Monday, December 16, 2013. That date marked the return of Burger King in Paris. Four years later, the chain counts over 208 restaurants in the country. To what can we attribute this success?

A well-honed sense of humor, playful nods at the competition, a cultivated sense of proximity with their customers... With all these tools, Burger King has managed to find its place in the French fast-food landscape, and then some: the chain has been experiencing a double-digit growth rate since its return, and is aiming for 2 billion euros in revenue in France for 2020.

The fast-food chain’s success can be explained in large part by the communication strategy designed by the king of burgers which relies on humor, a balance between digital and street marketing, and a real “focus on social media,” as Marine Dupas, the group’s marketing director, confides. Let’s roll the tape on this success story.

A long-awaited and carefully planned comeback in France

July 1997: Burger King leaves France. The roll-out of the chain in France hasn’t been a success. The economy of scale isn’t enough and the restaurants aren’t profitable.

November 2012: A press release announces the return of Burger King in France. The company is kicking things off slowly: a restaurant at the airport in Marseille, then a second one in partnership with the Autogrill group on a highway rest stop near Reims.

Monday, December 16, 2013: The opening of Burger King Saint-Lazare kicks off a series of new restaurant openings. Twitter ignites and Burger King manages to keep the fire alive.

An ingenious balance between street and digital marketing exploits the perception of rarity

As Marine Dupas tells us, “the brand has often used this perception of how few Burger Kings there are in the country” to create buzz. The method is similar for every new opening.

The announcement of a new restaurant opening is made both online and in situ. Three months before the opening, the chain sets up big heavy-duty signs to let everyone know about the upcoming opening—always with a little joke.

(Translation: “Soon here: BURGER KING. You’ll soon have a good reason to turn left.”)

Burger King has turned its construction sites into powerful communication tools. The company also prints out tweets by its customers with a surprising or funny response on construction tarps. People passing by can have a laugh, it’s shared online, and the brand continues to get people talking.

(Translation: “Whenever there’s a burger king (sic) in Lille ill buy you all a menu,remember that” / “Dear @vanoukia, luckily no one thought of printing your tweet on a tarp.”)

(Translation: “Yo it’s not even 12 burger king’s packed open other restaurants” / “Hey @mroymusic, to make you happy we’re opening one here, C?”)

A communication strategy with strong local roots to attract more customers to the restaurants

At Burger King, a team within the marketing and communications department is dedicated exclusively to speeding up local activity: the team manages the openings and works to increase each restaurant’s visibility in their respective area.

Before every opening, the team shares a “local post,” something related to the news of the region on Facebook and Twitter. They’re “dark posts,” meaning they’re not visible on Burger King France’s national pages, but will be to users who are located in the area of a new restaurant (within a 40km radius).

Users who see the post can then sign up on a side page and receive an invitation with a free menu offered. “This process isn’t systematic, but works very well,” Marine explains.

A cultivated and well-displayed bond with its customers to generate buzz

Burger King entertains such an intense proximity with its customers that for Christmas—wait for it—he company offered its best fan on Facebook one of its restaurants!

(“To our biggest fan, Merry Christmas, Sullyvan.”)

As a reward for his loyalty, Burger King offered its most active fan on social media his own restaurant, with a reserved parking spot, a table named after him, one year of free burgers in every Burger King in the world…

The stunt was presented in a video that surpassed 60,000 views on YouTube and served the company’s name well.

At the heart of a media strategy to maximize brand awareness: social media

Burger King uses every social media platform differently to make the most of each. But one principle is constant throughout: “a strong brand personality; always a bit of arrogance and irony to not take ourselves too seriously.”

Twitter is used to mark the tone of the brand, both online by interacting with followers and on the street by printing out tweets and funny responses on construction site panels.

“On Instagram, users are the ones driving the Burger King account.” Indeed, the company mostly counts on User Generated Content as it regrams (or shares) content created by Instagram users. Not only does this considerably lowers the cost of content creation, it’s also a way to generate even more user engagement on the platform.

On Facebook, Burger King uses a very different strategy from McDonald’s, whose Facebook page is used to share information and managed by a very active community manager who answers comments and has a functional purpose they fill with humor.

At Burger King, the thing that matters most if user engagement. Most posts give incentives like free burgers or the title of “King or Queen of Burger King” to make people like the post and leave comments.

“Social media allows us to create a real and engaged community, to turn our followers into brand ambassadors,” Marine Dupas tells us. Community managers don’t answer every comment, “only pertinent comments where they feel they can make an impression with the tone of the brand.”

Burger King thus continues its expansion in France with a powerful communication strategy, strong local roots, and a clever use of social media. From now until 2020, every Quick restaurant will have become Burger Kings.

