When it comes to online marketing and content creation the food industry has an enormous advantage over everyone else. I know that you have heard the saying ‘to eat with your eyes’. Here are eight ideas inspired by the food industry that you can use to help increase online reach and engagement for your business.
1. Give people something pretty to photograph and share
How often have you visited a restaurant or café because you saw a photo of someone else’s meal? Whenever we are served up good looking food these days it’s not unusual to photograph it and share on social media, tagging the restaurant that we are eating at to let them know ‘hey, we loved the experience’.
How can you provide clients with a similar opportunity to photograph and share? A quote written on a cute chalkboard or displayed as part of a vignette on a lightbox is a perfect starting point. How about some cool artwork on the wall or mural on your building.
Don’t have an office for customers to visit? How about sending them something pretty in the post like shareworthy greeting card. Or just do it digitally by creating visual content for your social media posts that people will want to share.
At the end of the day whatever it is that you give your customers and clients to share it is going to improve online reach and engagement for your business.
2. Offer a loyalty program
I don’t know about you but I love getting that free cup of coffee from my local café and loaf of bread from the bakery. These little touches really help to maintain customer loyalty and keep people coming back time and again, because who isn’t motivated by free? Supermarkets use reward points and % off savings.
In most local businesses it’s not always practical to offer a 10th one free kind of deal…I mean that’s a lot of tax returns at the accountant or teeth cleans at the dentist but there are practical ways that any business can get creative and introduce a loyalty system that keeps clients and customers more engaged with you and coming back time and again.
3. Promote user generated content
Re-sharing user generated or crowd sourced content is ideal for increasing client engagement and online reach. People love to be acknowledged and love having that moment in the spotlight. There are plenty of reshare apps for Instagram but what do you do if there isn’t much crowd sourced visual content being generated for your business?
Instead think in terms of client profiles and testimonials. Most of us love to talk about ourselves and promote businesses and services that we have had a positive experience with. Make it easy for your customers to recommend you via word of mouth by facilitating it for them.
4. Let people get to know your staff
Think about all those celebrity chefs, because we feel like we have gotten to know them through television, websites and their cookbooks it’s not uncommon that we will be more likely to seek out their restaurants.
You can achieve the same ‘celebrity’ for your offline business and staff by letting people get to know them via a really strong online presence. Having potential clients and customers feel like they already know you before they even set foot through the door makes an enormous difference in terms of them choosing to use your services in the first place. Letting your audience get to know you online serves to build your credibility in a way that no amount of paid advertising can achieve.
5. Have an online ‘menu’
How often do you look up a takeaway menu online these days? For me, if a restaurant doesn’t have one then they won’t be getting my business. Likewise I tend to place more trust in one that I find on the business website in favour of one that ‘may or may not be correct’ on a third party site.
I know that this suggestion might seem a bit out there to some but including some form of ‘online menu’ about your business services is a great way to build trust with your audience. Just like the description of a dish on a menu include some detail around what each of your products/packages includes and you may even like to go so far as to offer a price guideline for each.
With so much choice and competition for services giving a potential client as much information as possible on which to base their decision is usually going to work in your favour. A price guideline is also going to help to attract only the clients you want to be working with.
6. Take appointment bookings online
How easy is it to reserve a table at a restaurant online. If the first one you try is booked out then it’s so much easier to move on to your next choice without having to do the ring around. These days more businesses that provide services are starting to catch on to the benefits of online booking tools.
It’s a double whammy in terms of time saving, you are making it really easy for your client to book a time that suits them and it saves you time in having to schedule the appointment in the first place. Added advantages are that bookings can be made out of 9-5 business hours and you can easily email through any information forms that might need to be filled out prior to the appointment.
For service businesses that often end up out of pocket due to late notice cancellation you can ask that clients pay upfront or make a deposit at time of booking by linking the online booking service to a payment processor.
7. Partner with the locals
We all love the feel good message of food that has been lovingly prepared using locally sourced produce. Drawing on this within your business is a great way to help increase your reach and engagement within the local community by partnering with other complimentary local businesses.
Think Personal Trainer + Physiotherapist, Dentist + Orthodontist, Real Estate Agent + Mortgage Broker, Butcher + Fruit & Vegetable shop…the combinations are endless.
Consider reaching out to other local businesses to form strategic and like-minded online partnerships where you share each other’s content (in context) and even develop pieces of content for one another.
Bear in mind the power of the collective too…forming a single online platform for a group of local businesses that are trying to reach the same audience can be of huge benefit to all the businesses involved.
8. Share recipes
It’s a well-known fact that people love recipes and they are great fodder for increasing your online reach through sharing. The trick here is that you don’t need to take the word ‘recipe’ literally. Think tips, tricks and ‘insider knowledge’ that are relevant to your niche. They can quickly and easily be made into visual content and can go a long way to expanding your reach.
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