In the era, where smart phones are the priority and good food- the life, how can someone avoid a digital dive?

From Amazon Alexa and Google Homes, laptops and tablets, smart phones and smart watches, technology has opened up a new form of marketing on which to peddle products and services.

Its 2019! The world has taken a paradigm shift from analog to digital.

Most people are turning towards online information, making digital marketing a winning play.
With increase in services, way of living, and advancement in technology, digital marketing has brought huge success for businesses.

It's no longer enough to have a website or some un-focused Ad campaign.
If you don't have digital marketing plan for your business, you're making time play against you.

As the internet has entwined our lives and everything else we do, digital marketing has amplified existing marketing strategies.

Knowing about the WHY of digital marketing is the first step towards growth.
Let’s take a look at why digital marketing is important for your business's success...

1. Huge Market Place
At the time of writing this, InternetLiveStats shows that over 4.1 billion people are using the Internet.
Woaah! That's a lot of people.
And each second the user base is growing.
That's why digital marketing is estimated to grow to $129.23 billion by 2021.

Mobile, social media are the huge part of it.
Instead of targeting limited customers by a traditional marketing plan like distributing flyers, pamphlets, you can turn over to digital marketing: Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, etc.

Why to target thousands of patrons when you can target the millions and the billions?

2. Increased Sales and Better Revenues
Higher conversion rates are the Holy Grail of Digital Marketing.
As a lot of people are encouraged to buy your products, the sales and the revenue is estimated to grow at a rapid pace.
As the goal is to get people to buy something from your restaurant,
Digital Marketing gives you a lot of exposure and increases sales pushing towards increased revenue.

3. Cost Effective
Small business with no capitalization or assets can go for superior market via digital marketing.
Not like the old times, when business had to save up on its resources to make profits later;
Digital marketing gives the scope to reach out to many customers at the same time and that too with limited budget.
Instead of trade shows and tele marketing where you need to spend a huge cost, you can prefer Blogs and Newsletters.

4. Get Accessible to customers
It's clear that in today's digital world, the first place the average customer looks for everything is online.
So if you have been avoiding digital marketing, chances are you may lose your potential customers.
By creating a web presence, you can reach well beyond the walls. You can attract a much larger audience than you possibly could by catering local content.
SEO is a strategy that can help you move ahead of your competitors just by being the first name that a prospect finds in a Google search with keywords that can lead them to your business.

5. Promotions through paid channels
You might know about the TV-ads and the surveys for advertising, but do you know about the profit and losses it incurs?
Do TV-ads give you the complete stats of the sales, targeted goals and achieved goals?
With digital marketing, you get to know about each and every detail of your ads and users.
Whether they saw it, if they liked it, if they interacted with it, if they shared with another friend, etc
With Google Analytics, you can gain more insights about who your customers are, their likes and preferences, etc.

6. Build brand and people's trust
Delivering what you promised will help you make better relations with your targeted audience.
After all, good reputation is essential. Without the trust and confidence of the customer, a company can't survive.
By communicating with customers through website, e-mail, social media, clearing their doubts and offering help, you can build a long lasting relation with your customers, thus creating a brand success.

7. Better growth options, better ROI
Be it a small business or an established multi-outlet business, digital marketing closes the gap between their growth options.
It provides each level with almost same resources.
While big companies can spend more on paid ads, small businesses gets a wider exposure and opportunities to compete, improve brand awareness, and build an audience.
Talking about ROI, the digital marketing ROI statistics show that email have an average of 122% i.e.,4x higher ROI than other marketing formats such as social media, direct mail, and paid search, whereas content marketing has 3x leads (The people who're very likely to buy your products and become loyal customers).
Thus with every dollar, even a small business can get a better ROI.

After knowing the Why's of Digital Marketing,
Let's proceed towards the HOW...
How to improve your restaurant business with Digital marketing...

1. Make the image do the talking:
The best way to promote your restaurant is with high-quality, drool inducing photos.
An image of a tasty dish is likely to hook more customers than the words.
Instead of loading your website and social media accounts with tons of text, go for images that would clearly get the message.
Delicious looking photos of the food are essential for drawing hungry eyes to your place!

