specific subject to no avail, that’s a great indication that there are others just like you looking for the same thing. There therefore may be an opportunity to fill there.

Make it a habit to write down every time you research a topic but come up dissatisfied with your results; you’d be surprised how quickly you amass a list of blog topics just waiting to be created.

The best thing about this method of validating a topic is that all of the work is done for you prior to the actual creation process since your list is already on hand, and it takes the pain out of ideation since these are all topics you’re already interested in.

In the world of modern marketing content is king, but it’s worthless without proper validation; gather data through these simple processes, and you’ll soon find that your blog posts are earning you better engagement and higher traffic than ever before.