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If you’re a restaurant business, you were likely to hit hard by the pandemic, and you’re looking to recover. One way to restart now is to ramp up your online presence through paid digital advertising. Pay-per-click advertising is a powerful process that can get you the audience you need.
Restaurants can take advantage of PPC campaigns to the fullest because of their visual nature and the never-ending demand for food. Here’s how you can make the most out of your ads budget and generate more conversions down the line.
1. Pick Your Advertising Channels
If you’re looking to include PPC into your restaurant business plan, you need to understand first where you can put your ads. There are several marketing channels that you can use to capture your target audience. These include:
- Social media ads
- Search ads (mainly Google)
- Shopping feed ads
- Remarketing ads
The most robust channels you would want to take advantage of for restaurants are social media ads and search ads like Google and Bing ads. This guide will focus on these two types of channels as they create the highest, best-quality traffic for websites.
Why should you do PPC ads as a restaurant business? One crucial advantage restaurants have in advertising is the sheer visual experience that restaurants can provide. People will always look for good food and, with good visual presentation and enjoyable copy, you can entice customers with your offerings.
2. Find Tools That Can Help Your PPC Campaigns
A critical step going into PPC ads is having the right tools for the jobs. Much like how some companies use tools that are HIPAA and FERPA compliant, you want PPC tools that can give you a broad reach and an easier time doing ads.
You want simple but robust tools that can give you a wealth of insights, the right keywords, accurate cost per click (CPC), and good competitor analysis. Tools like SemRush, AhRefs, and Ad Badger are only some of the most well-known tools that you can use.
At the very least, you want to utilize Google’s tools for their advertising space. These include:
- Google Ads (formerly Adwords)
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
These tools can help simplify your entire process. Most of them provide built-in tools for social media advertising that you can use to gather analytics data and use to empower your ads. Among these are Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Twitter Ads that let you operate them independently.
3. Find The Right Keywords
Keywords are vital to ensuring that you can get the most out of your PPC campaigns. It’s critical to have a robust keyword selection to drive patrons to see your ads. You want to have the right keywords to get more qualified leads.
Start by doing your homework. Restaurants thrive on keywords that take advantage of three vital sales areas: seasonality, geolocation, and competition. You want to make the most out of keywords, especially seasonal offerings that people would surely love.
Leverage match types to help control customer experience and get an insight on the best keyword variations that potential customers would want. Test your ads through A/B testing and combine several keywords to reach their maximum potential.
4. Utilize Location Keywords
Start your ads by deciding the geolocation that you’re serving. Depending on your business, you would want to limit your advertising within a specific service area for your business. These should go within a radius of your restaurant, or within the city you operate in.
When doing PPC ads, use keywords that combine your branded keywords with your service area. Use the name of the neighborhood, town, county, city, or even words that locals know. These can help you make cost-effective, targeted ads. If you can, provide unique rewards for a specific area too.
Google search ads are great for this purpose. If you want to make the most out of your budget, detailed long-tails with strong buyers’ intent can save you a good chunk of money. Combine branded keywords with location keywords to get a stronger ad position.
5. Create A Mobile-Friendly Website
When advertising for your restaurant business, your next goal is to advertise to mobile users. A little more than half of all searches come from mobile users, with more than 70% of their inquiries related to food and beverage. The pandemic only made the demand more attractive to a lot of buyers.
Make sure to have mobile-friendly campaigns using responsive web design for your landing pages. Utilize click-to-call features on your ads, especially with your social media ads. This will help people click your number and land a call straight to your business if they need to make a split-second decision.
Make sure your landing pages also contain easy-to-use buttons that put them directly on your menus or for reservations. You also need to have a menu page that makes it easy for everyone to access your delicacies, specialties, and even a gallery page for your interiors, exteriors, and best tables.
6. Retarget Your Ads
In most situations, customers may click your ads but are not yet ready to buy or get reservations from your business. When this happens, it’s best to use remarketing ads to help increase your conversion rates over time.
Remarketing, also known as retargeted ads, involves advertising to people who previously interacted with your pages or sites. Track your visitors and follow them by placing your ads on websites they visit. You need to remember that retargeted ads are quite competitively priced but used right, and you’ll get people back to your site.
It takes as many as seven touchpoints before you can get a lead, so use remarketing as a way to remind customers of your website. Use your ads to help nudge them towards your website. You can even use these ads to offer specific coupons and discounts too.
Remember that customers may have other things to do online. When they see your ad and show interest in it but don’t convey it the first time around, work towards bringing them back. It can mean the difference between a lead and an actual, paying customer.
The Bottom Line
PPC advertising for restaurant businesses is a fantastic way to improve your visibility and grow your customer base. Whether you’re looking for more sales or you want to reach other business goals, PPC campaigns will help you build and rise to the next level.