Whether your restaurant is high-end, fast casual, a healthy eatery, a gastropub, or fast food, your restaurant’s specific target audience is on Facebook multiple times per day every day of the week.
If you’re not utilizing Facebook ads to reach your customers, you are missing out on one of the most effective advertising channels to reach them. And the worst part, if you’re not promoting your restaurant with Facebook ads, your savvier competitors are and stealing your customers.
Want to target event planners, group dining, private dining? That’s achievable with Facebook ads too.
In this post, I outline why Facebook ads are so important for creating awareness for your restaurant, and give you five killer ad tactics to consider for driving more business (including catering). Here’s a summary of what we’ll be covering.
- Run Seasonal Specials. Plan an ad calendar for Facebook ads
- Promote Restaurant Entertainment. Target people that like that type of music in Facebook.
- Reward Your Existing Customers Using Retargeting Ads. Run special promos to past customers.
- Grow Restaurant Catering. Target office assistants with catering specials inside Facebook.
- Integrate Ads With Traditional Marketing. Create Facebook ads that target users that like your traditional media outlets
- Restaurant Job Ads. Hire better people with Facebook job ads
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Why Facebook ads to promote your restaurant?
Facebook is hands down the number one social media channel in the world. Your customers are there in the largest concentration out of any other social channel. And the vast majority of your customers access Facebook multiple times per day of which the majority are accessing via their mobile phone. Pair this with the below statistics and insights (Source: Facebook Quarterly Report):
- 65% of Facebook users access it daily
- Facebook has 1.52 billion mobile daily active users
- Users spend 20 – 30 minutes per day on Facebook
Mobile usage is huge right now, and you’re probably not leveraging it well. Nobody is carrying around the newspaper, or a magazine and checking it multiple times per day – but they are on Facebook via their mobile phones. Of the three hours per day that consumers spend on mobile devices, almost a one-third of that is spent on Facebook! Consider also that many of your restaurant competitors are not very savvy yet with online marketing and are still over-relying on inefficient and wasteful traditional marketing. While traditional marketing has its place, there is a real opportunity for you to get in the game ahead of your slower, less sophisticated competitors.
Mobile Usage Is Still Exploding – Yet Advertisers Are Not There Yet
Just look at the chart below – it shows the time spent in a media source by your customers versus advertising spend in that media source (Source: Mary Meeker’s Internet Marketing Trends Report 2018). There are some interesting data points here, but the one I want to highlight is the far right bars for mobile (highlighted in the red box). People are spending more and more time on mobile and its growing, yet advertisers are behind in reaching consumers here. This is a real opportunity for you and your restaurant – your customers are on Facebook almost solely via a mobile device. Chances are your less sophisticated restaurant peers are not there.
Forget About Facebook Organic Posts – There’s No Exposure Without Ads
You can forget about the Facebook posts you put up on your restaurant’s Facebook page to deliver exposure. Almost nobody sees those posts as Facebook has reduced your organic non-paid page posts exposure to only 2% of your fan base – if you had 1,000 fans, you would reach maybe 20 people at best. Without ads, you have no exposure to anyone on Facebook (this is true of almost all social channels – without ads your ability to have an impact in social is severely limited).
You say you do catering also? Facebook ads can be used very effectively in B-to-B marketing to target those decision makers as well for company picnics and corporate events. I will get to the specific ad ideas in a moment, but let me show you what’s possible with the targeting. 
Incredible Demographic Targeting Possibilities With Facebook Ads
Spanish Tapas Restaurant Facebook Ad Targeting Example
Find your ideal restaurant customer – below we are using Facebook to find people in the greater Houston area that like tapas or tapas bars, or Spanish cuisine, and have a household income in the top 10% – 25%. From this, we can see there are 10,000 people we could target. All the chosen variables in this example can be modified, refined, added to, to create even more precise targeting.
So think about this for a moment – what other advertising platforms can you down select for an audience like this? There is none!
