24 Facebook Marketing Ideas and Strategies for Restaurants

With over a billion active users on Facebook as of 2017, the social media giant is making itself one of the most attractive outlets for restaurant marketers. This is in part due to the fact that everyone needs to eat, and with the right Facebook marketing strategy your restaurant could be their destination of choice.

But with so many of your competitors on the platform, how do you make sure yours gets a slice of the pie? The answer is simple. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with " Facebook marketing secrets". Instead, you need to be taking advantage of a number of proven marketing tips and tricks that will get you one step closer to achieving your goals.

The 24 best facebook marketing ideas and strategies

In this article you will learn 24 Facebook marketing ideas and strategies you can implement right now.

1. Use hashtags

Hashtags are an easy way to make your posts searchable. If you run a small Facebook page, it's difficult to reach a broad audience. By using popular hashtags, or hashtags relevant to current events, you are increasing the likelihood someone will find your page.

2. Recycle successful content

As a restaurant on social media, there might be a lot of pressure to consistently post new and interesting content. One of the most overlooked content strategies is taking pre-existing content and either reposting it or recycling it to create a new piece of content.

Your followers aren’t always online, and odds are the vast majority of them haven’t even seen the original post. This is the perfect opportunity to repost a picture or blog post that didn’t do too well the first time or to repost a successful picture from a while ago.

3. Promote your page with Facebook Ads

When it comes to online advertising, Google isn’t your only option. Facebook has a highly intuitive and effective ad manager that can help your restaurant reach massive amounts of potential guests. You don’t need a budget in the thousands to achieve success, anything from $50 to a couple hundred is enough to reach a good-sized local audience.

4. Respond to messages ASAP

Restaurant Facebook pages are oftentimes the first place people go to when wanting to learn more about a restaurant. By quickly responding to questions and comments left on your Facebook profile, your page will display a message that says “Response quickly” to anyone who is on your page. This increases how likely guests are to leave comments.

5. Add a book now button

Restaurants that are subscribed to one of Facebook's official partners, like Eat App, can enable direct bookings from their Facebook page by connecting their booking widget through the "Book Now" button on their profile. This simple process includes adding a book now button on the Facebook page and connecting it to your reservation partner. 

Find the step-by-step process to add a book now button to your Facebook page here.

 6. Claim your URL

As soon as your page starts to gain likes, Facebook allows you to change your URL to a custom one. This is perfect to make concise and shareable links that represent your restaurant.

7. Include a like button across other platforms

If your restaurant has a website or blog outside of Facebook, adding ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons across your platforms is a great way to redirect traffic back to your Facebook restaurant page. Try using interesting call-to-actions like “Want to see more from us?” to encourage people to visit.

8. Spread the word through email

If you send a lot of emails on a daily basis, try adding your Facebook link to your email signature to grab a few more profile views from potentially interested people.

9. Schedule posts for the weekend

Social media marketing is a full-time job, and this means posting content over the weekends when the number of active users spikes. If you don’t want to be online on your days off, Facebook gives you the option of scheduling posts for future dates.

A couple of minutes every week means you have a constant flow of engaging content for your followers.

10. Use custom Facebook tabs

Facebook allows you to add custom tabs on your profile. This is a perfect way to inject your page with some custom landing pages to increase email subscribers, entries to a competition, or even try out your restaurant.

11. Post Videos 

Scroll through Facebook, and the one thing that will stand out is the number of videos that are being shared on the social network. Posting interesting videos on your Facebook page is an easy way to engage your followers. Try a number of different types of videos to see which works best. Most importantly - make sure they are shareable.

12. Use Facebook Live

One of the newest additions to a plethora of social media sites is the ability to broadcast live video. On Facebook, this is the perfect way to show off a launch, a special event, or even just a tour of your restaurant to your followers.

13. Post when the highest number of your fans are online

Facebook insights will tell you when your followers are online. Use this to your advantage and post when you know most of them are online. This will increase engagement on your posts.

14. Post high-quality photos with your content

Social media is an image-driven medium. Posting high-quality photos along with your content will only increase engagement from your followers. 

15. Update your Facebook profile photo

Your Facebook profile photo is the image that represents your entire company. While it is a great way to increase brand recognition, it can also be used as another form of Facebook marketing. Updating your profile and cover photos to reflect special offers or competitions is an easy method of getting it in front of more people.

16. Pin a post to your feed

Facebook allows you to pin posts to the top of your feed. Use this to pin recent blog posts, competitions, and special offers so it’s the first thing people see when they stumble across your Facebook page.

17. Include a CTA

Sometimes it can be difficult to increase engagement on Facebook, but with one simple change, you increase the likelihood that someone will interact with your posts. Calls-to-action is the bread and butter of social media marketing and adding statements like “Like this post!” or “Comment your favorite dish” are simple ways to entice your followers.

18. Everything in moderation

If you are a restaurant wanting to increase customers through Facebook, you might be wondering how often to post about your venue. Your followers aren’t interested in being barraged with only promotional content.

Instead, try to balance out your posts by following the 60/30/10 ratio. 60% of your content should be interesting and valuable, 30% of your content should be something your followers would want to share, and the last 10% should be promoting your restaurant.

19. Share posts from your followers

The best way to reward your loyal followers is by sharing photos they take when visiting your restaurant. This not only encourages customers to post more pictures in hopes of being shared, but it also keeps your profile updated with interesting content.

20. Complete your Facebook Profile

The most crucial aspect of running a Facebook profile for your business is ensuring that your profile is complete. One of the first things that potential customers do after discovering your restaurant is going through its Facebook profile for more information. Make sure as much information as possible is available.

This includes:

• Uploading a menu
• Adding operating hours
• Contact information
• Specifying cuisine type
• Accept bookings with a "Book Now" button 

21. Partner with influencers

We’ve said it before and we will say it again, inviting social media influencers is the quickest way to get the word out to the public of your restaurant. Social media influencers, often including bloggers, are people who have garnered thousands and thousands of online followers.

One picture or tweet across their social media accounts can result in hundreds of potential customers wanting to visit.

22. Use GIFs

Your followers are most likely scrolling through Facebook on their phones, it’s also highly likely they aren’t interested in watching videos on Facebook while on the go. This why posting GIFs is a great idea.

GIFs are short video snippets that don’t have sound and don’t take minutes to fully load or watch. The perfect way to get a small point across to your followers while providing entertaining content.

23. Tag bigger Facebook pages

If you are just starting on Facebook, it might be hard to get your posts in front of a larger audience. By tagging other big pages in your post you increase your reach. If one of these larger pages likes or shares your post, it will show to their entire following too.

24. Share content from Instagram

If Facebook isn’t your thing and you are more active on Instagram, you can set your Instagram photos to automatically share on Facebook. This creates a steady stream of content on Facebook based on your other social media platform.

Looking for more tips? 

Our friends over at Design Wizard have put together a list of 100 effective Facebook post ideas to help grow your business.