Suppose you’re running Facebook ads, in that case, you need to catch up on one of the best and most effective advertising strategies you should use to reach more customers and grow your restaurant using Facebook ads.
Facebook is a top-rated and flexible platform for businesses, including restaurants, allowing them to reach their ideal customers and make more sales. Facebook even allows you to target particular niches within the restaurant and dish-making industry, making it an effective platform for restaurants to reach their ideal customers. Facebook paid social ads are crucial in building an effective online presence that grows your restaurant business.
This article aims to reveal the best Facebook advertising strategies for restaurants. With the information on this page, you will learn how to run Facebook ads for restaurants and the benefits of utilizing Facebook ads for your restaurant.
You might be asking:
Does Facebook Ads Work for Restaurants? Of course, Facebook ads work for restaurants. However, running a successful ad campaign for your restaurant requires experience in the industry. This is why you need to work with an experienced and reliable social media marketing restaurant agency to curate a successful ad campaign for your restaurant business.
Sociallybuzz is a leading social media marketing, management, and digital advertising agency for small and medium-sized businesses. With over 12 years of experience, we know how to create and execute marketing campaigns that will help you grow your business. Our social media agency has created successful targeted social media campaigns that acquired our customers more leads, sales, and revenue.
Before creating your ad, you need to configure your targeting options to ensure your ads appear to the right people. Your ads appearing to the right people is essential in running a successful Facebook ad for your restaurants. You can set your ads to your restaurant’s local zip code to ensure you are targeting customers that will only need to travel a short way to come and dine in your restaurant.
You can also add neighboring zip codes around your restaurant where people are most likely to travel to dine in your restaurant. This is why configuring your location targeting is the first thing you should do before creating your ads. Not to worry, doing this is very much easy.
Ensure your goals are well thought out, and your ad objectives align with them.
You will have to determine the overall objective of creating your restuarant Facebook ad and ensure your purpose aligns with the goal of your restaurant. Hence, think thoroughly and come up with what you intend to achieve.
Your goal could be to encourage people to book reservations, increase brand visibility, increase sales, increase likes and followership on your restaurant social media page and many more.
Some people may have engaged with your content on Facebook but have not patronized you for some reason. This set of people already know your business and the services you render.
You can target them using Facebook ads, as Facebook tracks visitors of your website using Facebook Pixel. You can use this tool for advertising to potential customers on your list too.
Set your Facebook ads to appear to them and motivate them to come to patronize you. Many may have intended to dine in your restaurant but have forgotten. With Facebook ad retargeting for your restaurant, they will remember your restaurant because ad retargeting ad serves as a reminder.
Attracting new customers is more complicated than retaining current ones. Your existing customers love you already and are also interested in your services. They are the people most interested in your promotional offer.
They are always waiting to hear about a new item on the menu. Since these customers enjoy your food and are impressed with your restaurant’s dining experience, you should create a Facebook ad to remind them to return to your restaurants.
Using custom audiences, you can upload your customer emails to Facebook’s ad manager. Doing this will help Facebook match these lists to users and allow you to show ads directly to your potential audience. Another good thing about these ads is that they don’t cost much to implement.
If you do not have an existing email list, you can use Facebook pixel on your website; this helps Facebook track your website visitors and target them with an ad. With this, you will be shocked by the large target audiences you will build quickly.
Recommended: Try these restaurant advertising ideas.
Running a Facebook ad for your restaurant should be easy and quick. Allow Facebook to build a lookalike audience for you. A lookalike audience is one full of users similar to your typical customers.
The Facebook lookalike audience feature creates the specific target audience for your ad. It shows your ad to the group of people who are likely to dine at your restaurant. If you have customer loyalty or an email list from your existing customers, you can upload them to Facebook. This way, Facebook can create a lookalike audience that will help you get more customers. Alternatively, you can specify who you want to target in ads manager and let Facebook build a lookalike audience for you.