Fast Casual Restaurant Facebook Ad Targeting Example
Let’s assume you have a fast-casual restaurant in midtown Manhattan as an example. We can target people that have an interest in competitor restaurants in midtown Manhattan. For this example, we selected Chipotle Mexican Grill, Qdoba Mexican Grill, El Pollo Loco, and Panera. As you can see, we are targeting a very small area around part of Central Park. Facebook is telling us that there are 32,000 people here that have an interest in those competitor restaurants. The options inside Facebook for being precise in your targeting based on interests, likes, and behaviors are many. I am showing you just a fraction of what’s possible.
Facebook Ad Tactic #1: Seasonal Specials
You have dozens of menu items you could promote, but choose a dish that makes sense for the season. It helps if you have a calendar planned out in advance for the year for each month by week. If it is summer and you have great salads, showcase your salad options.
Alternatively, if it is Mother’s Day, showcase the food items that will resonate well with families and moms.
Below is another example of a restaurant targeting for Mother’s Day – perhaps your restaurant has a Mother’s Day brunch special, and you have fun activities planned for young kids as well. Below we are able to find families within 10 miles of San Diego that have kids from newborns to age 18 that also are in the top household incomes.
Facebook Ad Tactic #2: Promote Restaurant Entertainment
Does your restaurant have live music entertainment on Fridays and Saturdays? Use Facebook ads to promote your entertainment to people that you know are highly likely to be interested. For example, if you are an Irish pub, and you have an Irish band, target these types of people on Facebook. Below we pulled everyone in San Diego that likes anything related to Irish music, Riverdance, AND that also likes to drink beer and Scotch Whisky.
Facebook Ad Tactic #3: Reward Your Existing Customers With Retargeting Ads
It is possible to target your loyal, repeat customers with special promotions, or for just brand awareness to encourage repeat visits. What you choose to promote to them is up to you, but you can easily target them on Facebook. There are a couple of ways to target past customers for your restaurant on Facebook.
- Retargeting customers with emails: Do you collect email or phone number information from your customers? For example, if you provide free wifi for guests (here’s a mega-valuable related post on how Facebook wifi can provide free local exposure for your restaurant overnight), often they have to enter their email to get access. Well, you can take that email list and load it on Facebook and have Facebook match those emails to profiles – now you have a Custom Audience inside Facebook of past customers you can run ads towards.
- Website visitors: anyone that has visited your restaurant website can also be retargeted. Facebook allows you to create a retargeting list of anyone that visits your website. This is another good way to reach past customers.
- Physically was in your restaurant: When an existing customer has visited your restaurant it’s possible to serve them an ad just because they were there physically. With mobile devices, Facebook knows where your customers are and if they have visited your restaurant.
Just recently I went to the Yard House for lunch. I did not check-in, I have never “liked” its page, and I didn’t use the WiFi in the restaurant. Yet the Yard House served me an ad the very next day on Facebook.
When I clicked on the ad to find out how it was targeting me, this is what Facebook said:
So you are able to retarget people who have physically been in your restaurant but have never ever interacted with it online. This is a savvy, sophisticated way to extend your brand awareness and mindshare with past customers. And the best part is that this type of a tactic costs very little in ad spend.
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Facebook Ad Tactic #4: Growing Restaurant Catering
Do you also offer catering? Maybe you do corporate events, parties, and more. Promoting this aspect of your restaurant is also possible. Below we selected for anyone that had an executive assistant-like job title.
Facebook Ad Tactic #5: Integrating Ads With Traditional Marketing
Are you spending on traditional marketing tactics – print, radio, or TV? We all know traditional marketing is incredibly wasteful because of the lack of efficient targeting. And the majority of restaurants rely heavily on these old school tactics.
However, with Facebook ads, we can make our traditional marketing that much more effective.
Facebook ads can easily integrate with your other traditional marketing efforts. It’s no surprise that integrating efforts like this improves overall response as well – multiple channels and multiple impressions help push the customer closer to a conversion. A consumer survey found that on average, people need more than 12 sources of influence before making a purchase decision (source: Think With Google).
