Effective Strategies to Increase Sales in Restaurant

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let me tell you a secret the way restaurant owners have been told to use Instagram is a scam because a lot of the Instagram Consultants trying to help your restaurant get views on reals or telling you to post every day for the sake of consistency or telling you to boost posts are just wasting your time and money and trying to sell you something the numbers that I've seen across thousands of restaurants prove that which we'll get into later which is why in this video I'll be sharing the three Instagram growth strategies that will actually drive sales for your restaurant starting with number one the best paid strategy retargeting which always is the best way to increase sales on Instagram Yes retargeting sounds like a big fancy word but it's exactly what it sounds like targeting a certain customer with an Instagram ad to try and convince them to spend money at your restaurant but only doing it after they've almost placed an order that's why it's retargeting to make this easier to understand let's imagine a customer named Sally it's 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday night and Sally hasn't had dinner yet she's hungry for some great comforting Italian food that's exactly what you sell at your restaurant Sally starts scrolling on her phone she does a Google Search and she finds your website she clicks into your online ordering it's great so far she starts placing an order she adds the chicken alfredo into her cart and she's about ready to type in her guard details when her boyfriend comes in the door and says Sally I brought Chinese takeout home and ruins everything but it doesn't have to be ruined because imagine you have a fixed marketing budget every month would you rather spend that money trying to convince an entirely new customer or what if you could just gently remind Sally that that chicken alfredo dish still exists and you could have it on Wednesday instead with retargeting you can all you do is you put a Facebook pixel on your online ordering site the pixel is a product by Facebook which collects info on every website video visitor on your website and then it figures out their Instagram and Facebook accounts then it lets you target them with ads so the magic of retargeting versus doing boosted posts or other Facebook ads is that it's much cheaper and it helps you stay top of mind with people that are the most likely to order because the people we're retargeting are the people who already know your restaurant they've already visited your website they've already in some cases like Sally started placing their order and then for whatever reason they didn't make it through the checkout process you're probably wondering are there really a lot of these people surprisingly yes I didn't think so either until I saw the numbers behind restaurants online ordering systems but here are the facts the very best online ordering systems only convert 20 out of every 100 people who visit an online ordering system into an online order that means that the other 80 out of 100 spend some time on the online ordering system are interested in ordering food from you but in many cases get distracted or change their mind not because they suddenly hate the restaurant they almost ordered from but because life gets in the way like Sally's boyfriend bringing home Chinese takeout our other example customer Marco who is being interrupted by a phone call which makes him forget that he almost placed that order so if we can get back in front of Sally or Marco or the hundreds of people every month that they represent then we can convert them into sales you've probably had this experience on Instagram where it feels like you're being stocked because you visited an online shopping website where you almost bought a item from an online store and then didn't complete checkout for whatever reason and then for the next month the stalking begins because you constantly see advertisements for that product there's a reason all these Brands stalk you and it's because it's the top sales driver that they use to drive new customers to drive new sales but most Facebook ad gurus that are telling restaurants about how to use Instagram don't tell them about this because it ends up saving so much time and so much money that they don't actually need the consultant anymore so after we've got that Facebook pixel set up on the online ordering system to enable retargeting across Instagram and Facebook of people who almost placed that order now we go into our Facebook ads manager account which is the place where you set up ads for Instagram and Facebook and we create a simple ad for the audience we just select people who spent over 1 minute on our website but didn't actually place an online order with us my friend Chris the owner of Brooklyn Pizza in Short Hills is a perfect example of this strategy because he's used it to drive 70 new orders per month and over $3,000 in sales with less than $500 in ad spend the first thing he set up was the targeting he retargeted people who visited his website but didn't actually place an online order with him and he showed them this Facebook ad which I'll put on screen for you so that you can see what I'm talking about I'm about to explain why it is that this ad on screen works but before I do if you are liking this video so far and want more videos on growing a restaurant then make sure to click that subscribe down below so that you can keep learning about growing a restaurant as I do every month on this channel I post a few new videos based on what I've seen work best to increase restaurant sales so why does it work Adam part of the reason it works is that it's only