Targeting the proper interest for your restaurant’s Facebook ad is very important, just like choosing the correct geographical location and audience. For example, Suppose your restaurant makes only international dishes. In that case, showing your ad to local food lovers is not wise. Targeting specific interests to run a Facebook ad for your restaurant would be best.
You don’t need to be told that everyone loves freebies. Organizing fun events where you give free food to your guests is an excellent way to attract new customers. Event marketing and Facebook ads can work perfectly together. Why not take advantage of this fact and use the two well?
You can set up an event and then promote it using Facebook ads. By doing this, you are presenting your restaurant to many people using Facebook ads. When your restaurant hosts special events, it can attract current and new customers. New people who do not know about your restaurant will get to know it exists. And a good number of those unique people will likely turn into customers.
New customers need to know your business exists. It would be best if you targeted them when creating your Facebook ad. Using Facebook ad to target the people in your locality that would like to dine in your restaurant is a great idea. You can do that using factors like interest and demographics categories.
Targeting new customers in your Facebook ad entails more work and consistency. You may also have to spend more money. However, you can create an ad copy that contains a brief statement about why someone would be interested in your restaurant and experiment before investing much in Facebook ads.
Running multiple Facebook Ad formats is better than running a single one. Setting up a Facebook ad is easy; hence you can create and run multiple ads simultaneously.
Many restaurant owners think Facebook ads are the kinds you set and forget. That’s not right, you should ensure you are monitoring your performance regularly. Rather than fix and forget one ad, creating an ad with different formats like carousel ads, single image ads, and video ads would be better. It’s always a good idea to A/B test different ad campaigns to find best performing ads.
Recommended: Facebook ads for small businesses
It is one thing to create ads and another to ensure they get to your audience at the right time. Facebook allows you to schedule your ads ahead of time with their ad scheduling tool to help you ensure that your ads are delivered when customers need them the most.
Doing this is very good as it is an effective way to reach people when you believe they are likely to see your ad. If you are still determining the time that works, you can run your ad at all hours and find out when your customers engage your ads the most.
Even if you are using your computer to create your ad, make it look good on a mobile phone. Checking your Facebook ad’s appearance on different screen sizes is better. Your ad might look good on a computer screen but won’t on a mobile phone.
Therefore, ensuring your restaurant’s Facebook ads look excellent and transparent across all social media platforms without any image or word getting cut off is crucial. You can use Facebook’s ad preview tool to see your ad appearance on a mobile phone, desktop, etc. You can then make the necessary adjustments if it doesn’t look good.
Another good strategy to advertise your restaurant using Facebook ads is promoting new and seasonal dishes.
When you add a new dish to your restaurant menu, you will want your customers to know about it. Add unique and seasonal dishes to your restaurant’s menu yearly to spice things up. Doing this will attract new customers and make old ones come more frequently.
Read More: Check out this article to know whether Facebook ads work for B2Bs
You can use Facebook ads to show off your dishes and employees. Your restaurant’s dishes matter a lot to your customers, and it determines if they will return, this is why you should ensure you take eye-catching photos of your best dishes.
If you cannot do this yourself, you can employ the services of professional photographers to do the work for you and then make these photos part of your Facebook ads. A good customer-brand relationship is also very crucial in every business.
Telling the public about how great your employees are, is an excellent way to attract more customers. You can highlight great attributes of your employees using Facebook ads and share a photo of them serving customers.
You can plan your ads around seasonal occasions. You know, yearly seasonal events are celebrated in your locality; use that opportunity to add a new item to your list and create an ad that will push people to your menu. As there is an event to celebrate and people tend to eat out during such events, running an effective ad will help you attract more customers.
Do you know you can show your Facebook ads on other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook Messenger? A lot of people do not know this. People assume Facebook ads are made for Facebook alone, but that is untrue.
You can promote your restaurant’s Facebook ads on Instagram, and you don’t need an Instagram account for that. Yes! Without having an Instagram account, your restaurant’s Facebook ads can show on Instagram. Cross-platform advertisement is a very effective way to run your restaurant’s Facebook ad.