With over 600 million active users every month and 95 million posts published every day, Instagram’s success has nothing left to prove. The social media platform has become more than essential to boost businesses’ online visibility. And it has become even more of a key player for restaurants: food is people’s third favorite type of content on Instagram.

Instagram isn’t difficult to use, but it’s best to follow a few guidelines to make the most of what the platform has to offer. Here are a few tips and tricks to take your restaurant’s Instagram account to the next level, reach a new audience of potential customers, and convert them to real ones.

1) Create a business and restaurant account

The first step is obviously to get your restaurant on Instagram. Once you’ve created an account, the only thing you have to do is go to your Profile, click on Settings and Account, check the “Switch to Business Profile” option, and fill the required information.

You’ll then be able to access your account’s statistics (number of views, number of profile views following a post, number of clicks…).

Make sure your restaurant is easily identifiable: your username has to match the name of your restaurant, or at least be coherent with your concept, so people can readily find you. Keep your profile public so that people who don’t follow you can also see your posts (and be compelled to follow you!). Remember to put up all the important information in your bio, namely the restaurant’s phone number, address, and opening hours, as well as a link to your website.

To this day, 8 million businesses have already created dedicated Instagram accounts, a number which confirms how well professionals have embraced the platform. The next step for beginners would be to learn how to use it efficiently to reach their goals.

2) Publish scrumptious photos that’ll make your followers hungry

Instagram is by far the most visual social media platform: its raison d’être was to allow people to publish quality pictures with the filters available on their phone. It is more and more routine for restaurants to make a name for themselves and build their reputation on Instagram. Visual content being more appreciated than textual content, be sure to publish beautiful, appetizing photos on your account that will easily generate engagement.

New York City’s most famous deli restaurant, Katz’s Delicatessen, regularly shares “food porn” photos highlighting the mouth-watering quality of their sandwiches. And it works: these types of posts often get them over 3,000 likes.

3) Settle on a singular visual identity to shape your online presence

Using the same filter for your published content will lend a harmonious and aesthetic effect to your feed. Continuity in your editorial policy is key. In your posts, make sure your logo appears and feel free to appropriate a few words or expressions that’ll set you apart. This is how your restaurant will be recognized: you’re building a brand identity for your restaurant, a strategy that Pizza Loves Emily in New York has applied very effectively:

4) Engage with your followers to build a relationship with them

It is paramount to interact with your followers and with other Instagram users to build a relationship with them. Find out what your audience’s interests are, what your followers like, their go-to spots, the accounts they follow… and use all that information in your interactions with them. Reply to all their messages and leave comments on their photos to show your interest. But don’t be too pushy—you don’t want to run the risk of being seen as a spam account.

5) Encourage your customers to publish content themselves

Finding a way to incite your followers and customers to publish their own content of your restaurant is a good way for you to get free advertising. That’s what is called UGC (user-generated content), content that is created and shared by customers, a way to spread more photos of your restaurant with a lesser cost and generate engagement with your customers who will be pleased to see their posts published on your account.

Paris New York favors UGC on Instagram, which has proved to be quite a good strategy for them. The burger restaurant set up a space in its bathroom entirely dedicated to the taking of selfies:

Burger King also encourages Instagram users to publish photos of their burgers. The chain account then relies on “regrams” to fill its feed:

6) Publish entertaining and appetizing content

Post pictures of your dishes that’ll have your followers mouth-watering by making it seem as though they can just taste the food through the screen. That’s all there is to food porn! Describe it with specifics: the taste, smell, texture… Feel free to use humor, to be entertaining: content that makes people smile or laugh is always more successful. Big Mamma manages to bring together food porn and humor, and generates excellent engagement rates on all its posts:

7) Use current events to publish pertinent content

The calendar year provides many opportunities to share timely content with your followers. You can extend your best wishes after the new year, during the holiday season, celebrate Mother’s Day, Halloween, Easter… Spot all the dates you can use and think up creative ideas for posts that will make your followers smile and create engagement. Our advice is also to share your own milestones with them: your chef has won an award, your restaurant celebrates an anniversary, you were talked about on the news… Use all the interactive channels at your disposal to communicate with them about these events and maintain a close link with your customer base.

8) Share videos

Videos generate good engagement rates and reach a wider audience. Why not show what’s going on in the kitchen, in the restaurant, or on your plates?

