Branding is an important part of running a successful restaurant. It helps customers identify your restaurant by its logo, name, and other visual elements. It makes your restaurant “memorable” in the customer’s mind. In the post-pandemic customer experience, a strong brand can make the difference between a mediocre and a great restaurant in 2024.
In this article, we discuss why branding is important for your restaurant, what makes a strong restaurant brand and how to build a strong brand for your restaurant.
Why Is Branding Important?
Brands are powerful tools that help us communicate our values and beliefs. They provide a sense of identity and belonging, and they allow us to differentiate ourselves from others. In other words, brands make us feel good about who we are.
Branding allows you to form connections with your target audience, which can lead to them becoming devoted consumers. You can build a brand that people care about and push yourself ahead of competitors who aren’t taking advantage of this.
What makes a strong brand?
Now, creating a “likeable” and “memorable” restaurant brand isn’t as straightforward as many people believe—it takes a little more than a well-designed restaurant logo. Developing a brand that actually connects with your customers and keeps them coming back takes time and effort. What is the prize? A long-term restaurant business with a dedicated customer base.
To build a strong brand, you must first understand what makes up a brand. Brands are made up of three elements: 1) a name; 2) a promise; and 3) a symbol.
How to build a “memorable” brand for your restaurant?
So, what are some of the most crucial aspects to consider while developing your restaurant’s brand?
Identify Your Target Audience
It’s important to identify who your target audience is before you start promoting your restaurant online. If you’re targeting millennials, then you’ll need to focus on creating content that appeals to them.
Develop a Clear Message
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you’ll need to develop a clear message that resonates with them. This means understanding what makes people tick, why they do what they do, and how they think. You should also understand the psychology behind human behavior so you can use that knowledge to your advantage when designing your website.
Create a Restaurant Branding Mockup
Restaurant branding mockups are a stage in the design process before the final branding guidelines are completed.
Now that you know that branding is one of the most important aspects of a business, aside from the financial and technical aspects, the next step is to create a restaurant branding mockup. You can create a branding mockup using tools like Canva or download free templates from the web. Create your own restaurant branding guidelines that you can alter with your restaurant identity and logo to make it look like yours.
Promote Your Business Online
Once you’ve finished your branding guidelines, use it to increase brand awareness and build a loyal customer base across all internet marketing platforms where your restaurant has a presence.
- Website: Update website design as per branding guideline.
- SEO: Optimize your restaurant SEO with keywords from branding guideline.
- Local SEO: Update Google My Business and local directories with your branding message.
- Email: Update your email campaign template as per branding guideline.
- Social Media: Update Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn profile pages with branding guideline recommendations. All social media campaigns needs to follow the branding guidelines.
- PPC ads campaigns: All pay-per-click ads campaigns on Google, Facebook, Twitter needs to be designed as per the restaurant brand guidelines.
Promote your Branded Menu
In addition to promoting your business online, the restaurant menu and all in-store marketing collaterals (flyers, table tents, coupons) needs to follow the restaurant branding guideline.
Developing The “Branding Guideline”
What is a branding guideline document?
A branding guideline document helps a business standardize how it communicates with customers and represents the brand. This rule serves as the foundation for establishing a strong digital presence, which includes your website, social media platforms, email marketing, and other tactics, as well as in-store collateral.
What to include in a Branding Guideline?
- Logo: A logo that represents the brand in a memorable way.
- Color palette: a brand color palette allows for all your marketing collateral, channels and communications to represent your brand in a consistent and cohesive manner.
- Fonts: Primary and secondary fonts allow for you to develop a recognizable brand signature across all channels.
- Verbiage: consistent brand verbiage helps keep communications unified across all channels (social, email, website etc), allowing you to tell your brand story to build value and loyalty in the long run.
Summary
In conclusion, branding is one of the most important aspects of running a successful restaurant business. You need to develop a clear identity that will set you apart from other restaurants in your area.
Are you ready to develop your restaurant’s branding guideline? Contact us to learn more about how our digital professionals can assist you in developing the right branding strategy for your restaurant.
