TikTok Marketing For Restaurants

One of my clients asked me whether the time was right for them to do some social media on TikTok.

First of all, I want to remind you of the three Ms of marketing which I have discussed previously.

The three Ms of Marketing are Market, Message, and Media.

1.    Market

First, you need to determine who and where your target market is. If you're considering using social media and your target market is 45 or older, it's likely that they won't be using TikTok. They won’t be dancing and watching videos all the time. However, they might use Facebook to communicate with their families and Instagram to view and share photos.

But if your market is, say, 35 and younger, then TikTok might be the way to go because that's where your market is, and that is a preferred social media platform for a great number of this age group.

TikTok has been dowloaded close to 2 billion times as of now. That's a large number of people. However, do the people that you are trying to attract have that app on their phones? Is it something that they consume? You need to figure that out.

2.    Message

Next, how do your customers or diners want to receive their messages? How do they want to communicate with you? Is it that they want to receive emails with offers? Is it that they want to receive cards in the mail for their birthdays and anniversaries? Is it that they want to see you on Facebook and receive things through Facebook and Messenger? Or is it that they know somebody who likes to scroll through Instagram and see different foods, and that's how they come to it?

You've got to understand not only who the market is, but how the market want to be communicated with? To give you an example, one of the things that nearly everybody has within their arsenal is mobile numbers. When people book online or order takeout, they'll often give a mobile number. So, you have a way of communicating with your market, which is SMS.

However, do people enjoy receiving SMS messages from restaurants saying, "Hey, we've got this offer today"? The answer is NO. People don't like receiving a message that way. SMS is used for their family, friends, and sometimes their work to communicate with them, it is not used for receiving marketing messages.

Even though your market has provided you with a mobile number, it's a big NO for sending out marketing through SMS…  Unless you have built up a rapport with them. They would likely be more receptive if you sent them a confirmation message as soon as they contacted you and submitted their mobile number.  This could be followed by a thank you, and then perhaps within the following week, a free gift. This is very different to you scrolling through all of your mobile numbers and blasting out a marketing

message (which is likely to get you into trouble for sending out SPAM sms messages too!)

3.    Media

The media is where we look at the different channels where you can show your message to the target market. This could be posters, emails, adverts, or social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and so on. But in this case, we'll talk about TikTok.

Before using TikTok for your restaurant, you need to ask questions like:

●     How do I use TikTok?

●     Will it be useful to me in any way?

●     Will I be able to continue posting frequently?

Since TikTok relies heavily on your posting regularly, you will need to be active on the platform and post videos at least three times per day. You need to post a lot of videos there so that you get into the algorithm. When people start seeing it, they start sharing or liking what you do.

Now, given the fact that it goes all over the world, you cannot target your local area to receive your videos. You can't say, "I only want it in this suburb." Right now, your videos are going to go everywhere, and they might be seen by a hundred thousand people or people from all over the world. Yet, the people that you actually want to communicate with are only within three KM of your restaurant.

Another thing that TikTok does is allow influencers to post about your place. If you know a TikTok influencer who has a massive following and that following is around your place, then it could be worthwhile talking to them about whether they would do a feature on your restaurant.

However, you've got to pay for that. But it seems to me that even though they can do that, they're not qualified as reviewers. I didn't see any well-known reviewers on TikTok, the kind of people that you would see writing in the newspaper, and so on. So, it's like the early days of blogging when these first bloggers came out and would go around restaurants and write about them promising the restaurant would get a following it was very hit and miss.

To summarise, here are the things you need to consider before using TikTok for your restaurant:

●     Is your target market on TikTok?

●     Do they want to see videos of you talking about your restaurant?

●     If you're going to use TikTok, are you actually getting a return on investment from this?

●     If you’ve spent hours putting together these videos to post three times a day, are they going to reach the exact audience that you want anyway?

From my perspective, using TikTok for your restaurant is not a really great use of your time, and it's not an accurate platform to place your message for your market. I could be proved wrong in the future. But right now, it's not something that I'll be encouraging my clients to do.

Want to know more about marketing your restaurant? Book in for a quick, no-obligation chat with Howard by clicking the button below.