A “food porn” video shared by Benedict in Paris was viewed over 3,000 times:

Instagram’s story feature is a good tool to increase your visibility on the platform. Stories allow you to promote your storytelling strategy by communicating more directly with your customers. Whenever your restaurant is tagged in one of your customers’ stories, feel free to repost it on your own account with proper credits. That way, you can relate to your followers that an influencer, or even just a happy customer, has come to eat at your restaurant. Reposts of this kind are a token of trust for potential new customers—don’t forget to use them!

9) Organize contests to widen your reach

Contests can quickly increase your follower count and your restaurant’s online visibility. Our tip for contest guidelines is to make contestants like your post, follow your account, and tag friends in their comments. If the prize is appetizing enough, you can also ask that they share your post with a unique hashtag. Signature Restaurant in Algiers often uses contests to boost its visibility:

10) Use the right hashtags to maximize your visibility

Hashtags are a way for Instagram’s algorithms to better index and highlight your content so new users can see it. Be careful to use the most used hashtags to maximize your visibility! As an example, the hashtag #burger is used three times as often as #burgers; it is consequently wiser for you to use the first hashtag:

Here are a few of the most popular hashtags on Instagram:

#food: 260 million posts
#foodporn: 150 million posts
#yummy: 110 million posts
#instafood: 107 million posts

The food guide Le Fooding gives Instagram users the chance to be regrammed and thus be seen by thousands of people. To that end, you have tag the media outlet twice in your post, with a hashtag (#lefooding) and a mention (@lefooding). Paris restaurant Draco had one of its truffle pizza regrammed:

11) Create your own hashtag to track your restaurant's progress

Having a unique hashtag for your restaurant allows you to track your standing on Instagram. Paris New York uses that strategy with the singular hashtag #mercreditoilettes (#wednesdayrestroom):

12) Share behind the scenes content with your followers

In addition to photos of food, feel free to share content from backstage. Introduce the members of the team, highlight their personality, share anecdotes, pictures of the kitchen staff in action… It’s important for your customers to see everything that goes into preparing their food, and it can be gratifying for your team to be recognized. You may run a business account, but there are human beings behind all aspects of your restaurant!

The pizzeria Bianco often shares content featuring staff members. For Christmas, they highlighted members of the team with a lot of humor to boot:

13) Share news and up-to-date promotions to keep your customers coming back

Publish content about special deals, promotions and events: they’re a perfect way to attract customers to your restaurant.

14) Add emojis to boost your posts’ engagement rate

Emojis allow you to improve how well your posts generate engagement. They’re also a way to appear more sympathetic, and to build a closer bond with your followers. We recommend you use the knife and fork, sushi, burger, and pizza emojis that are very popular:

The influencer @stuffbeneats (40,000 followers) uses several emojis in his captions, and generates an average engagement rate of 7% on his posts, which is an excellent rate with an audience of this size.

15) Collaborate with influencers

A smart collaboration with an influencer can boost your restaurant’s online visibility. For a collaboration to be effective, you have to pick your influencers carefully: the menu and spirit of your restaurant have to be in line with the type of content published by the influencer.

Le Dersou recently collaborated with @lefrenchfood (19,600 followers on Instagram), who shared a photo of one of their dishes on his account:

You can even go further, like Roomies Burger who collaborated with @PariswithCharlotte to create a limited edition “PariswithCharlotte” burger:

Another influencer, Stéphanie Guillemette, organizes regular brunches with SLOE (but not exclusively), and takes care of promoting them ahead of time to fill the restaurant’s tables.

Today 8 Americans out of 10 are choosing or checking restaurants online. You need to be listed in all the relevant platforms to attract new customers.

Restaurants need to have a strong online visibility to get new customers. Below are the top 14 platforms where you should be listed to increase your sales:

1. Google: the importance of local SEO

On average, 9 billion Internet searches are made on Google each day. Whenever someone searches for a restaurant online, Google will suggest the most relevant results based on their search criteria and location. The first page of results will include 3 local businesses on a map and a series of links deemed relevant by Google - generally the first links come from TripAdvisor, Yelp or media articles.

The most effective way to attract customers in your establishment? Get a spot in the top 3 displayed on Google Maps. To achieve this, you must first create a Google My Business profile if it does not exist and regularly update it with quality content, by sharing publications, adding photos, responding to comments.  The optimizations we made for Bask, a tapas restaurant in San Francisco, allowed the restaurant to get 57,000 views and get in the top 3 Google search results for its most strategic queries.

Creating and optimizing your listing on Bing and Yahoo is also useful - even if they are much less used than Google (respectively 3.4% and 1.8% of requests). Appearing in the first results in their Google My Business equivalents (Bing Places and Yahoo Local) reinforces your visibility as well.

