If you have spent any time considering how digital marketing can help boost your restaurant business, you cannot have escaped the fact that advertising on social media is massive online. The question is which social media channels you should use, and if you were to ask an online marketing agency like Slinky Digital, they would advise you that Facebook ads offer restaurants several advantages.

The first and most obvious point about Facebook is that it is the largest social platform on the internet. As such, logic tells us that in your local catchment area, the chances are that more of the people you would hope to target in any digital marketing campaign for your restaurant will be on Facebook than on any other social media website.

For example, Facebook has more than double the number of users than Instagram and more than TikTok, Weibo, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and Reddit combined. We are not saying you should not consider using any of the other social media sites, especially if you wish to target some of the demographic groups that use them, but any paid advertising campaign for your restaurant is going to be less effective if Facebook is not included in it.

We mentioned demographics in the last paragraph, and should you choose to use Facebook ads as part of your social media campaign, Facebook’s ability to pinpoint exactly the audience you wish to target makes it so much more effective.

The first and most important is that you can target geographically. This means your ad will only be seen by those who are in your area. You will note we said ‘in’ and not ‘live in’ and this is vital. As a restaurant owner or manager, you will likely be hoping for customers who happen to be in your area, although they might not actually live there.

With Facebook able to track the location of its users, your ads can be shown to someone who happens to visit your area, and they are as likely to want to eat as anyone else. This means tourists, business travellers, or simply someone visiting friends and relatives and wanting to take them out for a meal could potentially see your ad on Facebook.

Apart from targeting geographically, you can also target your Facebook marketing and ads towards specific groups. This can be particularly effective if you are running special promotions. An example would be a promotion for Valentine’s Day, so you might want to include targeting those who are married or in a relationship and exclude singles. All these relationship statuses are in the profiles of Facebook users.

Apart from being able to target demographics like age, location, and relationship status, another way you can target on Facebook is with respect to what people have indicated their likes and preferences are. Depending on the type of restaurant you have, you can set up an ad by selecting certain Facebook user’s likes, which will include the type of cuisine you serve in your restaurant.

Finally, another great benefit of Facebook ads is you can start with low budgets to test certain ads and specific keywords. That way, you do not waste a lot of money on ads that do not work and can also ramp up the ones that do work, which generates plenty of bookings. Over the longer term you can continually tweak ads to see if they perform better, always knowing that you are in total control of your ad budget.