How to Use Video to Market Your Restaurant

If you’re in the restaurant business, then you know that good food is about more than taste and smell. There’s a huge visual element as well – appearance and presentation. That – and the fact that most people now are highly visual and image oriented – is why video is such a great medium for marketing your restaurant.

The reality now is that restaurants simply cannot ignore video marketing.

According to Think With Google Statistics, 96% of travelers go online to plan their trips, and 63% of them “depend on travel videos to decide their next destination.” And these statistics include searches for restaurants as well as for destinations and travel agencies.

Here, then, are four suggestions to help you make the most of video marketing for your restaurant.

Make it Top Quality and Entertaining (And Mobile Friendly)

Having grown up on creatively, professionally executed movies and TV programs and even some top-notch YouTube videos, consumers today have pretty high expectations for both production quality and content value. In addition, a high percentage of online searchers and video viewers use a mobile device almost exclusively. And almost every one of them wants to be entertained rather than merely informed.

This is where it’s possible for restaurants to go wrong in their video marketing efforts – they can run the risk of their videos seeming like sales pitches. That turns viewers, who want to be entertained above all, off. Your video goal is to get potential customers excited about your brand (not necessarily your food) through indirect means.

Tell a Story

So, following on what we suggested just above, your marketing video shouldn’t concentrate on the transaction. It should, rather, be all about the story.

Every good copywriter will tell you that good ad copy – whether a short magazine ad, a long sales page, or a marketing video – always tells a story. A story helps viewers better understand what you offer and what it can do for them because it resonates at a much deeper emotional level than mere conveyance of information. Basically, good story telling strengthens your brand.

Engage Your Audience

Audience engagement is vitally important if you want to keep them viewing till the end and then get them to take action. Your goal is to transform them from passive into active viewers.

One good tactic to accomplish this is that of tantalizing. For example, don’t show the fully prepared food all served up in its gorgeous setting. Instead, show the ribs in their final stage of cooking on the smoker, just about ready to be taken up and served. Your viewer will then be forced to actively imagine the ribs in front of them and how they will taste.

Another possibility is to allow your viewers to go behind the scenes, giving them access to, say, your kitchen so they can see the work that really takes place. Or you might teach them a few of your secret techniques. But whatever you choose to do, the object is to get them engaged.

Keep Feeding It

It’s becoming a tired mantra by now, but it’s still just as true: content marketing works. And video marketing is a form of content marketing as well. So the best strategy is a longer term one that includes making and posting videos on a regular basis.

Video marketing can be a huge boon to your business, but it has to be done right, with results tracked and effectiveness measured. At Marketing Vitals, we help restaurants improve sales and increase profits with our data-mining software and our restaurant expertise. Discover more about why 90+ restaurant brands around the world trust us.