If you own a HoReCa business, you certainly know how important quality marketing is for the maximum visibility of your brand. We have compiled in this article top tips for digital promotion of your business, from the 7-year practice of the online marketing agency SEOLITTE.

Online promotion tips for HoReCa

• Use marketing stories: Remind your customers about your services and products in a friendly way so that you can persuade them to go back to where their tastes, sensations, and memories were ... Not too harsh, without aggression, but with a story that would awaken emotions and habits a little asleep during the COVID period.
• Offer customers well-targeted promotions and discounts so you can be loyal to them. An important point is to give them a sense of security on the premises.
• Invest in social media promotion and be ready to receive feedback and answer any questions that may arise, this will ensure that you gain the trust of your customers.
• Rethink and keep the concept of taking away and delivery, these will be useful for a long time to come. It took a long time for the new habits to take root in people's lives, so delivering on good terms remains a big plus.
• Be extraordinary - yes, the originality of the strategies, of the advertising campaigns will ensure the success of the business, in addition to some quality services. What could originality consist of? Creative photo sessions are a great idea. Another good idea is to collaborate with bloggers/influencers: invite them to the kitchen to see the process of creating the products and, respectively, to describe it as they know it later on their channels.
• Get constant reviews and recommendations - work on a professional presence on Trustpilot and Google My Business. See a GMB account optimization guide here. Thus, with the free tool from Google, GMB, you have the opportunity to appear in the results of organic search with wow pictures and videos. Another important role of this profile is to be compiled with reviews from your customers. We suggest that you write a nice message on the menu, emphasizing the importance of the reviews received from your guests.
• Periodically send newsletters for loyalty purposes - you will be sent periodically with up-to-date information from the place: the offers of the month, the new dishes introduced on the menu, and the seasonal menus.
• Make them want to eat, especially at lunchtime! - Clearly, the best way to promote your online restaurant is with high-quality photos that will make you feel a "craving". Another good idea is to sponsor some delicious photos of your food around noon!
• Emphasize the professionalism of your staff - their diplomas and specializations; here too you could put a special emphasis on the chef.
• Be sure to resort to restructuring and SEO optimization of the site, with new pages. An idea would be to extend the site's menu with additional services, plus text created for these pages (such as Festive Dinners, Themed Banquets, Anniversaries, Workshops, Seminars, and Product Launches). You can also think of a special section - Recipes / secret ingredients / new / from grandma / from the chef etc.
• Automate your business - we suggest you implement the CRM monitoring system (to structure your customer communication) and/or use a calendar for online bookings.
• Advertise published on news and thematic sites - PR and branding efforts can crystallize into increased streams of visitors to your site. If you manage to build a cool and youthful local look in the press, you will also attract the public in the same way. Here are some interesting advertorials: company mission and values, restaurant history, key employees, interviews with existing customers, interviews with key employees, description of core partnerships, and description of joint projects with other companies.
• To increase the engagement rate and brand visibility on Social media, posts need to contain more relevant information and appeal to users' emotions. That is, to be friendly, but to capture attention, and the commercial type should be given at most once a week: Here are the types of content that would be good on social media: pictures of foreign guests with a small comment from after visiting the place or even better: video reviews. Also on Social Media, you can use User-Generated Content, such as contests such as: uploading an original picture of yourself in the venue, people voting for the best photo, and the restaurant giving prizes to the winner. Communicate about your CSR campaigns, such as your campaign's social (x money from the purchase is sent to a children's home).
  

What to avoid when promoting a HoReCa business?

Many HoReCa businesses completely forget about the customer experience: the most specific mistakes are included here. Let's imagine: we have a business in the field of HoReCa that has the full spectrum of online promotion channels, works based on the most interesting and unique marketing mechanisms, but forgets to hire qualified staff. The client, intoxicated by the promises offered, clashes head-on with the attitude of the non-like-minded staff. From now on, the efforts will be reduced to an overwhelming zero!

A business is a constant challenge. The work done, sometimes, is not easily capitalized, but if it is done diligently and with increased interest in the impact of the reputation, the results will not be long in coming.

Do you want your HoReCa business to be promoted like a book? Call today for a free consultation at +373 69 809 235 (Moldova), +40 721 536 067 (Romania), or leave us a message at info{@}seolitte.com!