being served to retargeting audiences that means that Chris is showing this ad to people who had visited his website but didn't place an online order and the other key part of the reason this works is the way the ad itself is written because as you can see in just a few sentences Chris is reminding people of what makes Brooklyn Pizza different and better he says things like Brooklyn Pizza is committed to Brooklyn style cooking with fresh ingredients and great taste as they're creative meaning the part of the ad which isn't text they use a gallery of photos which are showing off the most popular dishes on their menu so that people can eat with their eyes so powerful in restaurants one other thing I'll call out is how key it is that they're using emojis strategically who would have thought that emojis could be strategic but in Facebook ads because emojis make it easier to skim and easier to read through each line and give people visual cues of what it's talking about it creates more engagement which drives that ad performance to do better and engages customers more with the content you may be wondering this ad is awesome Adam so why not just run it to a bigger audience why only show it to people who have already visited our website but didn't order the short answer there is that you can get over over $6 in sales on average for every $1 you spend with this type of ad just like Chris did if you keep the audience just on retargeting because the way Facebook prices advertisements is they charge you for every thousand people that they show the ad to they're charging you about $20 for every thousand Impressions you generate so you get to choose of the Thousand Impressions that you're going to pay $20 for do you want those Impressions to go to people that already know your restaurant and almost bought from you or do you want them to go to complete strangers because if we've got a fixed marketing budget it is in our best interest to ensure that that marketing budget is used on the people that have the highest likelihood to convert our goal isn't to get as much exposure to people as possible our goal is to drive as much in sales with the least spend possible which is where retargeting is so powerful because these people already have that deep familiarity with our brand that comes from having spent time on our website almost placing an order online ordering system you'll notice I kicked this off with a paid Instagram strategy right away that's because although many people will tell you to focus on the free strategies for Instagram like posting every day those free strategies can be really hard to do well and actually get return on the investment from they take huge amounts of time every day and that isn't practical for busy restaurant owners to spend hours every day figuring out what pictures to take in the restaurant actually edit them and how to caption them which doesn't actually drive sales for restaurants because most people on Instagram are there to be entertained they're not there to look for restaurants to buy from there's an exception to this which we'll get into later in the video but that is why this idea that the way you succeed on Instagram is through constantly posting is just false organic strategies can get you Impressions and likes and I'll mention a few in this video but likes can't pay your rent what does actual sales so it's critical that the strategies we focus on actually drive sales so we we've established that retargeting can make restaurants a lot of money when done properly but there's one crucial mistake that restaurants sometimes make and that mistake is not having an optimized profile just like a website needs to be optimized for conversion so does an Instagram profile because investing time into bringing people to your Instagram page without having an optimized profile would be like trying to sell your house and having beautiful photography on Zillow and in incredible curb appeal with the lawn perfectly manicured but then when people walk into the open house having them see graffiti in the kitchen and dog poop it just kills the deal for the people that actually step into the house and want to learn more some customers will actually click into the restaurant's Instagram profile and ask themselves questions and within seconds they're going to be making judgments about whether they're going to order from this place they'll be asking themselves things like what's most popular on this Restaurant's menu or what are this restaurant's hours or even crazy young people like me does this restaurant have Good Vibes and that question can be quickly answered with an optimized profile the first Common mistake I see is not using the profile description in the right way because in that profile description we need to quickly have the following things addressed in the customer's mind the type of Cuisine the differentiating factors the website and the call to action my friend Omar the owner of talk and Tacos in mirar Florida is a perfect example of Instagram optimization done right because at this point he's driving over a 100 new customers per month from Instagram like clockwork both with the paid strategies and with the organic strategies and a huge part of how he's been able to do that is ensuring that when people click in to his talking tacos page that they're quickly able to answer those questions that are going on in their mind so I'll put up his profile on screen so that you can see what I mean first line it's Halal Mexican food second line they share their most popular dish by saying home of the biria taco their line of that description they call out a local partnership that makes it clear that they're a member of their Community partner of the Miami Dolphins I've also