Even if the number of meals sold weekly is enough to ensure the business keeps its lights on, every restaurant owner dreams of attracting more customers and seeing their business grow. But— among the stiff competition—this can be a tough task. 

To win over guests in the gastronomy scene, you need to have some cards up your sleeve. One of those is paid digital ads such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. In 2018, U.S. marketers gained 11 U.S. dollars on average for each dollar invested in digital advertising. Next to driving direct purchases, ads also represent an efficient tool to build website traffic and make customers aware of special events, promotions, and menu changes. 

However, a successful ad campaign isn’t built in one day. Your goal is to get the best return on investment (ROI) out of your spending budget, so you need to know how to write and design profitable digital ad campaigns.

Define Your Goals and Target Audience

Ad campaigns can achieve various goals such as driving website traffic, converting leads into sales, or attracting customers to sign up for a loyalty program. Depending on your specific objective, you will have to adjust your campaign’s setup. It will influence your outreach goals, the messaging language, the call to action (CTA), and the period the ad is going to be active.

Let’s imagine you are interested in increasing your delivery volume outside of your immediate neighborhood. How can you adjust your strategy? With ads that specifically target your chosen location, you could make customers living in those neighborhoods aware of the new reach of your delivery options.

Moreover, you should review the age group and other demographic characteristics of the customers you want to target in this planning stage. This will change your messaging approach and to whom the ad will be shown when purchasing the ad service.

Develop Your Ad Messages

The visuals and the messages you send play a vital role in the overall success of an ad campaign. 

Generally speaking, ads work best if they are short, sensational, and engaging. They should always include a clear CTA. In the restaurant scene, CTAs like “Reserve a table,” “Taste our four-course menu,” and “Order with free delivery” are very popular in driving customers’ interest. The ad planning stage is an excellent time to choose or create images or graphics that beautify your ads and draw attention to your messages. Also, keep in mind: It’s not without reason that we say “You eat with your eyes”. That’s why high-quality images are a must for ads. 

The ad for a special event in a Chinese dining room can look like this: pictures of the food dishes on offer that night, linking the musician playing in the post, and mentioning the event’s price tag in the copies. 

Plan Your Ad Budget

Determine how much budget you want to allocate to your ads. Even though ads are one of the best mediums for high investment turnouts, restaurants should make sure they plan enough cash for each step of the ad process: writing, images, and scheduling.

Estimating the ROI and relating the costs of ads with how much you can gain if people increase their order value or attend your event helps you write green figures. However, consider that direct purchases should not be the only marketing goal. Some people might see the ad, follow your Facebook page for now, and visit your restaurant in the future.

Let’s look at some examples to get a broad idea of the cost of running paid digital ads: Facebook advertising costs, on average, $0.97 per click and $7.19 per 1000 impressions. Ad campaigns focused on earning likes or app downloads can expect to pay $1.07 per like and $5.47 per download.

Measure Your Ad Campaign Results

Only when you measure your results you can determine the success of your ad campaign. There are many key performance metrics to select, with the most important being cost per click, click-through rate, and revenue for clicks. Each of these metrics sheds light on a different aspect of advertising, and together, they paint a complete picture of the well-designed ads and the campaign parts that need a little redoing.

Instead of running each ad campaign on your own, you can choose ad solutions integrated with your eCommerce platform. Providers like Local Express not only help you develop complete ad campaigns, but you can also access the key performance metrics directly through the platform. 

Are you ready to drive new revenue with an integrated marketing solution? Get in contact with Local Express and learn about the benefits of an end-to-end food platform.