Restaurant PPC Agency

What is PPC Ads Management for Restaurants?

PPC management for restaurants refers to creating and optimizing paid ads campaigns. Despite that simple explanation, let's explore it further.

A paid advertising company for restaurants often begins by getting to know you and your needs before providing premium paid ads management. You can use this information to determine the next steps, since paid advertising for a localized restaurant differs from PPC advertising for an ecommerce-focused restaurant.

Local restaurants, for instance, are often only interested in contact form submissions or calls. This can be accomplished through paid ads that drives traffic to an optimized landing page or sales funnel. If those digital assets don't yet exist, or need substantial improvement, we recommend you start with Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms.

In contrast, ecommerce-focused restaurants are most likely to be interested in online sales. Using PPC advertising, you can increase traffic to a page optimized for products or categories. You might even want to include Google Shopping Campaigns in some cases. Our team has even used sales funnels to help sell products and subscriptions.

To optimize and scale restaurant paid ads campaigns, it's important to understand what metrics will be used. For some restaurants, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

Your restaurant should use a variety of advertising tactics and marketing tools to be successful with paid advertising. For example, the best restaurant PPC advertising plans will include plans to:

• Drive traffic to your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc) from search engines, social media channels, and third-party websites.
• Make your restaurant more profitable by acquiring qualified leads or selling online.
• Integrate third-party attribution tools to better understand ad attribution.
• Present social proof through case studies, white papers, and video testimonials.
• Collect email addresses, create user-generated content, and nurture relationships.
• Test the effectiveness of different ad creatives across different media and ad placements.

Tips for Managing Paid Ads for Restaurants

With in-depth knowledge of the latest PPC trends for restaurants and other industries, we are a team of paid ads experts.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

Keyword research for restaurants is mostly used for Google Ads and Bing Ads search network campaigns. After all, search ads only appear based on what is searched on Google or Bing and targeted by your restaurant.

For example, a person looking for a restaurant nearby might search "local restaurant" on a search engine. Knowing to target that exact phrase wouldn't require in-depth keyword research.

However, what if the exact match keyword isn't generating enough search volume and the restaurant needs to expand their advertising reach? To solve the problem, keyword research would be required.

After discussing options, the next step might involve the PPC advertising manager talking with the restaurant about what products / services they want to target more often and where. There may also be a need to broaden the keyword targeting.

Suppose the paid ads manager discovers that there is high traffic volume for "nearby restaurants" or even "restaurant services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. In the second phrase, a service is being targeted, which might result in a more lucrative conversion opportunity.

Negative keyword lists can also benefit from keyword research. Negative keywords are used to stop your paid ads from showing in search queries that you know won't bring in patrons.

For example, someone searching for "free services from restaurants" or "how to advertise to restaurants" isn't likely to convert with your restaurant. They might see your PPC advertising if you use broad keyword targeting without any negative keywords like "free" or "advertise".

You can see that as you scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend, the needs for keyword research become more complex.

2.) Audience Research Tips

For restaurant paid advertising campaigns, audience research is often discussed in the context of scaling social ads. However, Bing Ads and Google Ads also allow audience targeting.

Let's take a look at audience research and targeting within Facebook Ads.

Restaurant paid advertising managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. As a matter of fact, one of the most appealing features of Facebook Ads was its ability to collect data on users, which advertisers flocked to take advantage of.

As time went on, data privacy and machine learning both had an impact on custom audiences.

When Apple released its iOS 14.5 update, they included a pop up message that allowed users to easily opt out of personalized ad tracking. As a result, Facebook had difficulty tracking mobile device behavior. Even ad attribution reporting was affected.

For most restaurant-focused advertising agencies, machine learning algorithms greatly reduced the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences. By choosing your own interest-based targeting, you tend to do more harm than good because their algorithm often understands your ideal audience better than you do.

Although many restaurant paid advertising firms still rely on custom audiences, the trend is shifting toward broad targeting. You can see it for yourself. Every few months Facebook rolls out updates that gradually remove lesser-used interest-based targeting options. They even keep changing out "Advantage Detailed Targeting" is pushed in the ad set creation.

Interested in another take on audience targeting? Social Media Examiner's blog article does a good job of explaining recent changes.

However, audience research and targeting aren't going away. There will always be targeting options that can be manipulated within restaurant ad campaigns to squeeze a little extra performance.

