Restaurant Brand Awareness: How to Grow Your Brand in South Korea

Have you been trying to figure out ways to improve your restaurant brand awareness in South Korea? Would you like to learn how exactly you can do that, and better reach your target audience? Let’s find out why brand awareness is so important in the restaurant industry, and how you can establish a unique brand identity for your establishment to reach the South Korean audience. Then we’ll go through some effective digital marketing strategies that will help you in brand positioning among potential customers, and ways to build a loyal customer base.

Why Should You Raise Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is essentially how much your target audience is familiar with your brand, and the products or services you provide. It is an essential part of any business since potential customers have to be able to recognize your brand and trust it before they purchase anything from you. For a new brand, it takes a while to increase awareness and build trust with the customers.  

A high level of brand awareness means that your brand is on customers’ minds when they are looking for a product or service in your niche. You could even embed brand awareness with your signature product in the minds of customers if planned and executed strategically. At that point, your brand will become synonymous with your product or service. One great example of this is Google. Its main service, the search engine, has become so well known that most people say “Google it” when they refer to searching anything on the internet. 

As you take steps to increase brand awareness, you will find that loyal customers will often create a community around your brand. These are the people that find your brand identity and personality relatable. These customers are only one segment of your target audience, but they will have the most brand loyalty to you. They will often choose your brand over your competition. 

Even if you have loyal customers, they may not think of you if you fail to stay relevant. Therefore, raising brand awareness is a continuous process. Digital marketing is a key tool in raising brand awareness among new and existing customers. With so much to gain from building a customer base loyal to your brand, generating more traffic to your website, and increasing your sales, it is easy to see why brand awareness is so important.

How to Increase Brand Awareness for a Restaurant

Building awareness is especially important for businesses like restaurants, either large or small. After a strong brand identity is established and positioned correctly, restaurant owners can continue their digital marketing efforts with a smaller budget to increase awareness of the brand. Especially in a market like South Korea where the population is highly digitally active. Let’s find out what effective marketing strategies can be used to increase the awareness of your restaurant brand, and how that will convince more customers to walk through your doors.

Establish a Unique and Memorable Brand Identity

Before you go about building awareness, you first have to establish a unique identity for your restaurant brand. On one hand, this will be the restaurant branding assets such as logo, color palette, fonts, and menu design that will represent your brand visually in your marketing. On the other, it will be your brand personality which can consist of a memorable tagline, a mission statement that speaks to your audience, and the tone of voice which you will be using in all your marketing communications with your customers. 

It’s important that all of these assets and your online personality be consistent with your values, and look appealing to your target demographic. If your restaurant brand is trying to attract kids, then it needs to be family-friendly. If it’s targeting young adults, a little bit of a playful attitude might do the trick to make it appealing to this demographic. 

All of these things need to be established clearly in your brand guidelines, which will ensure that your marketing team knows how to utilize them properly without going against your values. After establishing this appealing brand identity, it’s important to maintain brand consistency across all your channels from social media to your website.

Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media

A strong social media presence is vital for a restaurant brand for several reasons. Firstly, the food and beverages on your menu are best promoted by displaying them through high-quality photos and short video clips. The most ideal platform to showcase your signature dishes is Instagram, the social media platform of choice for most foodies. Apart from your menu, you can also impress your audience with visual content that shows off the atmosphere and level of service of your staff.

Once customers do arrive, you can also encourage them to get on Instagram and share pictures of your restaurant and what’s on the menu. Your signature offerings as well as the restaurant interiors have to be photo-worthy for this to work. You can even be on the lookout for popular social media influencers who might be open to collaboration. 
As customers and influencers start generating the content, awareness of your restaurant on social media will improve. Of course, you will have to ensure that your social media accounts are created and ready to be tagged by customers or anyone else that wants to mention your brand. New menu items and restaurant news such as a new location opening up can be communicated to your followers through social media as well. For more on improving brand awareness on social media, read Brand Awareness – What Is It and How Can Social Media Help It Grow?

Set Up and Optimize Your Google My Business Account

The Google My Business (GMB) account can be created by any business to manage their online presence on Google’s services like Maps. By creating this account, you will have control over valuable information about your business such as opening hours, geographic location on Google Maps, contact details, and more.

