Category Archives: seo

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers     

We’re in the midst of the Coronavirus lock-down at the moment but the restrictions on movement will be relaxed soon. Before we know it, pubs, bar, clubs and restaurants will be open again. The problem is, though, will the customers be as fast to start socialising and eating out again? How do we market our pubs, bars, clubs, and hotels? Is this even the right time for restaurant, bar & hotel marketing? 

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

The last recession was very tough for nearly all businesses but there were some very interesting lessons learned. The most important one, however, is that you can’t be complacent. The successful business that came out of the recession stronger than ever were the ones that realised they had to ‘up their game.’ They knew that it would take time for things to return to normal so they had to fight for the customers or go bust. Many of the organisations who simply ‘battened down the hatches’ and stopped investing in their business went under. Now is the time to start your restaurant, bar & hotel marketing

How to get more customers – restaurant, bar & hotel marketing the easy way

I’ve been in sales & marketing for as long as the internet has existed. Since before Google, Twitter and Facebook existed. Even before smartphones and mobile data. The amazing thing over this time has been the change in customer behaviour. We don’t ‘take a punt’ on a new restaurant anymore. Rather we ‘check it out online’ first. We check the website and read the menus. Look at the photos and explore the virtual tour. If we’re not 100% sure it’s the place for us we hot ‘back’ and go to the next listing on Google. This is why it’s so important to get it right first time

How to get new customers for bars, restaurants, and hotels

1 – First of all make sure your website is up to scratch from the visitors perspective. Your customers don’t need much – don’t make it difficult for them to find what they need! On your website, make the following information very prominent; Opening times, your location & parking (with a link to Google Maps), reservation information if available, menus (please not in PDFs!!!), and any specials or happy hour info. This is the most important thing to consider when thinking about your restaurant, bar & hotel marketing

2 – Make sure you have good quality and accurate photos (please no stock photos!)

3 – A good quality virtual tour is the number one factor in choosing a restaurant, bar or hotel. If your new potential customers are able to explore by themselves when it’s convenient for them, you’re much more likely to get them to visit in person.

4 – Next, make sure your website can be found. There is a very nice article on DIY SEO here, however, I’d recommend hiring an expert SEO to optimise your site and build a few links for you whilst they’re at it

5 – Make the most of what Google has to offer. Get your virtual tour on Google Maps, Google Search, Google Street View, and Google My Business. This is all part of getting a virtual tour done. See this article on integrating your virtual tour into Google

What next?

Here is a list of suppliers you may want to get in touch with:

Web development (click here) – make sure your website is up-to-scratch. Click here for good quality web development

Virtual tour & photography (click here) – good quality photos and a high-quality HDR Matterport virtual tour are two of the most important things you’ll need. Get a quote for a virtual tour here

Search engine optimisation (click here) (SEO) – get your site indexing on Google and make sure new customers can find you – Click here to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation

Google virtual tour integration (click here) – get your photos and virtual tour on Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Search and Google Street View with a Trusted Google Photographer

 

 

 

Search Engine Optimisation – about keyword research

Having a website that isn’t ranking well within the major search engines is a problem for many businesses. As a sales tool, for virtually all businesses these days, a website is essential. For example, your word-of-mouth prospects will want to ‘check you out’ online, and your potential customers will be searching for your services on the internet. If you don’t have a website, you may be discounted at the first hurdle and even if you do, if you can’t find it using a simple search, you may as well not have a site. Therefore, the logical conclusion is often to spend time optimising the site to improve its usability and position within search results. The problem many people have, however, is where do you start with SEO?

I’ve been working in digital marketing for more years than I care to remember and I often forget how non-digital marketers will often view search engine optimisation (SEO) as some sort of black-magic or witch-craft when in reality, it’s generally a case of understanding how the major search engines interact with a website and reverse engineering them to communicate effectively. As Google’s algorithm (as the biggest online search provider) becomes increasingly clever at understanding websites, the process of SEO will also generally help to provide a better website experience for your site visitors so there are other benefits to this activity too.

So where do we start? The first step if to understand what your potential customers or target audience are actually typing into the search box when they are looking for your products and services. In the ‘old days’ of print media, this step would generally require a focus group to provide you with some moderately accurate results, however, in the modern age, user behaviour is logged digitally and can be crunched on a huge scale to provide us with some very accurate information about what our audience is actually doing online including what they’re typing into Google, when they’re doing it, where they are (geographically,) and who they are. The words or phrases our potential customers are typing into the search engines when they’re looking for our products and services are generally referred to as ‘key words’ or ‘key phrases’

So how do we do this? There are many tools available online to provide us with the information we need on our key-phrases – some of these you may have heard of, such as, the Google Keyword Research Tools, Google Analytics, the Bing Keyword Research Tool, and Wordtracker and others you may have not heard of such as the SEM-Tool Keyword-Tool. I find keyword research generally starts off with a rough idea about the kinds of things our target audience will be typing into the search engine search box and the keyword research tools will return those phrases along with similar and relevant phrases you may not have considered. Apply a bit of behavioural psychology and common sense to the results and you can quickly build up a picture of what the audience are searching for.

Once a picture of the user behaviour has been established, (to cut a much longer story short) you simply apply these phrases to the site – both on-site and off-site – then sit back and monitor the increase in traffic and the increase in the proportion of qualified visitors.

For more information on search engine optimisation for your site, give us a call today on 0114 383 0711