How to Successfully Market Your Restaurant on YouTube
According to YouTube Insights, cooking and food videos are the fastest growing video genre on YouTube. In 2013, the top 20 cooking and food channels – including Epic Mealtime, Rosanna Pansino, Laura Vitale’s Kitchen, and Jamie Oliver – generated over 370 million views. These statistics reveal a huge opportunity for restaurant owners to attract hungry customers before they even walk through the door. Here are a few simple tips to create a successful restaurant video to help market your menu.
Too often, restaurant videos focus strictly on delivering a marketing message rather than presenting viewers with something valuable. Whether your customers are craving entertainment or education, YouTube videos can help you serve up exactly what they want in a visually stimulating way. Instead of droning on about how your restaurant was founded, showcase your head chef’s best dish by demonstrating how to make it in an instructional recipe video. Recipe videos are some of the most popular content on YouTube’s food and cooking channels, giving restauranteurs a chance to show potential customers exactly what’s going into the food they’re eating while simultaneously showcasing the chef’s culinary skills and experience.
Statistics show you only have about 5-8 seconds to engage a viewer and create a connection before he or she bounces off to the next video. Many corporate videos start off too slow, failing to create that instant personal, emotional connection with the viewer. Create an impact right off the bat and make your viewers hunger for more. Try a close up shot of your most delicious entree, a shot of the chef dropping pans in the kitchen, or a hot stove engulfed in flames; open your video with a bang to keep your viewers hanging on. Once you’ve got your viewers’ attention, then you can introduce them to your menu, your philosophy, and your cooking staff.
Above all, you want your restaurant video to be of the highest quality. Don’t put a shaky, hand-held iPhone video up on YouTube and expect to get thousands of views. YouTube actually ranks High-Definition (HD) videos higher than standard definition videos. Good cinematography is key to optimal engagement – you want your food looking extra delicious, not extra dull. Finding the time and the equipment to create a great restaurant video can be difficult. It might be a good idea to ask an experienced videographer for help. The team at In Focus Studios can work with you to determine the best way to market your restaurant using high-quality video. Located near Raleigh, North Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland, our highly-talented team of photographers and videographers can help produce the best marketing video for your restaurant.
