4 Benefits of Content Marketing for Restaurants—Especially When Times Are Tough

By Cordy Bartlett

Nobody needs to be reminded that times are tough for restaurants and other food and beverage businesses right now. When business slows down, it’s easy to think that your budget tightening efforts should include putting your content marketing strategy on hold. But for restaurants looking to weather the storm, content marketing could be critical to their survival.

While marketing is one of the first things businesses consider cutting back, that idea should be approached with caution. Content marketing, in particular, can be the most effective way to keep your restaurant’s brand alive in the minds of your customers. In today’s ever-changing environment, it may also be the most effective way to grab hold of new opportunities to expand your market share.

In order to put yourself in the best position to stay in business during this challenging period, you need to keep your brand active, responsive, and engaged. Here's how effective content marketing for restaurants can help you do just that.

4 benefits of content marketing for restaurants

1. Content marketing is more affordable than other forms of marketing

When your business is struggling, costs need to be cut. If you're slimming down your marketing budget, focus it on where it can deliver. For restaurants, this strategy means pulling back on costlier forms of marketing, such as advertising, and focusing on inbound. Here’s why:

• People spend a lot of time online, especially on social media. On average, people spend 145 minutes a day on social media sites, and a majority of Facebook (70%) and Instagram (59%) users say these visit these platforms every day. This means a lot of views for your content.
• Content marketing is relatively cheap. Distributing content via your own blog and your social channels can be extremely affordable—all it takes is time, creativity, and decent writing skills. Leveraging this content through affordable advertising avenues, such as remarketing, can get more value from your content without breaking the bank. And if you do have some advertising budget left over, paid advertising on social media is pretty affordable when compared to other traditional advertising methods, and can be effective when your core content is strong.

2. It helps your business connect authentically with customers

Right now is an opportunity for those businesses with integrity—that care for their customers and want to build meaningful, loyal relationships with them—to shine.

People aren’t looking for a hard sell, and companies that aren’t showing compassion are facing the music, so now’s the perfect time to showcase what your restaurant and brand truly stands for. Consumers are especially responsive to brands that show empathy, acknowledging that they’re fighting this crisis alongside everyone else.

Take the time to research the challenges your customers are facing and align your services to meet these needs. Cement yourself as part of your community, helping out those in need, creating charity options to help customers support their community, and actively participating in creating positive, authentic goodwill.

Engaging with them and communicating the ongoing process through your email newsletters, your blog and your social channels can keep people tuned in to your brand and ensure they feel listened to.

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• Business Lessons From a Bar That Shut Down Because of the Pandemic—Here’s How It Bounced Back
• 7 Tips for Starting a Fast Food Business
• The Secret to Business Survival in Today’s Tough Market
• 5 Low-Cost Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience
• Should You Buy or Lease Your Restaurant Location?

3. It can help promote your new services

Surviving in a down economy is no easy feat—it takes resilience and a willingness to be agile. This may mean finding new ways to provide your service to your consumers or even reinventing your service entirely.

The business environment has changed, the consumer environment has changed, so there’s no use trying to shoehorn your old marketing strategy and goals for 2020 into the current situation. Being agile means adapting your business, streamlining your offering, and introducing features that help customers overcome the challenges they’re facing.

For instance, you could get creative and offer online cooking lessons to teach people how to recreate the dishes they love at home, teach them about some of the ingredients you source and how they are used, start delivery or collection services, offer lunches for kids at home from school and office employees working remotely—the opportunities are endless.

Whatever approach you decide to take, your content strategy gives you the opportunity to explain your reasons and thought process, what you’re trying to achieve, and ask your audience directly for their feedback and ideas.

It’s the best opportunity you have to get them to feel vested in your ongoing initiatives, and that emotional connection can matter even more than customer satisfaction.

4. It's a great way for restaurants to communicate, entertain, uplift

Content marketing is endlessly versatile, providing an opportunity to send out frequent and creative communications. The focus isn’t on spamming your customers or flooding their timelines or inboxes, it’s about being a supportive force in their daily life.

Using the versatility of social media, you can share updates about your restaurant and community (including safety precautions in place for customers, customer experiences, new menus you are testing out, news about local suppliers who rely on your business, and more), create videos about what’s happening behind the scenes—whatever aligns with your brand and gets your customers excited about your offering.

The value of content marketing for restaurants

Failure to leverage content marketing shuts you off from the most important element of your restaurant’s survival and recovery: your customers. But content marketing for restaurants can be an effective way to connect and grow your business. By following the right content strategy and staying true to your brand’s values and the needs of your target market, you can keep that essential line of communication—and hopefully your doors—open.

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