If you’re a restaurant owner, you have a good idea of how certain seasons and holidays bring more traffic into your restaurant than usual. You also know that during this time, your competitors will be marketing their food aggressively. And since it’s likely that you have similar target audiences, you have to do everything you can to make sure that people come to your restaurant to eat, and not theirs.
If you’ve just launched a special seasonal menu, promoting it well before the season begins will build up intrigue and anticipation, and give people the time to gather their friends and make plans to visit you.
A lot goes into promoting your seasonal menu, from designing the perfect menu card to using online tools to get the word out there. In this blog post, we’ve compiled some must-try strategies to promote your seasonal menu online.
Let’s take a look!
1. Create a digital menu and post it on your website
A digital menu allows your customers to see what their food options are beforehand. This way, they know exactly what they would like to get and what’s on the menu, and will not leave your restaurant disappointed.
The good thing about a digital menu is that it can also be tweaked and updated as you add new items to your menu or make changes based on the ingredients that are available.
If you have no idea how to create an aesthetically pleasing digital menu, use PosterMyWall’s menu maker. The site has plenty of menu templates that you can customize according to your needs in minutes. Since your menu is seasonal, make sure to add relevant graphics to depict the right tone. For example, if you’re putting out a summer drinks menu, use a flowy font for your text and images of the sun, the beach, and so on.
Once your digital menu is ready, put it up on your website as a separate landing page. Add the link to the menu in all your promotions so that people come to your website and see the options you have for them.
2. Announce your seasonal menu on social media
Social media is where you’ll find your target audience. Since it’s important to be loud and visual to gain traction on social media, create appropriate promotional content that complements your new menu.
A good way to gain attention on social media is through digital posters. When you start your promotions, put out a themed digital poster telling everyone that you’re excited to unveil your new seasonal menu. This way you’ll be able to build some hype and get people excited.
When your menu is launched, put out more digital posters advertising it. Add the link to the menu, tell people about the season, and add relevant images and animations.
You can create a fun and engaging digital poster in minutes using PosterMyWall’s online poster maker. We would recommend that you design a bunch of seasonal marketing posters, schedule them, and then post them sporadically throughout your campaign.
3. Post yummy images of food from your seasonal menu
There’s nothing like a delicious picture of a food item to convince people to come to your restaurant. Once your menu is up, post a picture of one of your food or drink items from the menu every day.
Instagram is the best place to post photos so keep that as your primary platform. In the caption, name the dish, describe it, and mention how much it costs. Also, mention any allergy inducing ingredients that may have been added. To make things more fun, talk about how the food relates to the particular season or holiday and why that makes it special.
Here are some tips for taking the perfect food picture:
- Take the photo from the top (bird’s eye view)
- Make sure your main object is placed either in the center or follow the rule of thirds
- Make the background pretty (without becoming a distraction)
- Add some props – for example, if you’re taking a picture of a strawberry cake, add some strawberries or whipped cream on the side
4. Start your promotions well before the season starts
Just because the season hasn’t started yet, doesn’t mean that you can’t start talking about it. You need to give people time to familiarize themselves with your new menu so that they can get excited about it as well.
We would recommend that you start promoting your menu at least three weeks before the season starts. You can use digital posters and social media posts to hype people up. Ask them if they’re ready for some exciting new seasonal additions to the menu. You can even get their opinion on what food they’d like to see on the menu.
For instance, let’s go back to the summer drinks menu. Ask people what drink reminds them of summer. You can even make a promotional video teasing a new drink – show the process, the details, and end it with a “coming soon” or something similar.
Final thoughts
To promote your seasonal menu, you have to think out of the box. The strategies in this blog post will help you do just that so that you can get a head start on your seasonal campaign and blow the competition out of the water.
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