Should I Use Facebook, Not Social Media, To Get More Customers in My Restaurant
The quick easy answer, YES!
It is still the most underpriced platform in the digital space to swipe people’s attention long enough to get them to take an action on your message and or offer.
But, wait a minute…social media, isn’t Facebook Social Media? Yes, and when I say Facebook I am talking about the ad platform Facebook, not the organic posting of content in your newsfeed, social media Facebook.
Facebook can open doors to new streams of revenue because of the traffic it controls. With 1.5 Billion Active Daily Users on Facebook, as of Q3 report 2018, it is hard to wrap my brain around why someone would still say, “well my customers really are not on Facebook”. This is almost 100% not true.
Wait, before you say it…Millennials, 41% of them are using Facebook on a daily basis!
So, we can move on, here are the demographics:
Facebook Demographics
- Facebook users are 53%female and 47%
- Of all the people on the internet, 83%of Women & 75% of Men use Facebook.
- Average Facebook user has 155 “friends”. (whoa…can you say referrals?)
- 62%of online Seniors aged 65+ are on Facebook and 72% are between age 50-64.
Now that we’ve obliterated the “my customers are not on Facebook” myth, let’s discuss why I think Facebook Advertising is right for your Restaurant.
- Instant Traffic Source
- Incredible Targeting Tools (even though some have been removed 1,000’s still remain)
- Real Time Tracking
- Pay only for Results
Instant Traffic Source
Mentioned earlier, 1.5 Billion active daily users! OKAY, so maybe you’re not going after a global market, you’d just like to add a few more covers from the city you’re in…is it possible?
Good news, absolutely.
There are 207.36 Million users in the United States…total 325.7 Million total humans in the US…
This means 64% of the citizens of the United States are using Facebook daily.
Compare this to the percentage of people who read the newspaper, or watch the news on TV, or listen to a local radio station on a daily basis…If you have a newspaper ad running, I’m sorry.
We aren’t even taking the people out who are incarcerated, in mental institutions or too young or too old to operate a smartphone or computer.
So here’s the math…take your local population and then take 64% of it to give you an idea of the total traffic from Facebook on a daily basis that is available in your city.
A simple example of the city I live in has 49,000 total residents. So, 64% or 31,360 are on Facebook every single day!
Next, ask yourself “self, how many of these people need to say yes to my offer for me to see a positive impact on my business?”
If you’re average ticket is say $25 and you added 4 new customers a day, you’d have a nice impact at the end of the month!
Facebook is a source of instant and constant flow of new traffic!
Targeting Tools
The tools provided by Facebook when you are creating an ad to run are too long to list. So, let me share with you (as of this writing) my favorites.
- Gender – You can segment your targeting based on gender. This helps if say your ideal clients are predominantly one specific gender. This helps in so many ways when creating the actual copy for the ad as well.
- Age – you can show your message to age ranges that are MOST LIKELY to say yes to your offer. No need to waste ad dollars advertising to someone who will not walk through the door.
- Zip Codes – This helps you determine, by zip codes, where to show your offer. So if you have say an upper class clientele, and you know they live in specific zip codes only, you can make sure then to only show your ad in those zip codes.
- Work – Meaning you can segment by job title. CEO, Owner, General Manager, and so on.
- Types of shows they watch
- Types of Magazines they may read
- Who they may follow…so if they are Oprah fans or Ellen. Maybe a Sports Celebrity.
As I say there are many more and these can very quickly uncover your ideal customers and put you and your offer in front of them.
Real Time Tracking
Just like it implies, it tracks exactly what’s happening in real time with very little if any data lag. You may ask, why is this important? Well (and this is a bonus) because your ads are digital you can make adjustments to them on the fly, using this real time data.
When the data comes in and maybe it shows the performance is better among a certain age group, than another, you can adjust this targeting so only that age range sees your offer. This cuts down on waste. You can then optimize your ads, tweaking them to improve their results, on the fly.
The range of data you can collect is again long. You want to know what measuring metrics are best for your efforts.
Let me step outside this for a second and say “do not chase vanity metrics as they do not pay the bills” We don’t really get excited for our clients when we get likes and hearts…we want to see reservations or someone downloading their offers. A result you can take to the bank, the other will not cash.
Before we get to our final reason to be on Facebook let me share a few metrics we find important for our customers.
Comments –
this is key to us because this is how we collect names and emails for our customers to build a large and targeted database as well as the way we deliver the offer. So, the more comments the more people coming in the door. (these are called engagement campaigns and we see these costs our average restaurant client .10 per comment to 1.00)
Video Views –
We use this metric when we are doing what we call an awareness campaign. We are able to segment those who watched the video by watch time percentage. The longer people watch the video, the more likely they are to be a more serious customer. Typically, we will then retarget those who watched our customers videos we’ve made for them. We’re looking for 50% or more. These will become custom audiences and because we have interacted with them prior, it is less expensive to then put our offer in front of them. (these are called video view campaigns and we see views run consistently .01-.05 per view)
Pay Only For Results
This is pretty straightforward. Facebook only makes you pay for results!
Unlike other forms of advertising, whether it be radio, print or TV, you must pay up front for their services. The main reason why, in my opinion, is because they have no way to measure the effectiveness of their work.
If you have a TV ad running, it is nearly impossible to stop people from recording the show live and then fast forwarding through your commercials when they sit down to watch the program. This is just one of the many reasons traditional marketing we have all relied upon is being quickly replaced with digital alternatives…the ability to track results, dynamically change your ad and then have it back up and running with those changes, sometimes literally in seconds, and of course the targeting. Not to mention, if our digital audience is not interacting with your ad, you don’t pay.
If you placed an ad in your local newspaper, for instance, can you, with confidence, know only the ideal, most likely to act people in that house, would see the ad you just paid for in advance? (don’t answer…)
Let’s close with this…Should You Be Using Facebook Advertising for Your Restaurant, to Get More Reservations? Ok, put your hand down…we kinda thought you’d say yes!
If you’d like to see the automated Facebook Advertising we do for our customers, you can click the link below. This will be an example of what happens after your ideal customer makes a comment below the ad we have created for you. Click here to see how
SwingPointMedia is a marketing company focused on using content marketing, such as written articles, video and podcasts, to attract their customers ideal audiences. This approach has proven to attract higher quality customers while simultaneously reducing the sales cycle by as much as 70%.
SwingPointMedia serves local businesses in Southern California and can be reached by calling 760-422-5176.
You are invited to also attend a free weekly presentation, providing you the tools and strategy to roll out your own content marketing program for your company, or see exactly what SwingPointMedia does for its clients to achieve success. It can be viewed live on SwingPointMedia’s YouTube channel, at 11 am pst.