If people hear a radio ad or see a print ad if they also see a targeted Facebook ad they are that much closer to becoming your restaurant customer. So for example, if you are doing any print marketing like mailing out postcards to a USPS carrier route around your restaurant, why not also run Facebook ads in those same neighborhoods as well right before you drop the postcard and then for some time after you drop the postcard? Don’t rely on just that one impression from the postcard, which by the way the majority throw directly into the trash.
Alternatively, what if you’re running local radio ads or a TV commercial?
Did you know you can target radio listeners of specific radio stations and TV shows on Facebook? In the below example, I’m targeting people in San Diego that listen to XETRA-FM, watch the Bravo TV station, and watch The Real Housewives series, and have household incomes in the top 10% – 25%, and also like the San Diego Padres. If you leverage Facebook ads and integrate them into your traditional marketing tactics, you will improve the “lift” or response from these traditional advertising tactics and will see far better results.
Facebook Ad Tactic #6: Restaurant Job Ads
Many people are focused solely on Facebook marketing for new customers but don’t forget, Facebook ads can be an effective tactic for recruiting employees and creating awareness that you’re hiring. You can use Facebook’s job title targeting to reach potential candidates for all sorts of job titles. These types of job ads generally cost very little since the audience with specific job titles is typically small compared to the retail market for promoting your food and catering services.
Types of Facebook Ads For Your Tactics
Facebook offers some different ad formats for showcasing your restaurant’s promotions, brand, or specials. You can be incredibly creative with Facebook ads, and there are many ways to promote your restaurant with rich media.
- Single Image Ads: these are the most common type of ad and run with only one image. These are fine and work well in Facebook for restaurants, but there are more options to utilize rich media and more creativity.
- Video ads: do you have great video content? Maybe you had a promotional video made? Perhaps you can highlight the kitchen as the dishes are being prepared (one of the best experiences I have ever had was at a restaurant in downtown Cleveland sitting at the chef’s table – I had a front-row view of how the kitchen was operating, and it was completely fascinating). Video ads will stream through a user’s newsfeed and are on mute until they choose to hear the audio by tapping on the video.
- Carousel ads: Maybe you have a 3-course executive lunch special. With carousel ads, users can scroll horizontally through different pictures of the lunch special. In this case, you could show each item with a call-to-action interlaced. This type of ad will give people a real sense for that particular lunch special. Or maybe you have many different offers – you can use carousel ads to highlight each type of promotion allowing people to scroll easily through them to find the most appealing.
- Canvas ads: these types of ads are by far the richest and most engaging allowing you to really tell a story. They were designed to load extremely fast on mobile phones. With Canvas ads, you can blend in pictures and videos and users can scroll horizontally or vertically allowing them to really experience your brand.
Here’s an example Canvas ad from Facebook for Wendy’s:
Then the user scrolls down …
Clickable menu. And the user can scroll horizontally or vertically.
There’s far more to this Canvas ad than what is conveyed here, but they are very engaging and specifically designed to load quickly on mobile devices.
A Word Of Caution With Boost Posts
If you are already running Facebook ads but using Facebook Boost Post option from the page interface, you are missing the majority of what Facebook offers and I would encourage you to limit that usage. I wrote two related posts on the issues with using Facebook’s Boost Post and another post on the differences between a Boost Post and Facebook Ad.
For another related post, how you can use Facebook’s wifi access for free instantly valuable social exposure in Facebook – this is a no-brainer tactic for ANY restaurant.
Wrapping Up Facebook Ads For Restaurants
What I went through above was just a teaser of what’s possible with Facebook ads. The platform has so many options to be laser focused and targeted with your ad spend. If you have a restaurant and have not leveraged Facebook ads to promote your food, specials, or entertainment, you are missing a grand opportunity to engage with new customers where your restaurant competition is not.
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Have you tried advertising your restaurant on Facebook? Share your comments and questions below. And if you need help implementing a Facebook ad campaign for your restaurant, please contact us.
