Hospitality marketing on the menu: campaign ideas for restaurants, pubs & hotels

Last year, the UK hospitality industry was worth a staggering £71.3 billion. Having the right marketing strategy is essential to ensure your business is taking its share of the pie.

This sector is not always about big budgets. Sometimes, it's about just the right engagement, knowing your strengths and making your budget work harder.

Trends, influencers, savvy social media marketing and making the most of your user-generated content and glowing reviews are all key.

Leverage loyalty

This one is technically easy – get it right with your current customers, and they will do the work for you.

Sounds too easy? Well, it's not effort-free, but it will pay dividends.

If the service and quality is there, happy customers will return time and again. So, what better way to generate a positive brand sentiment than to actively reward them – for their custom, their data, or both?

This can take a few forms. It may be as simple as a paper card that gets stamped with every coffee purchased, or perhaps you have an app and when people book a table they earn points, or when people sign up for marketing newsletters, they are rewarded with discounts for their data. All of these forms are valid – and they all work.

We've talked before about the need to build a positive feeling and engagement with your brand through consistency, value-sharing and being 'human' – so once you've done this, you'll start to see willingness to sign up for loyalty schemes increase. The trust, coupled with the ‘what's in it for me’ come together to mean consistent revenue and/or repeat business.

In fact, 79% of consumers have either a membership, retail subscription or loyalty programme with the brands they purchase from. For 17% of consumers, this relationship encompasses all three!

People buy from people

We know, you know this, but we're talking about other consumers – not your CEO saying your product is great.

Why does this matter? Well, yes, we want you to humanise your brand. This might mean featuring staff stories on your social media, or utilising PR to give insight into your brand story. However, the people we want your new customers to buy from, are the ones already spending their cash with you.

We're all far more likely to believe a review, summary or piece of product feedback if it comes from an unbiased source: a paying consumer, for example. Credible, trustworthy, authentic sources will drive interest in your offering and encourage new customers to give you a go.

This can take many forms, but consider some of the following to burnish your credentials as an authentic hospitality brand:

1. User-generated content – this takes many forms, but utilising what your customers create for you is one of the fastest ways to sell the experience you're offering.
2. Maximise the positive reviews you already have – leverage these in your social media, email marketing and on your website. We listen to other people's experiences to shape our own.
3. Photos and social media posts – as well as reviews, if your customers are taking great imagery of your hospitality venue – facilities, decor, food – then you need to be making the most of this. Engage with their content, reply to them (garner those good feelings) and repost on your own channels (with permission, of course). Provide them with the branded hashtags to utilise when tagging your establishment.

Don't be anti-social

You can't expect to compete if you don't appear where your customers are – and we can almost guarantee that the vast majority of them are habitual social media scrollers. If you don't have a targeted, tailored, thumb-stopping social media strategy, now is the time to fix it.

You can look at TikTok and think it's not for you, but you'd be wrong… very wrong. This platform is one of the best ways to communicate your brand and what it stands for, what you offer and sell yourselves.

Don't believe us? Well, we've already attested to the power of TikTok for the food and drink industry. One survey highlighted that 53% of Millennial TikTok users have visited a restaurant and/or ordered food from it after seeing it on TikTok.

It's true that not every one of your consumers may be there, but TikTok seems to continue to be the app with something for everyone. In fact, TikTok is creeping up on both Google Maps and Search for restaurant suggestions.

Strategy is at the heart of successful brands: they engage, excite, inspire, make people laugh and wow them. All of this is considered and usually a blend of a number of different styles of content. Let’s look at who has successfully combined brand authenticity, social media personality and achieved some marketing brilliance.

Wendy's, an American fast food chain (now also here in the UK), is a brand that wins time and again for its success on social media. The fun-loving, cheeky persona they have adopted has been used to engage the audience and occasionally roast them – to rapturous applause in most cases.

While Wendy’s might tailor their content, the thread of brand personality remains. Users love the tongue-in-cheek approach – it generates a kind of loyalty and shareability money can't always buy. It certainly won’t hurt their bottom line, either.

Of course, Wendy's is a popular chain, but the mix of humour, personality and showcasing the food they offer through trends, sounds and UCG is what keeps them flying high on social media. Scale and build an approach within both your means and audience types, but have fun with it.

Feeling like your marketing strategy has gone cold?

Let our award-winning team cook up something new and exciting for you. Check out some of our work for fellow hospitality brands and get in touch today.