How to market your restaurant in China ?

In the restaurant sector in China, the environment is extremely competitive.

Whether it’s Chinese cooking or western cuisine competition is fierce.

One of the main outlets for Chinese spending is food, it has a pivotal place in Chinese culture, most Chinese go to a restaurant quite often with colleagues, childhood friends, family, and business partners. Eating is the engine that drives China’s growth!

The meal is an important moment of the day reflecting the Chinese culture as a whole.

You must know how to market your restaurant in China if you want it to be successful. The principal tools you need to use here in China are digital tools :

Offer a quality website

Offering a quality website about your restaurant with good photos will attract your customer. Communicating about the aesthetic, qualities, and characteristics of your restaurant will encourage people to come; Chinese internet users look at the information on restaurants before making decisions. Your website must be in Chinese too.

Example http://lebec.com.cn/

Have an SEO strategy

Now that you have a website, you must better optimize your online strategy on search engines (known as SEO: Search Engine Optimization) to be recognized in this sector among the multitude of restaurants.

You need to maximize your presence on influential websites and by diversifying the publication of articles. This will allow you to optimize your ranking on Baidu.

More on SEO in China here.

Pay attention to social networks

In order to engage with your audience, you must pay particular attention to internet word of mouth through social networks.

If customers have enjoyed eating at your restaurant, they will come back and bring back their friends. They will share images of food and comment on their experiences on social media.

You must be careful about the quality of your service and that the menu dishes are suitable for all tastes and all client types. Indeed comments made by users can be positive or negative and can have a huge influence on other customers’ behavior.

Remember that word of mouth is passed mainly through social networks such as WeChat, Weibo, QQ … etc.

Most Chinese users use social networks as their primary source of information in order to determine their final choice.

Curate quality content on social networks to inspire visitors to come to eat at your restaurant, organize tasting sessions, special evenings on a specific theme, cooking classes, and contests.

For example, WeChat offers interesting features for restaurants that want to promote their business through a service account. There is an interesting feature that allows you to customize your online menu and make online payments within WeChat. Highlight your best-known dishes with quality photos and share the location of your restaurant.

More about the WeChat features for restaurants is here.