Restaurant Branding: 3 Tips And Tricks To Build Your Brand

This article will discuss restaurant branding, providing 3 tips and tricks for you to build your brand. Brand marketing is one of the most beneficial types of marketing your restaurant can use. As a result, to the public, your restaurant’s brand is your restaurant’s identity. A strong brand is vital for encouraging online orders, along with other benefits such as a boost in revenue. Therefore, we’ll give you three useful tips and tricks for building your restaurant’s brand.

Good branding means that, when a potential diner hears the name of your restaurant, that name instantly conjures up that diner’s perceptions and experiences of your restaurant.

When your restaurant is recognised, diners are more likely to order from your restaurant over an unknown restaurant. 

In other words, branding allows you to drive more online orders, compete more strongly against competitors, and take control of your message and your online presence.

We’ll Be Covering 3 Tips And Tricks To Build Your Restaurant’s Brand:

Creating a strong visual brand identity

Bidding on your own brand terms

Embracing word-of-mouth

Restaurant Branding: Why Is Branding So Important?

Branding creates a kind of shorthand for your restaurant in a customer’s mind. They don’t have to do the kind of research they would for an unknown restaurant, because they already know your reputation, have a general idea of what you offer, know whether diners see you positively or negatively, and much more.

This notoriety can prompt diners, when given a choice between your restaurant and one they don’t recognise, to automatically choose you.

Therefore, think of it as making your restaurant a recognisable, friendly face in the crowd.

Branding also influences repeat business, as “a customer’s perception of a brand is going to be largely informed by their previous experiences with that brand.”

Brand recognition for small and medium sized independent restaurant can lend a significant competitive edge, especially in the highly competitive food industry.

In addition, even without the budget of an international chain, there are a few tips and tricks that independent restaurants can make use of.

Here’s what we recommend, along with a look at the specific benefits of branding.

Restaurant Branding: Tips And Tricks For Branding Your Restaurant

Before we dive in, remember that knowing your audience is key to all branding activities. Therefore, you must know who your restaurant appeals to, and know what that audience wants and needs. As a result, all your branding should keep your ideal audience at the forefront.

With that in mind, here are our 3 tips for building your restaurant’s brand.

1. You Need A Strong Visual Brand Identity For Restaurant Branding

Your brand identity should carry from your logo right down to your online ads and other branded material. As a result, without the visuals backing you up, you’ll have a very difficult time building your brand.

Therefore, your visuals should reflect your restaurant. Do you want diners to see you as a formal, luxury restaurant? As a result, choose fonts, colours, and language to reflect your nature.

2. Bid On Your Brand For Restaurant Branding

There’s a lot to be said for branded pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google AdWords and other search engines.

When you bid on your brand terms, you protect your brand, generate quality traffic, and take ownership of key search results.

Brand campaigns are typically dirt-cheap compared to other paid search campaigns, so there’s no reason to hold back.

Benefits Of Branded PPC Campaigns

You protect your brand by ensuring that your official restaurant website is the first result when your restaurant is searched for. 

1. Your competitors are assuredly bidding on your brand keywords – don’t let them have all the valuable clicks! Bidding on brand terms prevents competitors from taking up all the ad slots for your restaurant’s brand before diners have the chance to see a single organic result for your own website.

It’s also possible – even likely – that your top competitors are bidding on your brand terms. Therefore, there are tricks of search advertising that allow them to do this. In addition, by bidding on your own brand term with high-quality ads, you can push their ads down the ranks.

2. Secondly, brand campaigns generate quality traffic. Therefore, Google reports that clicks from branded searches have double the conversion rate of clicks from non-branded searches. In addition, studies have shown rates of up to 5 times that of organic conversion rates.

3. In terms of taking ownership, SearchEngineLand points out that an ad on branded keywords means you can control the landing page you send users to. That means you can guide people to your homepage, your wedding page, or wherever you like, instead of letting them go to non-relevant landing pages.

When you can tell diners about your ‘best offers’ and specials through search ads, you’re taking control of your message. This is more efficient than growing it through SEO alone.

You don’t want your competitors and third parties showing up for your brand terms – so take control!

3. Word Of Mouth

Word of mouth is a broad category. Today, it means more than someone mentioning you to a friend. Therefore, it covers your presence on review sites, previous guests recommending you offline and on social media, user generated content, and more.

Word of mouth has been called ‘the most valuable form of marketing’ because it tends to be trusted over every other form. In addition, people believe other people over brands, which makes sense.

So How Do You, The Brand, Take Advantage Of That?

The key is to encourage happy diners to spread the word about your restaurant’s brand far and wide. Therefore, empower them by giving them “different ways to talk and share” (Forbes). For example, this might be simple reviews, photos. 

Therefore, you can encourage them to leave a review by requesting one via email a few days after they dine. You should also encourage the sharing of testimonials and pictures on social media.

Try encouraging your diners to talk about you by offering a prize in a competition. Maybe sharing a photo from your restaurant on Instagram or Twitter (with your brand hashtag, of course) gets them entered in a competition for a free meal. 

Conclusion

This article will discussed restaurant branding and provided 3 tips and tricks for you to build your brand. These are just a few of the tips and tricks you can take advantage of when you’re growing brand awareness. However, you should keep in mind that a brand is only as high-quality as the business. Your restaurant should, above all, strive to deliver quality from the first click on your website. When you’ve got the quality and you know your audience, your branding activities become a thousand times more profitable. Along with focusing on visuals, paid campaigns and word of mouth, you should ensure you stay active and engaged on social media, and make sure your employees are also reflecting your brand. 

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