10 Awesome Copywriting Tips For Restaurants

10 Awesome Copywriting Tips For Restaurants

Copywriting is persuasion via the written word.

Social media posts, ads, landing pages, email newsletters, even restaurant menus…

That’s all copy that should be designed to persuade the potential customer to take a specific action.

Learning to write copy that converts can help you get ahead of your competition in the restaurant industry.

That’s why today we are going to share ten awesome copywriting tips that can help you grow your restaurant.

#1: Clearly Define Your Target Audience

Clearly Define Your Target Audience

The most common mistake that entrepreneurs make is seeing anyone and everyone as their target audience.

Wanting to be inclusive is understandable and at first glance makes sense from the business perspective. Why would you exclude anyone who might be a potential customer, right?

But the problem with this is that if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

People feel lukewarm about your brand – they see it as okay but nothing special.

This makes it pretty much impossible to stand out from the competition because how can you stand out when your brand is so non-descript that there’s nothing memorable about it?

What you should do instead is clearly define your target audience and create a brand that is designed to appeal to your dream customers.

Obviously, everyone who goes to a restaurant wants:

  1. Delicious food.
  2. Great service.

But beyond that, there’s a huge variation in what kind of restaurant experience people are seeking. So who are you targeting?

Young hipsters, that are looking for a cool place to hang out with friends that’s gonna look great on their social media?

Middle-aged parents, that are looking for a family-friendly establishment where they could take their kids?

Corporate executives, that are looking for an upscale restaurant in which they could conduct business meetings with potential clients?

You need to figure out who your dream customers are, what they want, and how to provide it.

#2: Conduct Extensive Customer Research

Conduct Extensive Customer Research

The best copywriters in the world are the ones that understand their target audiences the best.

The temptation to jump straight into writing copy is understandable – it can feel like a more productive use of time than customer research because it has a tangible output.

But this is completely misguided.

Writing copy without having done customer research is like building a house without having laid the foundation.

In the moment, it might seem that you are being productive, but you are creating a bunch of problems for yourself that will become evident later down the road.

The reality is that customer research is the foundation of all effective copywriting. There’s just no way around it.

That’s why you should do extensive customer research before writing a single word of copy. But how should you go about it?

For a restaurant owner like yourself, the best approach is figuring out where your dream customers congregate, then going there and talking to them in person.

Say, if you are targeting the corporate crowd, you can attend conferences, then strike up casual conversations with people there.

You can also tap into your personal network if you have any friends or acquaintances that belong to your target demographic.

The goal here isn’t to promote your restaurant, it’s to chat with people and learn more about what they want.

Once again, everyone wants delicious food and great service, that’s a given. But what else matters to your dream customers when they go to a restaurant?

#3: Conduct Extensive Competitor Research

Conduct Extensive Competitor Research

Once you are done with customer research, you should conduct competitor research.

Here are the key things that you want to learn:

  • The overall landscape of your local restaurant industry. Who are the established players? Who are the promising up-and-comers? Who is struggling, who is coasting, and who is doing well?
  • Your Main Competitors. While in theory, you might have a lot of competitors, in practice, you will probably be primarily competing with just a few other restaurants that are targeting the same demographic as you. You need to identify them.
  • The strengths and weaknesses of your main competitors. Once you have identified your main competitors, you should examine their businesses to understand what are their strengths and weaknesses.

    Go to those restaurants, analyze their menus, try the food, observe the service, and pay attention to the atmosphere.

    What are they doing right? What can be improved? How can you differentiate yourself while catering to the same crowd?
  • The customer perception of your main competitors. You should also read customer reviews and listen to social media chatter to learn what customers think about these restaurants.
  • The food critic perception of your main competitors. While food critic opinions don’t matter nearly as much as one might think, it’s still important to pay attention to them because they can influence customer perception.

    So seek out food critic reviews of your rivals and read them to see if you can learn anything useful.
  • The social media strategy of your main competitors. You also want to examine the social media strategy of each of your main competitors.

    Which platforms are their using? How many followers do they have on each one? What content and how frequently are they posting? Are they engaging with their followers?
  • What voice / copy are your main competitors using? What do they write in their social media posts, ads, menus, etc?

    Again, you want to see what works so that you could learn from it and what doesn’t work so that you could improve on it.

Remember, your restaurant doesn’t exist in isolation, it exists in your local restaurant industry landscape in which you have to compete.

#4: Decide On Your Brand Voice

Decide On Your Brand Voice

Okay, you have done all this research, what’s next?

Now it’s time to decide on your brand voice. But what does that mean?

You can think of your brand as the personality of your company.

Meanwhile, your brand voice is how that personality is expressed through your messaging – it’s the way your company speaks.

Obviously, your brand should be designed to appeal to your target audience, so it will all depend on who your dream customers are.

But here’s a general branding principle that you should keep in mind:

You know how with some people, you hit it off immediately – you have the same values, you get each other’s jokes, and it feels like you are on the same frequency?

You want your brand to have that effect on your dream customers.

And when it comes to your brand voice, it’s important to make sure that it remains consistent throughout all copy that you write, from Facebook ads to your menu.

#5: Use the Hook, Story, Offer Copywriting Framework

So how can you write copy that converts?

We recommend using the “Hook, Story, Offer” copywriting framework:

  1. Hook – Grab the potential customer’s attention with a compelling headline.
  2. Story – Tell them a captivating story that resonates with them on an emotional level.
  3. Offer – Transition from the story to the pitch and then to the call-to-action.

Here’s how our co-founder Russel Brunson explains it:

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three components:

Hook

The headline is the most important element of any copy. Why?

