Building brand recognition of any business takes a significant amount of effort and time. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation for many businesses, causing them to shut down. However, restaurant businesses have still continued operating with the aid of restaurant delivery apps even during the lockdown in different countries.
Reaching to the top in this mad race is quite dependent on the brand recognition of your restaurant. Brand recognition helps restaurants and small food joints increase their revenue and sustain in the long run. Creating brand awareness involves marketing your products, establishing an online presence, advertising, and establishing loyalty of customers. You can play with your company logo and labeling, you can check with whitegraphics.com for putting your brand name across all the products and items.
So, if you are looking to increase the brand recognition of your restaurant, here are 7 tips you can follow.
7 tips to make your restaurant business stand out
Restaurant branding is all about creating a unique image of your restaurant in the minds of your target audience. The unique branding instills customers’ trust in your restaurant, creates a loyal customer base, and differentiates your restaurant from others.
Social Media Marketing
The most important tip that every restaurant should include in its strategy to increase brand recognition is social media marketing. Connecting and engaging your customers on social media platforms is imperative for building their trust and loyalty. In fact, social media presence is more effective than having your own website.
This is because your target audience uses social media heavily for both work and leisure. Therefore, to have a wider reach and increase your customer base, leveraging different social media platforms is an important step.
To enhance your social media presence, you can try the following ideas:
- Share professional images of your restaurant and food items on your social media accounts.
- Engage your customers through different campaigns, deals, and promotions.
- Share images of your uniquely designed menu.
- Comment on posts and images that your restaurant has been tagged in.
- Post regularly on your account by linking to the trending topics. For instance, you can share posts related to upcoming festivals, occasions, or days like Mother’s Day, Earth Day, International Yoga day, etc.
Augmented Reality Menus
A trending marketing tool especially during the COVID-19 times is an Augmented Reality food menu. Prior to COVID-19, customers depended on menus to evaluate the prices, choose special dishes, get information on the preparation of a dish, etc.
However, due to COVID-19, dining-in is mostly being avoided by people to maintain social distancing. Even restaurants who are open to dine-in visitors have to ensure proper safety and hygiene measures are followed. At times like these, sharing a physical menu with all customers may be risky. Therefore, many restaurants are leveraging the AR food menu option.
The AR menus are visually appealing, intriguing, and hygienic. Moreover, restaurants can share a lot of information about a particular dish that wasn’t possible on physical menus.
Customers can access more information about a dish by pointing the smartphone camera at any menu item and AR brings out more information to help with selecting their meal. These AR menus attract many customers, enhance their experience, and increase brand recognition of the restaurant.
Restaurant Delivery App Development
Another important requirement to create an online presence and recognition is partnering with an aggregator or building your own restaurant delivery app. A majority of customers order their meals through a restaurant delivery app which may be operated by an aggregator or the restaurant itself. Moreover, the lockdown has inclined customers towards online meal ordering.
While ordering meals through an app, customers search for reviews and ratings of restaurants and find it easy to trust restaurants that have good ratings. Therefore, it is important to have your restaurant partnered with a food delivery aggregator or offer a restaurant delivery app for your customers to order online. You can hire a professional restaurant delivery app development company from Clutch or Goodfirms.
Brand Visuals
Visual brand awareness for your restaurant is important to create a strong positive impression on your customers’ minds. Your brand visuals imprint a vivid memory for your customers and they can instantly recognize your brand just by looking at the logo or the tagline.
You can also work on the color scheme of your website and logo, packaging, decor, and uniforms to reinforce a consistent image and concept for your restaurant as a brand. Leading brands such as McDonald, KFC, and Dominos are easily recognized with their logos and color combination as there is a story behind each logo and brand.
Consistency in the Branding Strategy
Not being consistent with your brand is the main reason for losing out on the loyalty of customers. You should be consistent across all aspects of your branding strategy. Your branding strategy should reflect in your logo, staff uniforms, menu, interiors, menu, and your services.
In fact, even your social media accounts, brochures, newsletters, coupons, offers, and flyers should maintain this consistency. Consistency in the branding strategy is the key to customer loyalty.
Collect Reviews from Customers
As important as word-of-mouth recommendations are for a restaurant, the trend has shifted to online reviews and ratings. People trust online reviews on different sites including Google. This is because online reviews generally provide unbiased information about the restaurant and the quality of food and services offered. The decision to complete their orders is highly influenced by the reviews.
Therefore, it is important to collect reviews on famous sites like Google, TripAdvisor, etc. Negative reviews are of equal importance and should be replied to instantly. They not only help restaurants to identify and work on improvement areas but also re-instills the confidence of irate customers in your brand.
Offer Freebies and Giveaway Coupons
Lastly, you can increase brand recognition of your restaurant by attracting and engaging your customers through giveaways, freebies, coupons, and other offers. After all, who doesn’t like freebies? This strategy helps build loyal customers who further spread a positive review of your brand.
Many cafes provide free coffee after the purchase of a few coffees. This encourages the customers to visit the cafes again with the hope of getting a free coffee. Similarly, some restaurants offer a free dessert bar or free meals for children under a certain age.
You can also offer discount coupons, giveaways, and other offers to promote your restaurant and keep the customers coming back to your restaurant. The freebies and giveaways can also be announced on your social media handles to instantly reach out to a wider audience. I hope you like reading this article.