seen restaurants that don't want to splurge on a big partnership like that talk about their Cuisine type in their Community like my friend Antoinette from otavio who says this is a concept with our family's recipes from Italy brought to Lakeside California and then directly underneath this they do a call to action they're trying to tell the customer what the next step is to take in placing that order so they say things like order from our app for 20% off off your first order then they do story highlights you can think of story highlights as your restaurant's greatest hit highlight reels like a movie trailer where the way movies grab the audience's attention is they show them all of the best parts of the movie compiled where quickly they're helping people determine whether they want to watch that movie by answering questions they have about what it's about because when customers are discovering a restaurant on Instagram they've got questions that are on their mind questions like what are the hours of this place which is why Taco's first highlight is the hours highlight another common question for customers considering buying from this place are what the most popular dishes are on the menu which is why this second highlight on talking tacos shout out Omar and mo the owners is the best dishes on the menu that they have then other things that they've got going are community events sharing the local charities that they're in partnership with as well as an ordering tab which helps people clearly see why to order directly from that restaurant rather than ordering from door Dash uberit they're training the customer through these highlights what to think about when they think of talking tacos this is important by the way even if we're only doing the retargeting strategy because sometimes customers click into the profile that is serving them the retargeting ad and then make fast decisions about whether to go to this restaurant based on those highlights as we discussed so now that we've got retargeting ads set up and our profile optimized that brings us to the next strategy strategy number three which is how to post content that does well on Instagram for actually attracting new customers and we should go back to talk and tacos for this because they are masterful in the way they execute Instagram they've attracted over 110,000 followers over the past 3 years and are quite good at driving new customers from it I know this because I've seen their numbers and I see that they get 50 new customers every month from Instagram for free and 3,000 Impressions per post and 400 likes per post Omar estimates that Instagram gets him in front of 990,000 extra people per month many of which are local customers you may have remembered a few minutes ago that I just said likes don't pay the bills Impressions don't pay the bills so why am I telling you these things well in Omar's case he gets both because his numbers prove that last month he drove an extra $144,000 in online sales just through Instagram he has a specific Instagram strategy that consists of two parts the first part is the frequency of posting he posts a lot and he's trained his managers to do the same the second part of what he does is related to aesthetic or as the young gen Z folk say Vibe Vibe is important for appealing not just to young people but to all people because as we know in restaurants people love to eat with their eyes so it's no surprise how colorful the talken tacos Instagram page is each picture of their food and video this same food like style the saturation is dialed way up so the colors pop and if you look at the top performing restaurant pages on Instagram you'll notice something pretty weird which is that they all seem to be edited using the exact same editing style and that's because that editing style has been tested time and time again and is proven to lead to the highest engagement and engagement on a post is how Instagram decides whether it's going to show that post to people on their explore Pages or under geotags which we'll cover in a moment and it is that explore pages and Geo tags which lead to new customer Discovery versus just showing the same posts to the same followers of any Instagram page the most successful type of filters that I've seen seen are the yummy filters in the foodie app which applied best to high quality photos that you want to look extra cravable you can scroll through them and preview them on the app this video is not sponsored by foodie but I'm a huge fan because I've seen a lot of restaurants use it successfully so here are some examples of food pictures editing with foodie which is a pretty cheap app that any restaurant can download this is the preset yummy filter which achieves this aesthetic before and after and here's the preset barbecue filter if you've got a barbecue type of restaurant before and after if you want want to get Advanced and edit like the top Instagram Pages they tend to apply these settings manually with images in their editing app to make sure they look as delicious as possible they turn brightness up about 10 points they turn contrast up about 15 points they turn saturation up about 18 points and they increase warmth about 7even points this brings us to the next strategy related to posting which is don't be spammy with your posts you want to be careful that not every post feels like you're begging your customers to please order your food with a strong call to action in the description because that is not what creates entertaining engaging content for people that are on Instagram so how do we accomplish this we do it by creating posts that are also about your brand your story and your team but they're simultaneously entertaining I have to use talking tacos as