50 Digital Marketing Stats For The Restaurant Business
The restaurants who are in the know win. So use these 50 digital marketing and social media stats to win over new customers.
You could have the best pizza, burger, pasta, sushi, macaroni and cheese, or chicken parm in the restaurant game, but if only a few people are coming in to order them you’re failing.
This is why it’s clear to me your restaurant’s marketing needs to be just as good as your food, customer service, and atmosphere.
Though all the time I’ll see anywhere from local food joints to big restaurant chains serve delicious, I mean truly unbelievable food for my taste buds, with weaker marketing than 8-year-old Kenny’s neighborhood lemonade stand. (Keep hustling Kenny!)
They nail Step 2 (delivering the tasty food) but fail at Step 1 (bringing new and lots of customers in the store). I’m sorry to tell you that you need to do both extremely well to succeed as an entrepreneur.
I have strong empathy to any business since I own one myself. For this reason I want to shine a light on the top digital marketing statistics that can help your business thrive in any competitive environment, given the right execution on your end.
Knowing these stats will pay off because they will allow you to:
- Target specific marketing ideas that best serve your audience
- Know where to put your employees time and your marketing budget
- Understand what to track on a monthly basis
- Gain insight on hiring extra staff (or firing redundancy)
With that said, to the stats!
Restaurant Specific Marketing Stats
General Marketing Stats
1. Over 1 billion restaurant visits by consumers are influenced by online marketing (Monetate).
2. Out of all industries, consumers read restaurant reviews more than any other industry (Bright Local).
3. Since 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations for dining decisions, it’s key you have a bunch of positive reviews (Bright Local).
4. A half-star difference on a Yelp review rating can swing restaurant business by a whopping 27% (Foodbeast).
5. Restaurants who respond to customers on social media will win as 71% say they’re more likely to recommend a company that responds quickly to them on social media (Forbes).
6. A growing number of social media users (37%) search apps to research companies for more information before making a purchasing decision (eMarketer).
7. Online orders are growing in popularity as 57% of customers order their food from a website (Toast Tab).
8. Marketing matters as 40% of people learn about food through digital methods—websites, blogs, or apps (Brandon Gaille).
9. Most people, 85% specifically, search for local businesses online (Reach Local).
10. Americans spend around 12.5% of their income buying food (BLS). As you know since this is one of the reasons you’re in this business, there’s plenty of money to be made serving food.
Facebook Marketing Stats
11. It’s a world take over: 22% of the world’s population uses Facebook (Statista).
12. A study found 75% of consumers have used Facebook to decide on what restaurant to eat at (Social Media Monthly). The influence of Facebook on purchasing decisions is only rising higher.
13. A report found 49% of people search Facebook to find restaurants (Mashable).
14. More than half (58%) of Facebook users expect some special promotion or offer for becoming a fan of a company (restaurant) page (Hubspot).
15. Mobile wins the day as 75% of Facebook video views happen on mobile devices (Sprout Social).
16. Only 3 percent of content is a video, but videos get the highest rate of engagement (Adweek).
17. Best windows for Facebook posts include: 3 PM Wednesday, 12 to 1 PM on Saturdays and Sundays, and 1 to 4 PM on Thursdays and Fridays (Hubspot).
18. Facebook ads are only getting more expensive: cost 122% more in 2015 than 2014 (Invesp).
19. Company Facebook pages that post once or twice a day get 32% more likes and 73% more comments than those who post three or more times a day (Jeff Bulas).
20. Offer incentives and discounts for likes, because 79% of people like a company Facebook page for that specific reason (Forbes).
21. The average person spends 3 times more time watching a live video than one that isn’t live (Facebook).
Instagram Marketing Stats
22. Instagram is the number one social media app for engagement with restaurant brands (Track Maven).
23. Instagram marketing wins for restaurants because close to 93% say the visual appearance of product influences their purchasing decision (Kissmetrics).
24. Fast food brands perform better on Instagram—21.4 engagement ratio—versus full-service restaurants—18.4 engagement ratio (Track Maven).
25. Getting users to take action with your dining spot isn’t difficult as 75% of Instagram users will visit a brand’s website after seeing an advertising post (Locowise).
26. Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without a hashtag (Simply Measured).
27. A New York restaurant named Springbone gets around 5% new customers a day through Instagram influencer marketing (Forbes).
28. The best time for a restaurant (or bar) to post on Instagram is when people are eating and looking at pictures on their phone: 9 AM, between noon and 1 PM, and 8 PM. (Napoleon Cat).
29. Teens love Instagram as 32% claim this is their favorite app (Business Insider).
30. Posting mouth-watering food pics goes a long way because the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text (Business 2 Community).
31. Although it has 63 US locations to McDonald’s 36,000 locations, Shake Shack is 100 times more successful on Instagram than Ronald McDonald’s company (Entrepreneur).
Twitter Marketing Stats
32. Twitter users have the highest engagement with restaurants compared to all other industries (Adweek).
33. Quick service restaurants get 57% of the over 1 million Twitter mentions (Statista).
34. Out of the people who complain to a brand on Twitter, 78% of Twitter users expect a response within an hour (Lithium).
35. Restaurants targeting millennials with their menu and atmosphere should focus on Twitter since 36% of Americans age 18 to 29 years old make up the majority of users (Pew).
36. The average Twitter user follows five business (Lori Taylor).
37. Hashtags aren’t as helpful as you’d think because Locowise found in their study that hashtags had no effect in engagement rates and actually tweets without hashtags performed better than those with them (Adweek).
38. It’s easy to get your restaurant in front of new customers on this platform since 79% of Twitter users recommend brands they follow (Adweek).
39. Twitter users clicking on links make up 92% of all user interaction (Hubspot).
40. Once they follow you, odds are they visit and buy from your restaurant since 94% plan to purchase from small businesses they follow (Twitter).
41. Higher-end restaurants would do well to market on Twitter since American users are likely to have an above-average income: 30% earn $75,000 or more which is the largest income category (Pew).
Video Marketing Stats
42. Making content specific for each app leads to better results. For example, Coca Cola broke through on Snapchat video with a 54% completion rate on 10 second videos by producing content specific for this app (FastCompany).
43. Close to 60% of college students say they would buy from a brand that sent them a coupon through Snapchat (IMM).
44. Snapchat users watch more than 10 billion videos a day (Adweek).
45. Videos around the 2 minute mark get the most amount of engagement (Wistia).
46. Mobile is the home of video as more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile (Ooyala).
47. Using video in your marketing grows revenue 49% faster than marketers who don’t use video (Vidyard).
48. Nearly two-thirds of potential customers prefer 60-second-or-less videos (Animoto).
49. Video promotion, like on YouTube, performs more than 6 times better than print and online promotion (Diode Digital).
50. YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 than any cable network (Mashable).
Final Words
The last thing I want you to do is get overwhelmed with the amount of stats and do nothing. Inactivity is the worst possible outcome.
Just start focusing on ranking at the top of Google, for example, and crush it. I mean absolutely go crazy until it’s driving amazing results.
Once you master it, keep it up while you move onto another platform or hire someone else to work full time on one social media profile. Then master that to win more business. And continue to expand as you go.
The world is your customer if you market the right way to them.
So get started today if you’re not already doing digital marketing. And never stop if you’re already doing it.
And to light a grill under your marketing, it’s no secret your competition is fighting to steal every last customer from you. Protect the future of your business and sustain it with tactical digital marketing.