How do you market food online
In the days before the rise of social media and cellphones, independent food businesses relied heavily on foot traffic, reviews in print media, and word-of-mouth buzz to promote their establishments. Customers, on the other hand, increasingly access information, choose how to spend their time, and make purchases through the use of the internet because we live in a digital age.
This creates significant opportunity for smaller food retailers in the immediate area. A low-quality vendor with a great budget may still get lots of business simply because he or she can pay the rent at that site immediately across from the bus stop. On the other hand, a smaller, more ambitious, artisanal bakery operating out of a home kitchen can now find success as well. Everyone has the potential to get a slice of the pie if they employ the appropriate strategy for marketing and branding via new media. (We apologize for include that pun; we just couldn't help ourselves.)
Here are five strategies that you should think about implementing in order to make your food business more discoverable online and increase the number of people who buy your delicacies.
How do you market food online
1. Highlight Your Achievements on Social Media.
The data that was compiled and presented by the National Restaurant Association not too long ago spoke for itself. Ninety percent of restaurant owners believe that the success of their business will increasingly depend on how well they market themselves on social media. 95% are either already active on Facebook or plan to become active there within the next several weeks. There is a strong rationale for this, as well, considering that 28% of customers choose where to eat based on the recommendations of social sites.
Pinterest users are more likely to communicate with one another because they have similar interests, in contrast to the majority of user activity on other social media platforms, which is centered on offline social interactions. When seen from this perspective, Pinterest presents a more favorable environment for the discovery of new audiences for small businesses than do other networks. And the nicheinterest category that sees the greatest activity in terms of browsing and pinning is food.
How do you market food online
Visit the "Food and Drinks" board on Pinterest that Wix has created.
2. Distribute Content That Is Continually Changing
Establishing oneself as an authority by imparting one's knowledge is the goal of content marketing. If you create more material that is valuable to readers and is related to your culinary sub-niche, Google will rank you higher for the relevant keywords. And if your original, dynamic material really does bring value to your intended audience by addressing the interests that they have, then readers will share it with their contemporaries and will continue to come back for more.
Get started straight immediately with your blog so that your pages can begin getting indexed as soon as possible, which can take some time. You may begin by sharing some of your most treasured hints and shortcuts for the kitchen; topics of this nature are almost invariably entertaining.
3. Get involved in specialized food photography communities
Pinterest is just the beginning when it comes to the visibility that can be gained by small food brands through the use of photo sharing sites. There are opportunities waiting for you in hyper-specific communities that you may or may not be familiar with, such as Instagram, Purpple, al, and food-related groups on Flickr. Check out this fantastic list right here.
It's possible that some of these sites have a somewhat limited audience, but the users who frequent them have already shown that they're interested in the things you have to offer.
4. Make Online Ordering Available
How do you market food online
It's possible that you're already using your website as an eCommerce property, but it will depend on the types of foods that you sell. This is absolutely necessary if your edibles are packaged in a way that allows for easy shipping.
However, even if your product must be consumed within a few minutes of its creation, there is still a significant possibility that online ordering will increase your sales. According to a number of studies, both restaurant owners and customers have a significant interest in the availability of digital self-service ordering and electronic payment options.
How do you market food online
Do you still lack faith in the existence of the demand? A mobile app for smartphones which helps people who are hungry discover locations nearby where they can be served quickly, brags about having helped 18.2 million people find the meals they were looking for without making them wait. It is very evident that the days of using your website solely as a business card have long since passed.
There are a lot of things that you are able to perform, regardless of whether you own a ritzy restaurant, a quick-order counter service facility, or a meal delivery brand. The Wix App Market features a number of applications that have been developed specifically for these kinds of tasks. These applications include tools for making table reservations, placing orders, transferring cash, and more.
The Brigaderia's management use a Wix website as an online storefront for the sale of these adorable cupcakes.
5. Optimization of the Local Search Engines
Over two billion searches with a local focus are submitted to Google every single month, and this number only accounts for desktop computers in the United States. Keywords connected to a user's location are used in more than half of all mobile searches. When one considers the fact that the internet is an ideal resource for individuals who lead busy lives and are looking for things to do with only a short amount of notice, these stats make a lot of sense.
How do you market food online
Ensure that these individuals are able to locate you by providing content that discusses your location (including your city, region, and zip code), businesses that are similar to yours that are located nearby, and events that are pertinent to your area.
Verify sure your business is featured in the maximum number of regional directories that are available. You should use Hubspot's helpful list of 50 locally indexed company directories to appear in, but you can get a head start by using Moz's Getlisted.org, which is a search engine for local listing sites, to determine where you stand right now. In the meantime, the Wix-integrated Site Booster app will take care of several major listing submissions on your behalf at a cost of less than $6 per month.
Pay-per-click ad networks from Google and Facebook might offer you a boost with geo-targeted campaign settings if the organic local search results in your area are too competitive.
Using the Yelp app offered by Wix, Half Baked Goods incorporates local reviews from Yelp.
Go Mobile!
When people are at home and start to feel hungry, they can start thinking about where they can get food, or they might start rummaging through their own refrigerators. However, when people are out and about, particularly in a location that is foreign to them, they will consult their smartphones for directions or other information. Make sure that your website displays properly on mobile devices so that potential customers do not get a negative opinion of your business. Wix's new HTML5 mobile website solution makes it incredibly easy and completely free to publish a version of your website that is optimized for use on mobile devices.
How do you market food online