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Here’s how to market a restaurant online

If you’d like to find out more about getting a mobile website so you can market your business online properly click here

How To Get Your Mobile Strategy Right

With mobile search rising in importance, you want to make sure you spend the next few months aligning your online activities with mobile, to get in front of this audience as they switch over to phone-based searches. A few ideas for restaurant owners:

• The next time you redesign your website, think seriously about a website design that is “mobile-first” – a phone-friendly website that also will work fine for desktop PCs. Most websites do the opposite (at best) but in the restaurant category, the market favours mobile, so your site design should, too.

• If you’re not ready to redesign yet, be sure that your homepage has a clickable phone number, with driving directions one click away. This is good common sense for all customers, phone-based or not.

• Should you do an app? Probably not – you want to be found by both new customers and old. Apps are great for keeping in touch with established customers, but only if you need to interact with them a lot. Domino’s pizza-delivery app is a prime example of that – they expect frequent business, and use the app to automate the process. If you just need to take reservations, then…

• Make sure you get listed in the search engines that phone users rely upon. Google Places and Yelp are the prime candidates, and if you have the right systems in place, OpenTable can be a big advantage in getting spontaneous bookings.

• Google’s Mobile AdWords can be the best money you spend this year. If your average table brings £100, you might spend £20 on twenty clicks to get a call for a booking. Probably a lot less, if you’re outside a major city. That’s a lot better than giving half your money to Groupon.

• Encourage customers to submit reviews, and suggest that they mention the specific dishes ordered by the table. This will help down the road when iPhone’s Siri becomes a bigger source of online bookings, due to the fact that Siri lets you ask for specific menu items(“Siri, who serves lobster thermodor?”)

Neil

P.S If you’d like to find out more about getting a mobile website so you can market your business online properly click here