3.) Landing Page Optimization Tips

An important factor in the success of your restaurant PPC advertising campaign is the landing page.

Let's begin by examining the landing pages for your restaurant to make sure they follow best practices. Our review takes into account the following factors:

• Does the headline focus on benefits?
• Is there an image above the fold?
• What is the quality of the content? Is it well written?
• Do you have a lead form I can use right away?
• What is the visibility of the call to action?
• Does the page load quickly?
• Is there social proof?
• Can I load the page on a mobile device?

Quality landing pages are the result of many factors. Here is a great write-up about what makes a high converting landing page.

Until you have a landing page that follows best practices, don't spend money on paid advertising. Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

4.) Revenue Funnel Tips

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. While managing their online marketing we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your restaurant isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) CRO Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from paid advertising, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in PPC advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most restaurants, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid advertising agency to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid advertising.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for restaurants, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out great ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a good ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Pricing for Restaurant Paid Ads Management

The cost of our PPC management plans is calculated based on the monthly time allocation you request for your campaigns. Below is the starting cost for our PPC management services, but we are happy to have a conversation about adjusting the budget if your ad spend or service requirements exceed our initial estimate.

Types of Paid Ads for Restaurants

The options for running paid advertising for your restaurant are numerous. The following are some of the most common paid advertisements options for restaurants.

1.) Local Business Ads

If you have a restaurant, you can run local ads on almost any advertising platform. You may find greater success on one platform over another depending on the nature of your local restaurant. It is important to try out every available option to see which works best for your needs. Let's talk about a few nearby advertising choices.

Google is going to offer two options.

As a first step, you can run traditional Google Adwords, possibly using their newer Performance Max campaign type. The Google algorithm finds the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you local customers using this type of dynamic ad campaign. Local professionals such as accountants, lawyers, dentists, and physicians frequently use Performance Max campaigns.

Google's second option for qualifying businesses is their Local Service Ads. As a pay-per-lead platform, Google Local Service Ads charges a flat fee per lead. Home service contractors, such as plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers, frequently use Google Local Service Ads.

Facebook Ads can also be used to target people in the area. This is a little more straightforward, since it just involves setting up a campaign that has ad sets with geographic restrictions. We often rely on nearby Facebook Ads for all types of restaurants.

2.) Social Media Advertising

Almost all online ads you see on social networks qualify as social media marketing.

Maintaining fresh ad creatives is key to social ads. Without rotating ad creatives every few weeks, your campaign performance will slowly deteriorate. A weekly change in ad creative is often recommended for higher-spend ad campaigns.

Using social media ads allows you to reach audiences who have never thought of your product or service, or aren't thinking about it right now. It's quite the opposite when you run search engine ads since you only get to show them when someone searches for what your restaurant offers.

It can also be a curse, as conversion rates often drop when people aren't closer to making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Advertising

If you know people are searching online for the products or services you offer, you'll want to invest in search advertisements.

Some people refer to this as restaurant Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. There are different ways to explain search ads (not to be confused with SEO), which are advertisements displayed on search engines' search results pages.

If you have been running search ads on Google for a while and have been successful, consider copying your campaigns over to Bing Ads. According to a StatCounter study from October 2022, about 3.57% of online users use Bing as their primary search engine.

4.) Display Ads

There are display ads on message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (sometimes even nearby news stations), gossip websites, and more.

Bing Ads and Google Ads both offer these.

With display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different sizes. It also helps to have a general idea of your target audience, but both ad platforms have their own algorithms that help you produce results from your ad spend.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Your restaurant website, landing page, or sales funnel won't convert everyone on the first visit.

To help people return to your site after they've thought through various options, retargeting ads are almost always recommended.

You can run retargeting ads on Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and many other platforms.

6.) Shopping Ads

It was Google Shopping Campaigns that popularized this form of search advertising.

To get started with Google Shopping, you just need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), a Google Merchant Center account, and a Google Ads account.

With these tools, you can provide Google Ads with an accurate list of all your product data, including title, SKU, image, price, and availability. Then, your products will be displayed at the top of search results based on the right types of search queries.

7.) Video Ads

You can run video ads on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and other social networking websites.

Using YouTube Ads is as simple as setting up a video ad campaign in Google Ads.

Facebook Ads is required if you want to run video ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Video is an excellent ad creative in terms of conversion opportunities. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your paid advertising campaigns.