an example again they're not a sponsor but I just learned a lot from what they do so I insist one video that they posted it comes to mind because they went viral for it where they filmed their kitchen team dancing to Mexican music in the kitchen look at those moves I don't just mean the dance moves I mean The Branding moves this is branding genius because it shows the spirit of talking tacos which is a funloving brand where the kitchen team has great energy as they make the food and that makes customers fall that much more in love with what it is that they're doing but if you look at the comments you'll notice that they're building a cult-like fan base people are talking about how this is an awesome restaurant and some people are even wanting to work for them which is pretty awesome in this labor market which brings us to our next posting strategy related to driving new customers from organic posts using geotags strategically geotags sound like a very technical term but are a very simple idea so as fun as Omar's Instagram sound so far with the dancing videos and the beautiful looking food you may have noticed a problem which is that Instagram is global meaning that usually posts get shown to people all around the world and as a restaurant owner in South Florida who cares if people in Dubai like his dancing kitchen videos if they're not actually going to become customers so that brings us to the next part of this video how we can use Geo tags strategically to ensure that our content is shown to the right people in the right location that can actually become customers of our restaurant geot tags are the location setting on a post on Instagram and they show you where it was posted from it may seem kind of a generic tool like shouldn't you just put your restaurants location there every time the answer is no geotags are a huge missed opportunity if you just put your restaurant as the location every time because the only people the tag will reach are people that already know your restaurant's name and location which is why they're searching for your restaurant but a way to use it to drive new customer discovery of people that are looking for things to do in your city or on your street is to tag those things in the food pictures you post because some people especially young people search their City on Instagram to figure out fun stuff to do or the street name that they're on to see what there is in the area and if they see delicious pictures of your food there or videos of your team dancing while they make your food it can lead to new customer Discovery because those people are in your area looking for things to do so you geotag a post with your city name and it gets high engagement then with that high engagement it stays pinned to the top of that Geo tag for a while so that anybody that is looking for things to do see those first nine posts at the top and that is how it results in new customers my my friend Steven the owner of planta in Miami does this brilliantly on his Instagram because rather than tagging every post planta South Beach as the location he and his team tag some with the street name Commerce Street and some with the location the city of South Beach Miami and so on so if you look at his profile and those Geo tags his pictures and his videos are often the ones that are pinned to the very top for these tourist destinations which Drive new customer Discovery from people that are nearby looking for cool things to do in the area or accounts to follow there's actually a way to measure how many new followers and profile visits each post drives and to use that to get better at creating content for your audience because it proves to you what is actually working versus what is not to do that you click into the insights tab at the bottom of any Instagram post and that tells you how many new followers it drove and how many profiles it drove but the problem that you're probably thinking to yourself is how much in sales did the Post Drive how do we figure that out if you want to see how many new customers you're getting from Instagram in total there's a technology that makes it so that you can track not only the new customers but how much in sales they drove straight from Instagram I know because we built it we were tired of hearing from restaurant owners about how frustrating it was to not even know if their time and money that was being spent on Instagram was actually working so we built the technology that sits on that restaurant's website and counts exactly how many new orders and exactly how much in sales they're driving based on where the customer is finding that restaurant from including on Instagram if they click from the Instagram app we can track that and we can show you exactly how many new orders you're doing from Instagram each month versus Google versus Facebook versus Yelp as well as other growth channels what we found is shocking Instagram can be somewhat helpful if it's executed perfectly like Mo from Talking tacos does but it's not the best way to get new customers online because most people are on social media to be entertained there's another Channel though that people aren't there to be entertained they're there to find restaurants to buy from and that's Google it's literally 10 times better across the board for restaurants all across the country at getting new customers all of the numbers from the thousands of restaurants that I've seen prove that definitively so if you're really ready to take your marketing to the next level then check out this video next I'll put it to the right of me so that you can just click in there and see how this strategy is used by hundreds of restaurants that I personally know of to drive over $10,000 per month in additional sales