With Facebook, you can test multiple ad placements to know the best one for you. It could be in Facebook messenger, your audience’s newsfeed, mobile phone, desktop and many more.
Knowing which ad placements work best for your restaurant’s Facebook ads is essential as you will have to use more of them. Trying different ad placements is an effective strategy for running your restaurant’s Facebook ads.
Read More: Google Ads for Local Businesses
One good way to attract current and new customers to your restaurants using Facebook ads is by giving coupons and running contests. Offering coupons helps to increase sales rapidly and equally boosts traffic to your restaurant’s location using your restaurant’s Facebook ads.
You can make a deal of ‘buy one get one free‘. Giving coupons can be a way of giving back to your customers to appreciate them for choosing your restaurant, and it motivates them to continue patronage.
Contests on the other hand are exciting and engaging, and can be used to increase awareness of your restaurant to your diners. It gives your customers the impression that you value them and you are intentional about building a good relationship with them.
You can set up a social media contest where users must repost one of your restaurant’s dishes to join the competition. The price could be a free meal and other gifts you dim fit. Tell them the competition will only run for a short period to encourage them to enter the contest faster and in mass.
You do not just create ads and forget about it. You will need to measure your result and know when your ads are performing well and when not, so you must set your budget and make clear goals for your restaurant’s Facebook ads.
Setting your budget and defining your goals will enable you to see if your advertising campaigns are successful or not performing well. Measuring your restaurant’s Facebook ad strategy success is one of the top restaurant Facebook ad strategies that works; it allows you to see what’s working and what’s not.
If at first, your restaurant’s Facebook ad does not work to your expectation, keep trying, and continue trying. Even if you decide to try that particular ad again, you have already known the mistakes you made in the past, and this time, running the ad would be much more successful than it was the last time. Or you can try another ad if you don’t want to continue with the former.
You can even put a pause on your ad campaign and change your targeting options if, along the line, you are not getting a good result. But, if you are getting good results from your ads, you can keep testing it to see how better to use it to your advantage. The number of people that clicked on your website’s link, the amount you spent, your engagement and some other factors can be used to determine a successful ad.
Your restaurant atmosphere matters a lot in promoting your restaurant. A bad atmosphere will only make diners not return to the restaurant; it can also stop them from referring your restaurant to friends and family.
If your restaurant atmosphere is good, you can flaunt it in your Facebook ad. Doing this helps attract more diners to your restaurant.
Read More: Ways to advertise your restaurant
You might have known a few benefits of Facebook ads to your restaurant; we have compiled some of the top benefits you would be so glad to know.
Restaurant Facebook ads help extend your reach to a larger social media audience. With the more significant number of active users on Facebook, you will be able to reach potential customers with your Facebook ad. You can even go beyond your location if you want.
Recommended: Check out this article to target the right Facebook Ad Audience
Facebook ads drive traffic to your restaurant website. You can run a website click campaign to target your audience and send them to your website when they click on your link. With your website, you can get current customers to learn about new items on your menu and new customers about existing dishes, outstanding customer service, and a fantastic atmosphere.
One of the most important advantages of running a Facebook ad for your restaurant business is targeting a specific demographic. Many active users on Facebook exist, but I’m sure you intend to market to only some of them. Facebook allows you to target the people you want your ad to reach.
These are people who will likely want to dine with you. You can select based on location, age, gender, interests and hobbies.
The effective targeting and retargeting options Facebook provide, allows you to reach prospective customers without stress. With targeting, you can be sure of your ads being shown to people who have the potential to dine in your restaurant.
Another advantage of using restaurant Facebook ads is that you can use whatever format you want. These ad format options include video, single image, collection, and carousel ads.
Each of these formats allow you to display your dishes and menu to your target audience. The real deal is even the fact that you can run multiple ad formats simultaneously. You can choose different call-to-action buttons to take your ad viewers to your website. And if an ad is not working, you can try another.