Pro Tip: Keep posting daily on Instagram and Facebook- the images of your tasty dishes that will attract more food lovers.
You can try the DIY style to take photographs with your smart phone or consider hiring a pro to take top-notch photographs of your tasty dishes.

2. Involve Food Bloggers:
As social-media is taking the world by storm, inviting food- bloggers to your restaurant would do a great work of words out.
Serve them your best and provide them with all the wows and yums of the place.
One picture or tweet across their social media accounts would make a lot of potential customers to visit.
The happier they are, the happiest would be their readers to visit!

Pro-Tip: Consider offering a free meal or appetizer.
Politely ask if they would be willing to review your restaurant and share their experience online.

3. Partner up with delivery services:
Now-a-days, patrons often love taking advantage of delivery services due to the offers, variety of options, and ease of use.
Partner up with delivery services so as to get the wide range of customers. As some customers may even discover you for the first time.

Pro Tip: Consider partnering with services like:

  a. Deliveroo

  b. Ubereats

  c. FoodPanda

  d. What To Eat

  e. Food Matters

4. Offer coupons and discounts:
People tend to get attracted to offers and discounts more than the restaurant's ambiance and food.
Try to offer different offers to market your restaurant such as: 10% off for signing up to receive newsletter on promotions and offers.
Alternatively, you can try giving coupons via different payment websites or other online services.

5. Online reservation tools:
People love when you make their life easy by providing online reservation options.
So an online reservation tool that lets customers book your establishments online is a fine marketing strategy.

6. Card getaways:
Arrange some exciting games and surprise offers.
Let your customers drop their business card in fish bowl for rewards. A reward like: lunch for winner and 5 friends, happy hour deal with discounted drinks, etc.
This way you can use those cards by emailing them about the upcoming events and offers. About the next weekend game they can participate in.
Tadaa! You got a super bunch of newsletter subscribers.

7. Use Mobile Ads:
No doubt, we're all addicted to our smartphones and this addiction can be of a great advantage for restaurants.
As users are often looking for nearby dining options, mobile ads tend to be cheaper than desktop ads.

For example, during dining hours, when a user searches for 'pizza', your ad could make you the first to be displayed.

Don't miss out on the pie of the internet!

8. Run Promotions for repetition:
Of course, you must be running promotions but it’s time to makeover your promotional strategies to increase sales and business.
Set some easy and attractive promotional offers that make the customers visit often.
Promotions such as: 10% off on 3rd visit, free dessert for 5 on 5th visit.
You got the idea? Right?

9. Loyalty for loyals
A traditional but always a profit making marketing strategy - Loyalty programs!
Offer different loyalty programs to your customers like membership to new customers, discounts for re-visitors, etc.
Loyalty programs increase your brand value, repeat customers, and eventually the sales!

10. Blogs, Emails and Newsletters
Keep you customers updated with new content. Share the recipes of your signature food or some other easy-tasty food secrets.
The more updated your customers are, the more they would prefer you.
As email marketing is 4x higher, the proper content you drop in customer's inbox is the result of your business growth.
Keep on the conversation with new offers or festival promotions, or new dishes or the other changes in the restaurant.

The more involved your business is with the customer's online experience, the more is your business's growth rate.

Summarizing all the points, you need to:

Have a user- friendly website,
Invest in SEO,
Have active social media profile,
Some paid advertising,
Maintain customer trust and brand reputation via customer feedbacks,
Integrated customer relation.

"Physical presence may be a spotlight;
Online presence is about a website.

Be a CEO,
With an integrated SEO.

Contacts and messages are old,
Insta, Twitter, Facebook on the roll...

Free ads may be more;
Paid Ads gives you score.

Correcting your mistakes is fine
but improving your mistakes(with customer feedbacks) is the goal line.

Friendly relations are everywhere;
Customer relations are so rare.

Online is where customers want you to touch;
Online is the new quench."

This online strategies will help you with digital marketing but implementing them is not as easy as said.

Find out how we can help you employ digital marketing for your F&B business.

Sign up for a free demo with SingFNB Demo today!

Contact us @

Phone: +65 6562 6050

Email: [email protected]