How To
6 Content Marketing Tips for Food and Beverage Businesses
With all of the recent increase in activity throughout social media in the last few years, food and beverage operators have now begun to embrace the concept of content marketing. Although many may be intimidated or unaware of what exactly is involved, it’s becoming an increasingly important component to any marketing strategy. Here are some tips for those in the food and beverage industry to help you get started with your content marketing.
Determine Your Content Marketing Goals
Before you begin marketing your business, you’ll need to figure out what you want the outcome to be. Whether it’s simply increasing the awareness and popularity of your restaurant, promoting a higher walk-in level, or boosting your average customer check amount, you need to know what your aim is ahead of time. You should also determine the metrics you’ll be using to measure these components and how they may be changing. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t be able to get there, so figure that out first and foremost.
Know the customers
Get some details about your customers before you begin a widespread marketing campaign. You want to make sure you’re present on the social media channels they frequent, how they usually decide where to eat, what their budgets are for eating out, and more. A quick survey online or offline can give you plenty of information to work with. Simply jumping in and trying to cover all areas of social media and the web could mean that you’re wasting resources on spots your customers aren’t even visiting.
Send out bite-sized, sharable content
You won’t want to overwhelm customers with a ton of information, so send out your content in easily digestible, bite-size nuggets. They’ll be more likely to actually read, watch and engage with these small tidbits of information and even share it with their friends. Simple things like visually tempting food photography, fun and engaging videos, or regular cooking tips that save customers money are all great examples of highly sharable and easily consumed information. Just remember to include your branding within your content, whether it’s at the beginning or end of a video, or a watermark on your photo. If you’re creating written content, such as blogs, you can enlist some professional help from a writer at Boom Essays. Each writer on the team is a vetted expert in their field, so you can be sure to connect with a food and beverage expert who can create interesting and relevant content for you.
Know who is responsible for what
Clearly defining the role everyone will take helps get everything done in a smooth and orderly manner. Of course, who does what all depends on how busy your establishment is, how much staff you have to spare to work on content marketing and also who is interested in doing it. Sometimes it may be necessary to call in an outside professional, such as a photographer, to help get things done.
Build Online Channels
Although it’s tempting to try to have a presence everywhere possible online, remember that you only want to focus your attention on where your customers and potential customers are, otherwise you’re wasting time and resources. You could also be spreading your resources thin if you try to cover all areas of the web and social media. Different outlets are good for achieving different goals – Facebook is great for sharing content and easily engaging with customers, while Twitter is a great outlet for sending out news to a large group of people. If you have a chef who’s eager to get on camera, creating a YouTube channel is a great idea for educating customers on the work that goes into preparing their food.
Plan your content marketing schedule
You will want to lay out a schedule of when you’ll be rolling out your content marketing, and what will be happening from day to day. Whether it’s Facebook posts, YouTube videos or other items, you want to have a clear picture of what’s happening, when it’s happening and who is going it. Something as simple as an Excel calendar with color-coded posts works perfectly.
As the world of social media continues to grow, you will want to create a strong presence for your food and beverage business online. Use these content marketing tips to help get you on your way towards this goal.
