In this 6-minute read:
- Create Facebook business page
- Create a menu and add photos
- Get reviews and recommendations
- Post regular content
- Build and engage with your following
- Boost posts and create ads
Facebook is the world’s third most visited website, and Americans spend an average of 58 minutes using the platform each day. That’s a lot of opportunity for your restaurant to make an impression and spread your brand’s awareness.
Attract more customers and keep them loyal with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
In this article, we’re going to give you some simple pointers to help you promote your restaurant on Facebook. Let’s dive in!
Create a Facebook business page
First, you need to create a Facebook business page for your restaurant. All you need to do is log into your personal Facebook account and click create to get started. Here’s a quick link to get you going.
Setting up a Facebook page is similar to setting up other listings, like Google and Yelp. Make sure you have the following information ready before setting up your page:
- Restaurant name
- Restaurant description
- Address
- Phone number
- Website
- Profile picture (logo or picture of the owners works great here)
- Cover photo or video (photos of the restaurant or menu items are perfect for this)
- Menu and pricing
Once you have your page set up, you can get started on really promoting and advertising your restaurant on Facebook. Read on!
Create a menu and add photos
Facebook allows you to add your menu to your restaurant’s page. Most people want to know what food you serve before they commit to spending their evening at your restaurant, so give them what they want.
All you need to add your menu to your page is a PDF version of the menu. For instructions to add your menu, go here.
Along with your menu, be sure to add tons of photos of your beautiful food! People are visual and will be much more compelled to visit your restaurant if your food is aesthetically pleasing.
Get reviews on Facebook
When your page is set up, you can start getting recommendations (Facebook’s version of reviews) for your restaurant. Sometimes, people are just so thrilled with their experience that they go straight to your Facebook page and leave a review. But in most cases, happy customers will need a little encouragement.
Here are a few ideas to get Facebook reviews for your restaurant:
- Ask your customers to leave feedback. Depending on the setting and tone you have for your restaurant, you could have the servers or cashiers invite customers to leave a review on Facebook as they are finishing up
- Place official Facebook signage along the checkout line or on the way out the door to remind customers that you are on Facebook
- If you send email receipts, include a link to your Facebook page in the receipt with some verbiage like, “Did you enjoy your meal? Recommend us on Facebook!”
- If you use print receipts, include a QR code with the URL to your Facebook page and similar phrasing as mentioned above
Post regular content
Once your Facebook page is up and running, it’s important to make sure you keep it active. A good goal to shoot for is 3 posts per week. You want to keep your followers informed and let them know that you are present in their lives.
Be sure to post engaging and visually appealing content. The posts that get the most interactions are beautiful and interesting images or video tutorials.
Here are some ideas for what you can post on your restaurant’s Facebook page:
- New menu items
- Happy hour deals (right before happy hour)
- Other sweet deals or offers
- Employee spotlights
- Cooking tutorials
- New renovations
Quick Tip: Be careful not to post too often. Followers tend to get annoyed if they see more than one post from you each day.
Build up your following and engage with them
Your Facebook page isn’t going to gain a lot of traction and help your restaurant grow without followers. Your devout followers are those that will share your posts and share personal referrals to your restaurant with their friends and family members. How can you increase the number of followers you have?
- Post regular content (yes, we’ve mentioned this already, because it’s that important)
- Invite all of your friends to “Like” your restaurant’s page. Your personal network is going to be the most likely to support you and help you out initially
- Add “Like us on Facebook” signs to your windows and other print marketing materials
- Add “Like us on Facebook” to receipts and menus
- Invite people who have reacted to your ads and shared posts. Follow these instructions
- Post about trending topics and news that are relevant to your industry
- Boost your posts and deals with Facebook’s advertising platform. (More on this below)
Boost posts locally
Facebook advertising allows you to “boost” most Facebook posts your create to targeted audiences. The best types of posts to boost are new deals, new menu items, and fun events like happy hour or karaoke night.
To boost a post, you first need to create a Facebook post and publish it. Then, when you go to your new post, there will be a blue button that says “Boost Post.” When you click that, you’ll have a few things to decide:
- Targeted audience (age, gender, location, interests, etc.)
- Total budget for the ad (the larger your budget, the larger your reach)
- Duration (how long do you want the ad to run?)
- Payment method
You can find Facebook’s instructions for boosting a post here.
When people start engaging and reacting to your boosted post, invite them to like your page and respond to them! This is a social network for a reason, so take advantage of that.
Create ads with Facebook Business Manager
If you want to get a little more advanced with your Facebook ads, then you’ll want to get into Ads Manager.
Ads Manager allows you to set objectives like brand awareness, broadening your reach, getting more traffic or engagement, lead generation, customer conversions, and store visits. Once you have your objective, you’re able to set a target audience, budget, and duration, similar to how you would for a boosted post.
Another sweet feature of Facebook ads with Ads Manager is that you can select different placements for your ads:
- Facebook News Feed
- Instagram Feed
- Facebook Marketplace
- Video Feeds
- Right Column
- Instagram Stories
- Facebook Stories
- Messenger
Short videos (60 seconds or less) and high-quality images (with little or no words) generally perform the best as ads.
You can find some easy-to-follow instructions here for setting up Ads Manager.
Get started now
Now take what you know about Facebook and get started in promoting your restaurant. Other than creating ads or boosting posts, there’s a lot you can do to promote your page for free, and even the ads are relatively inexpensive.
Some business owners get stuck when it comes to managing and responding to reviews on platforms like Facebook, but that doesn’t have to hold you back from getting the most that you can out of this social network. Reputation management solutions are available to help you monitor and respond to all of your Facebook reviews (and more). Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!