Serving Up Fresh Content in the Restaurant Industry

Serving Up Fresh Content in the Restaurant Industry

Here’s a great question that recently made my radar detector go off.

“I am curious about what ideas you can present in order to help us increase our restaurant business?”

So glad they asked! Here’s what I told them.

There are a lot of options that can help increase exposure/drive customer awareness in any business. In that regard, restaurants are no different. But unlike many businesses that have online access, for a restaurant campaign to work, the customer must be motivated to jump in their jalopy (or a shiny, Blue Truck®) and physically seek out the place of business.

Driving the Customer to Your Business

What drives the customer to take that action? A gangbuster campaign that includes a hefty serving of video content is a prime motivator! If the product is good (they LOVED the menu!), you’ll have repeat customers who’ll also help drive new customers through your front doors.

So let’s talk about what makes great video content that boosts your search engine optimization (SEO) to the top of the page, builds brand awareness and drives consumer interest and engagement.

Using Video to Boost Your SEO

Producing, curating (obtaining/licensing from outside sources), sharing and uploading video content is an excellent way to boost SEO. (More on how to curate video in a later blog.) As the saying goes, “Content is king.”

Statistics indicate that a video message is more likely to be viewed, shared and remembered by the viewer—and also increase your brand’s value and trust factor. Plus, video is a highly effective form of communication that provides a great reason to reach out to existing and new customers via social media (“Check out our video/commercial, etc.”). We call it the “soft serve” approach. You can even see how well you’re communicating using venues such as YouTube and Facebook, which have built in tracking and reporting mechanisms that allow you to see the results of your campaign.

Besides social media and website distribution, you may want to consider a commercial for cable broadcast or online paid advertising placement. There are many unique opportunities in today’s media-rich environment. One of our clients even places their commercials in movie theaters. While waiting for the movie to begin, moviegoers can munch on popcorn and get a heaping helping of your message at the same time. If you are investing marketing dollars in broadcast-quality video production, you can get the most bang for your buck by exploiting all distribution avenues. (To learn more, read my blogs about getting the most bang for your production buck, part 1 and part 2.)

Video content for your restaurant (or any business) may be anything from a commercial spot to behind-the-scenes vignettes (i.e. meet the staff/chef; learn or share a cocktail/food recipe; customer testimonials etc.). You can use video marketing to promote events or specials, which could be designed around your slower times, days or seasons. Who can resist the chef’s preparation and presentation of a mouth-watering menu item that tastes as good as it looks? Not me!

There’s another natural benefit of featuring your staff, products and customers in video—it goes a long way toward personalizing your brand. Putting faces and personalities to the name puts the “social” in social media.

Get the Customers Involved!

Besides the end product – the master video in hand – the process of creating a short film for your company can become a newsworthy topic to your audience. It gives you something exciting to tweet about, and opportunities to engage your audience. At Blue Truck Productions we help clients build a whole social media campaign around the pre- and post- production process.

For instance, in pre-production, we may hold a casting call for a customer to “star” in your commercial. Let’s make it a contest and get customers psyched and engaged. Ask them to submit a “video audition” and voila we’ve just curated more shareable content with a trail leading back to your company. A recipe for SEO success.

During production building up to the video’s release, we can share behind-the-scenes photographs, clips and production updates. And in post-production, we may cut two versions of the commercial and ask people to vote on their favorite. Get the picture? The ideas are endless–a veritable buffet of options!

I often consult with clients to build video production campaigns that may include a variety of professionally produced videos coupled with in-house content (which I help design/train staff to produce) and curated content. It’s just one of many services Blue Truck Productions offers its clients.

Let me know if I can help you in this way.

In the meantime, check out my Blog for information about using video in business, SEO, budgeting and more. There’s lot of good stuff in the blog archives with lots of new content heading your way. To receive updates, click in the sidebar to subscribe.

Kind regards,

Kristin

About the Author:

Kristin A. Kauffmann is an award-winning writer and executive producer with more than 20-years of experience in script-to-air television production and is the president of Blue Truck Media, Inc. Blue Truck specializes in the writing and creative development of original screenplays, television programming and books, and offers customized marketing and video production services to corporations, worldwide.