When you can measure your ad performance, you will be able to know when you are making progress or not. Facebook lets you see how many clicks, impressions, and conversions you get.
However, you may need a Facebook advertising specialist to assist you in tracking your activity on your website and measuring its performance. But if you can do this yourself, it is still okay. Need help? Contact us now.
Running a Facebook ad is cheaper than traditional advertising. With a bit of money, you can advertise your restaurant on Facebook, which is not so in traditional advertising.
Facebook ads are ideal for restaurant owners with limited social media advertising budgets. You can set a daily budget and increase or decrease it whenever you want. Running a Facebook ad for your restaurant is inexpensive yet effective.
Facebook Ads help to increase brand recognition; of course, brand recognition and awareness are essential to massive growth in every business.
A Facebook ad can build your restaurants awareness significantly and make people aware of your restaurant and what you offer. You should know that the more familiar people are with your restaurant, the more likely they will want to come and dine in it.
With Facebook ads, you can track how many engagements you get on your ads, including clicks, shares, and likes. You get to see the performance of your ad campaigns, and the report is shown in real-time, so you can see what is and is not working as your ad runs.
A Facebook ad helps you track how many engagements your ad gets and the demographics of said engagements. With Facebook ads analytic feedback, you will be able to know how much you spend per post-engagement, so you will see when you are going above your budget.
Aside from adjusting your budget, you can change other necessary factors affecting your Facebook ads that you need to adjust. In a nutshell, Facebook analytics helps you know where to channel more of your time and energy.
Engagement includes likes, comments, and interactions on your ad or website. It is essential because it shows your connection with your audience and helps increase followers.
Facebook ads increase engagement with your target audience. As your audience engages with your ad, you connect with them. The connection strengthens as they continue engaging and turn to customers with time.
Customer engagement plays an essential role in the success of every restaurant. A Facebook ad is an excellent option to build trust in your restaurant business and maintain a strong connection with your audience.
If you add a new dish to your menu, you can use Facebook ads to increase its exposure. Facebook ads are a good option for restaurants that habitually add new items to their menu. If you are one of them, you are lucky, as Facebook ads are an excellent way to spread the news.
Many Facebook users access Facebook with their mobile phones, which means they can easily access your ad with their phones. Since Facebook ads are portable, you can advertise to your audience on the device they use most, making them more effective.
Many restaurant owners need to learn how they can collect leads using Facebook ads. With Facebook ads, you can convert prospects into leads, and then nurture them into customers. The good thing about this is that the more accessible the restaurant, the more conversion you get.
Before creating a Facebook ad, you must have determined your goals for your restaurant. It would attract potential diners to your restaurant, increase followers, increase your brand awareness or whatever you wish to achieve. Facebook ad is there to help you achieve all.
Facebook has specific campaign objectives that allow you to customize your ads efforts to align with your restaurant goals. You can target your audience smartly with your actions aligned with your goals.
Your Facebook ads can also appear on Instagram and of course, this is an added advantage. Facebook owns Instagram; hence when you run Facebook ads, you can decide to place your ads on Instagram too, or you can even choose to run your ads on Instagram alone.
This method helps you leverage both platforms in promoting your restaurant. You get the opportunity to garner customers on both social media platforms.
Advertising your restaurant on Facebook can be challenging; however, with the right strategies, it will be less difficult to achieve your set goals. Facebook advertising does not only help you keep your existing diners engaged, but it also helps you reach entirely new diners who could even turn into permanent customers. Want best ways to advertise your restaurant? Check out our article for restaurant advertising ideas.
Sociallybuzz is a leading social media marketing, management, and digital advertising agency for small and medium-sized businesses. With over 12 years of experience, we know how to create and execute marketing campaigns that will help you grow your business. Our social media agency has created successful targeted social media campaigns that acquired our customers more leads, sales, and revenue.
Further Reading:
Best ways to advertise your restaurant
Best restaurant advertising ideas.
Best Facebook ad audience to target
Does Facebook ads work for B2B?
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