How To Properly Manage Influencer Marketing at Your Restaurant

Influencer Marketing has become a staple of any marketing campaigns in any industry in 2018. Be ready in 2019 for it to trickle down to small and medium businesses, especially restaurants. We know the horror stories out there and how people simply take advantage of unsuspecting owners by overcharging and then just basically do a grab and go while wasting half of the food. Thankfully, our Digital Media and Social Media agencies for restaurants have made up a how to guide on how to manage influencers for your restaurant.

Type of Influencers

First, you need to know what is what, there are different types of influencers and as always information is power so here are the most common types of influencers you will encounter as a restaurant owner:

• Unpaid

• Paid

• Pods

• Specialty Influencer (mommy influencer, lifestyle, vegan, etc…)

• Influencer Events

Build Your Strategy Now that you know what types of influencers you can work with, you need to build a strategy and the parameters for it.

• Frequency of Influencers

• Are you allocating a budget for influencers or are you aiming for all free influencers

• Do you want influencer events or just individual influencers at your restaurant

• Set food and beverage limits or better yet, build your custom tasting menu and experience for influencers

• Decide what you want the influencers to push content wise. What message do you want out there

• Set guest limits for influencers

• Decide what types of influencers you want (food, lifestyle, specialty, general)

• Set your preferred days and time for influencers to come by the restaurant

• Set your expectations for paid and unpaid influencers

Implement Now you have an idea of what influencers are, what you want to do and what you expect in return. After that comes the implementation.

• Research and curate a list of influencers that fit your parameters and have an audience that would be beneficial to your restaurant

• Review that list of influencers choose the best options

• Contact the list of curated influencers to invite them to the restaurant and provide the expectations in return for hosting them

• Coordinate the details, expectations and details with the influencer

• Coordinate the details, expectations and details with your restaurant staff or manager

• Confirm the influencer 2 days prior as well as the expectations

• Confirm with the restaurant staff 1 day prior as well as coach the team working with best practices and how to get the most out of the influencer (s)

• Collect feedback from influencer about restaurant and experience

• Collect feedback from restaurant staff about influencer

• Share the feedback of influencer with restaurant staff

• Verify and confirm that all expectations were met

• Collect a copy of all the content that was created to use on own media (don't forget to give credit)

• Collect all the data of the posts on all the platforms and create a post influencer report (this is usually 2-4 weeks after the visit)

• Review the report and impact statement to determine success of influencer campaign

• Repeat for each influencer

We know this seems time consuming and tedious but my mother always told me that when you do something, do it right or don't do it at all. Implementing all these steps into your restaurant influencer marketing strategy will guarantee the positive impact of that strategy on your restaurant.

If you believe in Influencer Marketing for your restaurant but simply don't have the time, just drop us a line and we will see how we can help you.