This quote, commonly attributed to David Ogilvy, one of the best copywriters that ever lived, summarizes it well:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

He was a 20th-century man so presumably he was talking about print ad copy that was featured in newspapers and magazines.

Today, we live in an environment that has way more distractions, which means that headlines are more important than ever.

After all, if someone is mindlessly scrolling through social media, you only have a second or two to get their attention.

That’s why getting the headline right should be your primary focus whenever you write copy.

Story

The story is the most flexible copy element because it can be adjusted to the format of the copy in question.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a Facebook ad, an email blast, or a landing page, you want to tell a story because that’s the best way to get people to read your copy.

Don’t get hung up on the idea that this story needs to be an elaborate tale.  What we are talking about is the core narrative structure.

Do you know how jokes can be just a few sentences but tell a story? Same principle here.

As a restaurant owner, you can tell stories about how you became interested in cooking, how you learned to make specific dishes, where the ingredients that you are using came from, sustainability practices, social initiatives, etc.

These days there’s a lot of interest in food culture so all you need to do is get creative.

Offer

The offer consists of two components:

  1. The pitch is where you explain how your offer will make the potential customer’s life better. What’s in it for them?
  2. The call-to-action (CTA) is where you tell the potential customer what to do next. This is typically either a CTA button or a CTA link.

Again, just like with the story, the offer needs to be adjusted to the format of the copy in question.

#6: Use Descriptive Language In Your Copy

When you are describing a particular dish in your copy, don’t just list the ingredients and leave it at that – use descriptive language to make the dish seem more appealing.

Even something as simple as adding adjectives can help here. Why leave it at “basil” when you could say “fresh basil”? Obviously, it actually need to be fresh basil in that case!

If you have high-quality ingredients, you can mention that as well. It’s not “mozzarella”, it’s “organic mozzarella from a family farm in the Italian countryside”. You get the idea.

#7: Support Your Copy With High-Quality Photos

You know that saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”?

We recommend supporting your copy with high-quality photos of the dishes that you serve in your restaurant.

It’s tempting to just snap a few photos yourself and use those but food photography is a skill so it’s best to hire a professional who specializes in it.

#8: Provide Social Proof

Provide Social Proof

Social proof is a psychological principle that says that whenever people are unsure of what to do, they look at what others do in order to determine the best course of action.

In the business context, this means that when potential customers are unsure of whether to trust you, they will look for indications that other people trust you.

You can take advantage of this by providing social proof yourself.

There are two types of social proof:

  • Direct social proof that relates to the offer in question. This typically means customer testimonials. Say, if you are promoting a special offer for a new dish, can you get a testimonial for it?
  • Indirect social proof that relates to you as an individual, to your team, or to your company. This can mean relevant credentials, accomplishments, awards, favorable reviews, media mentions, celebrity endorsements, etc. Getting a Michelin star is the most obvious example of indirect social proof in the restaurant industry.

We recommend incorporating both types of social proof in your copy as that should help you increase your conversion rates.

#9: Entice With a Free Offer

The easiest way to get people to check out your restaurant is to offer them a free meal or a free dessert.

Obviously, you need to make sure that the math works, so be careful with this strategy.

But if you can figure out how to do it in a way that’s profitable in the long run then writing copy for the offer should be easy.

You could be the worst copywriter on the planet and people would still show up for free food!

#10: Optimize Your Copy With A/B Testing

We see way too many entrepreneurs that take ages to write each piece of copy in an attempt to make sure that everything is perfect. But guess what?

The reality is that you can’t know whether your copy will resonate with your target audience until you put it in front of them so it doesn’t make sense to agonize about it.

What you should do instead is write copy as fast as you can, put it in front of your dream customers, and then start optimizing it with A/B testing.

Let’s say that you want to promote your special offer with Facebook ads.

Create several completely different Facebook ads and start running them with a small daily budget. Which one converts the best?

Once you have identified the winning ad, start optimizing it with A/B testing:

  1. Create two variants of the same ad: variant A and variant B. There should be only ONE difference between them (e.g. the call-to-action button copy). That’s the element that you are testing.
  2. Use Facebook’s A/B testing functionality to test these ads against each other.
  3. See which variant converts better and keep it.

You can significantly increase the conversion rate of your ad over time by constantly testing various ad elements.

Keep in mind that you can use A/B testing to optimize any copy, from ads to landing pages to emails.

Learn Copywriting FAST With “Copywriting Secrets”!

Copywriting is the most important skill that you need to acquire if you want to grow your business.

But what if you already have too much on your plate and don’t have the time to devote yourself to mastering it?

“Copywriting Secrets” is a book that was designed to serve as a SHORTCUT for busy entrepreneurs that want to learn to write copy that converts.

Here’s how its author Jim Edwards explains it:

This is not a book about “how to get rich”… but, if you do what it says, you will definitely make more money than you’re making right now in your existing business. Why can I say that?

Because this IS a book about how everyone can use the power of words to get more clicks, make more sales, and get more subscribers… no matter what you sell or who you sell it to!

If you’ve ever been frustrated by a lack of sales, lack of clicks, or lack of subscribers… This is the book you’ve been looking for!”

You don’t even have to finish “Copywriting Secrets” before you begin implementing Jim’s advice – you can start putting it into practice as you are reading the book.

And if you do it right then you should start seeing results ASAP.

You can get a paperback copy of “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE – all Jim asks is that you cover the shipping.

So what are you waiting for?

It’s time to start writing copy that CONVERTS!

You can get a paperback copy of “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE - all Jim asks is that you cover the shipping.

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

X