Facebook contests and giveaways can be some of the best offers to put out there to your audience. Even though the online ordering systems are functioning as the right partners of restaurants, too many people have tried and failed. What happens if you spend all of your ads spend on a contest or giveaway but no sales?

Let’s solve this issue. By reading this blog, you are going to get a clear understanding of restaurant contest ideas and how to implement them in the right way to increase your profit. In this blog, we will be focusing on Facebook contests. But before that, let’s have an understanding of restaurant contest ideas. 

Restaurant Contest Ideas

There are a lot of social media contests for restaurants and those are fantastic. They are a great way to get engagement and to get people excited and involved in your social media. But there are some mistakes people make all the time. If you can avoid these things, you will have a much better contest for your page. They are:

• Complicated – People are lazy when it comes to social media. We can see a lot of contests saying ‘you have to like this page, share it, comment, and so on. They are not going to do all these things. On the other side, who from your restaurant is going to be monitoring this. When you pick someone, who is going to go through and make sure they do all these. It is super complicated. 

So keep it simple. For eg: Something you might do is just ask somebody to comment by asking a question. It will be engaging the audience to comment. It is super simple. 

• Facebook’s Terms of Service – Instead of asking the audience to like, share, and comment, start with ‘Tell us’. For eg: ‘Tell us your favorite type of pizza’. It is another way of saying comment. It is a simple way and it won’t violate Facebook’s terms of service. 
• Everyone is a winner – While running contests, we set one big prize. Replace it with everybody who enters gets a prize so that it gives them more incentive to join. Giving vouchers and discounts are a great way to do this. 

Restaurant Facebook Contest Ideas

The very first thing that you want to understand before you get started with a giveaway or contest is your goals. You need to understand what’s your offer. This offer is ultimately an important aspect of getting someone to act now. It can be opt-in, register, sign up for a call, or just go ahead and buy your food. These are going to be offered after they register for your contest. Once you have a clear picture of the offer you will be promoting, you can begin planning your contest. 

The first thing you need to consider is what are you giving away. What you are giving away needs to tie directly to your restaurant. You need to ensure that your offer makes sense for them. We don’t need quantity necessarily, we need quality. But the great thing about contests is that you can get both, just be intentional about that giveaway prize. You need to ensure that your prize is matching with your ideal customers. This is the crucial element of the contest. Please don’t overlook it. 

You want to determine the length of time this contest is going to span. This is actually a pretty critical element as well. If you are giving away exactly what you sell, and your contest is too long, some people will wait to buy until they see if they win the contest. Don’t let that happen because we want to sow the seeds of desire by getting you excited about the competition and the prospect of victory.

You are going to wait a really long time to see the ultimate results. Because after a winner is announced is when the direct promotion is going to start. So by structuring monthly contests, It does a couple of different things. It makes that time frame short. If someone signs up for the contest and doesn’t win, you can know that this is the person who needs your service. The other benefit is you can serve 12 winners, making 11 additional people really happy and they will become your clients for life. 

The other thing is that it does is keeping people interested in staying on your Facebook or any other social media. If somebody signs up for a contest, often if they don’t win, they will unsubscribe. You don’t want that to happen, right? You want them to know that there is a contest every single month. 

It is time to get people to sign up for your contest. Contests are easy to promote because if you have a good prize and an audience that really wants that prize, you don’t have to create complex ads. It can be as simple as creating a set of graphics that very clearly shows that this is a contest or giveaway. The images need to spell that out very clearly. Brand the name of the contest and people are going to see that over and over again. It will resonate in their minds. 

The ad copy can typically be pretty short and sweet. You might need some additional details, but overall, you do not have to go through the detailed terms of service of the contest. Keep a link to that on your website that people can refer to.

You want to avoid having specific dates in those ads if it is all possible. It will be better if you add the date on your landing page or in your follow-up messages.  So, if it is a monthly contest, say you will be choosing a winner at the end of the month. You don’t have to give a particular date. 

Where are they going to sign up? A funnel, a form, or a message flow. That is exactly what your options are going to be. As mentioned above, there are so many people out there that are doing contests where someone would comment, share, tag three friends, like the page, and so on. Truth be told, that just has never been valuable.

It is great to get that additional exposure of people tagging friends. You could do that as a bonus entry if you want to. The ultimate thing that is going to be valuable is the list. If you get kicked off of Facebook in the future, you can take that list and market it through email. You need the registration, that is crucial. 

The next thing you need to do is give them the option to sign up for your core offer as soon as they register. This is not something where you want them to enter a contest and just say, ‘Thank you, we will let you know if you win’. You want to say, ‘Thank you so much for signing up’. Give them a reason to go ahead and pay you right away.

How are you going to follow up with these people? Some people use to actually call those that enter their contest. If you are the kind of person who wants a high volume of leads for your restaurant, this can be a great way to do it. You can adopt emails and text messages that go out after they sign up. First to confirm their entry and second to promote that new customer offer again. 

Once the winner is announced, that gives you another reason to reach out. The winner obviously is going to be excited. The people who don’t win can get a consolation prize as a ‘new client offer’. It doesn’t even have to be anything different, it just needs to be phrased differently. 

5 Restaurant Marketing Promotion Ideas

1. Catchy Name – Get your brand name carved in the minds of customers. Make it attractive and short. 
2. Appealing Colours – You should always choose appealing colours. There is a reason behind big brands choosing certain colours. You should use vibrant colours which can grab the attention of your ideal customers.

3. Social Media Marketing  – You have to keep promoting your food in the nearby areas through social media. So that people can know what new things you are working on. You have to encourage your customers to join your social media pages. Keep on sending them useful stuff.
4. New – Keep working on something new each month. It might be a dish, a festival, an event, or any day. Make sure that you communicate it to your customers so that they can know that something is happening at this place. 
5. Packaging – Give your customers a brand feel. The first contact that a brand has with its customer is through packaging. It is seen as an opportunity for any brand to visually communicate its message and plays a central role in all industries. 

Hope you understand the crucial points that are to be kept in your mind while doing contests and promotion. Whatever you do, keep in mind that it is for your restaurant’s growth. And for achieving that you need to consider the convenience and satisfaction of your customers. Everyone who reads this article is going to stand out for sure.