4 online marketing tools that every business should utilise to acquire customers

Your customer or potential customer is everywhere! To let them find your business online is critical and here are the marketing tools to help.
A classic example is a Restaurant or a Bar. A Restaurant or a Bar owner would be of the school of thought that the main purpose for having an online presence is for people to view their menu and the specials that they offer from time to time or perhaps to make a booking and find their address. Is it really?
I would say this is completely wrong! Building on with the example of a Restaurant or a Bar owner with a website, I will put forward 4 marketing tools that they can use to generate more traffic on their website which in turn can lead to more walk-ins at their venue.
Blogs – If you run a Restaurant or a Bar, I suppose you are passionate about food so that should give you a million ideas to blog about. You could perhaps share recipes on your blog or write about the new menu items and where the inspiration for the recipe came from. Connect with your customers! Tell them the story; from the source to the plate! Get in touch with some influential food bloggers around town and see if they would like to share your blogs on their website. Blogs can be very powerful!
Local Directories and Restaurant Guides – Add your Restaurant or Bar to local directories which makes it easier for people to find you. Also there are plenty of Restaurant Guides out there who are happy to list restaurants and Bars for free. If you have a little extra money to spend you can enquire about the packages they offer for listing your business on their homepage or perhaps on top of search results within their website, this will give you that extra edge over your competitors as your brand becomes more visible.
Social Media – When I think of Restaurants and Bars in conjunction to social media my mind explodes with Ideas. Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are on top of my list when it comes to social media marketing for Restaurants and Bars. You can share loads of pictures from behind the scenes through Instagram and Facebook to engage with your customers. To build on your initial fan base on Facebook, you can offer a discount coupon to customers who like or check-in to your Restaurant. For Pinterest you could create boards of the type of cuisine or cocktails that your Restaurant or Bar specialises in.
Search Engine Optimization – With a little bit of effort Restaurants and Bars can easily appear on top search engines particularly for local searches that include the suburb e.g. Restaurants in Ashfield etc. A bit of on-page optimization coupled with your social media efforts should make your venue visible to users in SERP’s. A great tool for Local SEO is Google My Business.