DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

CASE COMPANY INFORMATION:

Name: Taverna Zorbas

Industry: Restaurant 

Products & Services: Restaurant in Helsinki with Greek specific, offering food products and high quality services for them customers.

Other information: I have chosen this restaurant because is one of my favorites in Helsinki. The restaurant provide great traditional Greek food but more than that a great experience.

Website which need a lot of improvement: http://zorbas.fi/

INTRODUCTION AND STRATEGY

My Digital Marketing plan is structured using SOSTAC marketing plan process. First I will look at the opportunity, by reviewing Taverna Zorbas and its competitor use of digital marketing technology. The next step is to decide where the restaurant will focus the resources to reach its customers acquisition targets. Optimization is not only for content, it is very important that we optimize the website as well. 

The landing pages need to be user-friendly and straight to the point in order to be interesting for potential customers and to keep them as long as possible. At the end it’s important that the strategy is clear and simple to be implemented and to keep track of results.

CONTENT MARKETING AND INBOUND MARKETING

The website and the landing pages should have more content to offer more information ant to be more close to the customers.

The headlines of the content posted should be powerful and I recommend, for example:

• “How to feel the Greek atmosphere in the heart of Helsinki” for Facebook post or “How to make the traditional Greek salad” for a Youtube video.
• Using numbers in headlines, something like “5 reasons to like Greek food” or “3 mistakes which will ruin a Greek dish”.
• Mentioning the ideal customer: “Best experience for Greek food lovers in Helsinki”
• Using questions: “What’s your favorite traditional Greek dish?” will engage more people and a possible new item in the menu can be found.

Good quality and appealing content should be created and shared with the potential customers which correspond with the ideal profile, to attract them and keep the established customer base coming back. With the Inbound Marketing Funnel help we can track the marketing content success.    

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

Typing the key word “Greek restaurant in Helsinki” Google Business promote it the second and the Facebook page which is not active since a year ago, is displayed in the bottom of the first page, but not the website. Trip Advisor recommendations are displayed first so would be good to have a great ranking and reviews there. Unfortunately Trip Advisor does not display at all Taverna Zorbas among the other 4 competitors.

With such a poor SEO the restaurant is difficult to be found by customers. Because of this poor visibility the way of getting more traffic on the website could be to buy advertising on Google Adwords, Facebook ads and Remarketing after the people visited the website.

Recommendations to improve SEO ranking factors:

1.    On page:

• Relevant key words: “Greek restaurant Helsinki”, “Greek food Helsinki”, “Greek experience Helsinki”, “best Greek food Helsinki”, “Traditional Greek food Helsinki”, etc.
• User experience: longer time spent on website and scrolling down the page.
• Provide fresh and good quality content
• Improve the site speed
• Mobile optimization is important

2.    Off page:

• Improve the amount and quality of back-links
• Be more active on social media platforms promoting the restaurant with good content, pictures and links to the content, engaging people to follow the restaurant and to comment and share the content.

PAY PER CLICK AND PAID ADVERTISING

Paid advertisement is based on keywords in Google Adwords and on people interests I Facebook ads. I would recommend to use the correct keywords to target a specific group of people who search:

• kreikkalainen ravintola
• taverna zorbas
• kreikkalainen ravintola helsinki
• ravintola zorbas
• kreikkalainen
• zorbas ravintola
• kreikkalaiset ravintolat helsinki
• kalaravintola helsinki
• zorbas taverna
• taverna zorba
• ravintola helsinki
• the correspondent translation of those key words in English for non-Finnish speakers or tourists.

The paid advertising strategy will:

• increase traffic on website
• allow to test different campaigns
• provide targeted traffic
• reach more potential customers
• allow to track results

A call to action must be included in any paid advertising (“Call us to make a table reservation 09 7538518”, “The offer end on Sunday 17.5.”).

Remarketing would be recommendable as well. The people are visiting the website and then they forget about it. Google will advertise those visitors after they visited the website to remember them about the restaurant.

EMAIL MARKETING

I don’t know if Taverna Zorbas has a customer data base with a list of emails or not, bit email marketing is one of the best way to be in contact with customers and to improve the relationship with them, has a bigger probability to sell and is cost effective.

My recommendation would be to:

• collect the customers information and develop an email list
• Use MailChimp first email will be an welcome email
• test if the compatibility with different devices it’s working, what format is better and make a spam analysis
• Send it at the right time
• create relevant and clear email content and question to customers about Greek food after few days
• create relevant email content with a link to restaurant’s website, after another few days
• create a promotion for a specific period of time and a specific dish, with a call to action message
• track how many people have opened the email, how many have clicked the link or have not received the email (using Zoho CRM or SideKick by Hubspot).

Beside the text in emails I recommend them to use pictures (like in the print screen I took from a Valentine's Day email marketing campaign) which can convince the customers to visit the restaurant or to come back when they remember the nice experience they previously had.

The idea of promoting different campaign related with evens in people’s lives is very suitable for a local restaurant. I would recommend them to have a special email campaign with content related with any religious celebration or special days as Mather’s day and Father’s day.  


WHATSAPP AND MOBILE MARKETING

Now the connection between the restaurant and their customers through WhatsApp is as simply as sending a text message. It’s creating a personal and friendly connection with the customer. Taverna Zorbas should get a separate phone number only for WhatsApp and promote it on them website and all the other social media platforms, together with a call to action message: “Contact us for FREE on WhatsApp” or “Make a table reservation through WhatsApp”.

I would use first the website, Facebook page, Instagram or email list to ask customers or potential customers to opt-in to messaging list, giving the ability for the restaurant to directly approach customers via SMS with news updates, promotions, and special offers with pics from restaurant’s menu.

Alongside with the advertising, I would recommend to use WhatsApp messaging as a customer services hotline, giving the ability to this restaurant to answer basic questions, such as “what time are you open today?”, “do you serve lunch today?”, to the more difficult questions, including complaints and giving directions, directly via a text message. Because texting answers can consume too much time, the restaurant can create an SMS list of FAQ’s which can quickly be accessed to provide answers to questions.