When a customer uses a search engine to look for restaurants nearby, your business will appear in these results. The type of cuisine, atmosphere, and other details can be mentioned in the description of your business, and even the business name to match users’ search queries. Keep in mind that your local competition will also appear in local search results. The best way to beat them is to appear at the top of the search results, which can be achieved by earning positive reviews on GMB from your satisfied customers. For more on optimizing your GMB, read our post on Google My Business Optimization.

Get an Official Website

Guests often research a restaurant before making a reservation, especially if it’s a high-end establishment. Other than wishing to book your venue for private or corporate events will also need more convincing. To boost credibility and increase awareness for your restaurant online, you will need to have an official website. Here, you can impress people that discover your brand in several ways. 

You can show off the awards you have won, or the Michelin ratings your restaurant has earned. You can display high-quality photos of your food, and even video clips of your kitchen staff at work to deliver your value proposition. You can proudly display your mission statement and any customer testimonials you have received. If your company has upcoming events or volunteers in community service, this is the place to share those details. 

Aside from diners and those looking to book your restaurant for private events, you will also be able to attract new employees using this marketing plan. By taking viewers on a behind-the-scenes type of tour, you will be able to show what a great working environment you have provided for your staff, which will certainly get the attention of potential recruits.

SEO-Based Digital Marketing Efforts

If you want your restaurant to be included among the highly visited local websites, then you need to invest in some search engine optimization (SEO) efforts to make your web content discoverable to search engines. You can do keyword research to find out how customers in your local community search for restaurants and other food-related topics online. You can use this knowledge to design an effective SEO content plan including blog posts about your restaurant, food recipes, cooking tips, videos, and more. This content can be optimized for search engines by including the relevant keywords in them.
Food enthusiasts will no doubt wish to know how you create some of the signature items on your menu, and you have a chance of attracting them to dine at your restaurant. The more people discover engaging content on search results, the more likely they will come for repeat visits to taste your offerings. If you have an online ordering system in place, it’s even more important that your website appears at the top of search results. You need to create a modern, search engine-friendly website with dynamic content.

Be Present on Third-Party Review Sites

Word of mouth on third-party review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp is very important to a restaurant brand. Aside from Google Maps and social media, these sites are often the first point that many customers come across to decide where to go. You can create accounts on these sites, which will allow you to share accurate information about your restaurants such as an address, contact, opening hours, and reservation information. 

You can also respond to guest reviews by showing your appreciation for the positive ones. You can even address guests that had a poor experience and maintain a good relationship with them by apologizing and resolving their issues. By providing excellent service and receiving positive reviews, your restaurant could even win a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, which you can display to further improve your restaurant’s online reputation.  

Start a Customer Loyalty Program

There are even more ways to improve the level of awareness customers have for your restaurant brand. You can start a customer loyalty program and provide special discounts for your most loyal diners. You can use email campaigns and even direct mail to notify those registered for your loyalty program about the latest promotions, new menu items, and new location openings.

Want to Increase Your Restaurant Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness will help you reach new markets and attract more customers to your restaurant which will lead to growth in your business. While the concept might seem simple, executing it takes more effort, especially if you are trying to enter and establish awareness in a market such as South Korea. With many factors, including local digital platforms, culture, and language, playing a role, you may need extra effort to run awareness campaigns. That is where an expert digital marketing agency comes to your help. 

Inquivix can be your online partner, helping you create a unique brand identity, and helping spread awareness on it across all your digital platforms including social media, Naver, Google, and more. We will help you to optimize your restaurant website with SEO and manage your presence on social media. 

Contact us to get a free quote! 

FAQs

Why Is Brand Awareness Important for a Restaurant?

It is through brand awareness that customers will discover, remember, and trust a restaurant to walk and dine. It is the foundation for building a loyal customer base that will keep diners coming back for more. 

How Do Restaurants Increase Brand Awareness?

A restaurant brand can increase brand awareness by developing a memorable brand identity, having a strong presence on social media, optimizing its Google My Business account, having a well-optimized website with useful content, being present on third-party review sites, and through customer loyalty programs.