User generated content marketing (UGC marketing) results in 29% higher web conversions and helps promote your brand. Follow your favorite eatery's Instagram or TikTok account, and you'll likely see:
- Photos of top menu items
- Comments from happy customers
- Videos of recent events
All of these examples entice people to come to your restaurant. But if you go to your friend's profile and they're posting a video of their birthday party at the restaurant and someone else made a post on your local Facebook page about their experience, this is a powerful form of UGC marketing.
UGC should be part of your restaurant marketing tools to drive diners to your restaurant or encourage them to place orders online.
Defining User-Generated Content
Still a bit fuzzy on what UGC really means? In the most basic form, user generated content is a form of word-of-mouth but in the digital age. Instead of telling neighbors and friends only about a new favorite restaurant across town, a person will:
- Share photos or videos of your restaurant on their social media channels.
- Review your eatery to increase trust and confidence.
- Write a blog post about your restaurant.
Users are regular customers, not employees or owners, but they're not limited to posting on their own accounts. Restaurants will often repost the UGC or may even ask people to leave video reviews, which they share with their followers or subscribers.
UGC can be images, videos, text, reviews, testimonials or any other form of content that the person creates on digital platforms.
Restaurant patrons are bombarded with advertisements that are hyper-localized to their tastes.
Potential customers trust the word of other people more than they do an ad placement because these are real people who have had an experience at your restaurant. Brands create a lot of content, but when people organically produce this content, it's extremely powerful.
Your marketing team also benefits from someone else creating and sharing content.
Benefits of UGC for Restaurants
Restaurant marketing is far more complex today than it was even twenty years ago. Patrons have options and are willing to read reviews and view your socials before frequenting your eatery.
And many diners will order delivery or pickup and never actually sit down and eat at your business.
Some of the main reasons that 93% of marketers leverage the power of UGC in their marketing are:
- Authenticity building: Your ads and promotions may be phenomenal, but customers know that you're biased and think your food is amazing. If someone else shares your mouthwatering entrees with their hundreds or thousands of friends on social media, it is genuine. Real UGC marketing builds authenticity, proving that your food tastes as good as advertised and hits on consumer interests deeper than an ad you run on Facebook or Instagram.
- Boost reach and engagement: Restaurants should be using social media to promote their food and latest offers. You have a lot of marketing channels to run, and focusing on reach and engagement is paramount for hitting your KPIs. UGC naturally helps increase your eatery's reach. People tend to comment and share this type of content more often, allowing a single post to reach nearly an entire town if it goes viral.
- UGC is free: Someone else made the decision to promote and market your restaurant for free. Your team may share the post and comment on it, but the majority of the work has been done for you without lifting a finger or spending a dime on it.
But one benefit of user generated content that is easy to overlook is that it builds a community for your restaurant. If you reply to these posts and share them, you're deepening your connection with the people who frequent your restaurant.
UGC will also increase revenue and foot traffic if it works properly.
If someone sees a post about your new menu item and you make it easy for them to order or book a reservation, you have a new opportunity for a long-term customer.
Getting Customers to Create UGC and Become Part of Your Restaurant Marketing Plan
If you're not integral in the creation of UGC, how do you suggest people start creating it? A lot of time and effort goes into the creation of this content, but you're not the one making it. The trick to enticing people to post about you is simple:
- Focus on presentation in your restaurant and of your food. If you make your food or the atmosphere picture-worthy, people will naturally want to snap photos and share them. You can even add a unique focal point to the room or tables that pique people's interest and help you share better content.
- If delivery or takeout is a major part of your business, focus on your packaging. Add your logo, fancy colors, cute quotes or something else that makes people think, "How awesome! Let me share this with the world."
- Create your own hashtag or catchphrase that sticks in people's minds.
- Engage with any UGC that you find and even use a mention service to find what people are saying about you online so that you can reply quickly.
Reviews are another great form of UGC that you can encourage even more. On your menu or packaging, put a QR code that people can scan and follow to leave reviews.
How Do You Know If User Generated Content is Working?
Tracking how UGC efforts are working requires you to set up key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can then track through:
- Monitoring branded hashtags that you create and tracking their growth.
- Measuring things like comments, likes and shares on social media.
- Using Google Analytics to see if more traffic is coming from social media or reviews.
- Asking customers how they learned about your restaurant.
- Monitoring your reviews and ratings online.
Monitoring all of these areas of UGC will empower you to make strategic efforts to grow your marketing. You can then see how your new packaging or presentation is paying off or if you need to entice people to share content further by setting up a photo booth or holding a contest for a free dinner for the person who gets the most likes for the post they made about your restaurant.
Start with the future of restaurant marketing by switching your focus to UGC.