2. TripAdvisor: the n°1 travel site

The platform registered 315 million unique visitors per month in 2015 and 200 million reviews. Available as a mobile app or website, TripAdvisor allows you to specify your search with criteria: neighborhood, type of food, price range, specific diet etc. The application uses geolocation to suggest nearby establishments to users.

The more complete a listing is (pictures, descriptions, attributes, number of important notices, comments with answers etc.), the more the TripAdvisor algorithm will push the establishment among the first research results. In the U.S., nearly 90,000 food establishments are already listed. Another reason it is useful to be visible on TripAdvisor is because the pages of the website are well referenced on search engines. For example, if you have an Indian restaurant in New York, when someone searches for an Indian restaurant, under the top 3 Google results, links to TripAdvisor and Yelp pages featuring "The Best Indian Restaurants in New York City" will appear. Appearing at the top of these specific rankings will inevitably attract new customers.

The most effective solution is to appear even higher among the first 3 results suggested by Google. The Maharajah in Paris, France, with whom we work, ranks today in the 1st position for the request "Indian restaurant" in Paris, which is a great way to attract new customers directly.

3. Yelp: The leading service industry social network in the U.S.

With geolocation, Yelp can suggest shops, restaurants, cafes and bars nearby. The search criteria are similar to those of TripAdvisor and The Fork; nevertheless Yelp also looks like a social network. It is indeed possible to "check in" in establishments as one would on Facebook and "follow" friends or users to discover their favorite establishments or those they advise against.

4. Bing: Places for Business

Being one of the top search engines, every month over 150 million users search for local businesses and services on Bing, and many of these people are looking for great places to eat. If people aren’t searching on Google, chances are they’re searching for your restaurant on Bing.

5. Allmenus: The menu listing platform

People need to look at the restaurant menu before they decide to dine in or to order. Every month, over 550,000 people visit Allmenus to make their choice. It is one of the most comprehensive restaurant and food delivery guide with over 255,000 menus. This menu-oriented directory includes listings for hundreds of thousands of restaurants, and it is searched by millions of people each month. Plus, your Allmenus listing will also appear on other top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

6. CitySquares: The partner for local businesses

Founded 13 years ago, CitySquares champions itself as a partner for local, independently owned businesses, including restaurants. With over 700,000 visitors, CitySquares is one of the most influential website to list your restaurant. It also markets itself as an outlet to help businesses gain exposure across the web. Think of this directory as very “hyper-local”. It is an ideal listing spot for eateries looking to draw drop-in traffic.

7. Foursquare: The social media app to choose a restaurant

With over 50 million active user per month, not only is Foursquare a popular directory for restaurants, it is a popular social networking website, too, easily connecting to your Twitter handle. Guests can check in and comment on your restaurant, and this level of interaction makes them feel like they’re already at the table. Over 1.9 million businesses have already registered their locations to connect with customers.

8. Eater: The trendiest guide to find a restaurant

With over 10 million visitors per month on their website, Eater has gain trust from the American audience. With a quirky tone, sense of humor and great pictures, Eater presents the best tables that have not ticked all the criteria to appear on the Michelin Guide but are nevertheless excellent!

Eater is particularly active on Instagram with over one million subscribers and an audience that grows by at least 2% to 3% each month. For Food influencers, using the hashtag #Eater has become a reflex and seeing your publication "regrammed" by Eater is a real sign of recognition!

9. TimeOut: The trendy urban guide that also features restaurants

TimeOut presents the best addresses for a night out (restaurants, bars, exhibitions, shows etc.) in big cities like New York or Los Angeles, London, Paris or Madrid. The content is not exclusively related to food, but a rich section is dedicated to restaurants, tea rooms, pastry shops and bars—an opportunity for restaurants to gain visibility with a similar target audience as the Eater. The media outlet is particularly active on Facebook where it has gathered almost 1 million subscribers for the New York page.

10. OpenTable: The booking platform dedicated to restaurants

It is one the world's leading online restaurant booking platforms, seating more than 24 million diners per month via online reservations across more than 43,000 restaurants. The OpenTable network connects restaurants and diners, helping diners discover and book the perfect table and helping restaurants deliver personalized booking services to keep guests coming back.

Every month, OpenTable diners write 450,000 restaurant reviews. What are they saying about your business? Join the conversation by creating your OpenTable page. The directory listing is worth it for the OpenTable app alone.

11. Yahoo: Local Listing

Much less used that Google, Yahoo still owns 12,7% of the U.S. desktop search market and 7,1% of the U.S. mobile organic search market. With news, reviews, ratings, directions and interactive maps, the multi-faceted Yahoo! helps over 150 million people find local restaurants and eateries. Use Yahoo! to share information about your business and reach new targets.

12. Zomato: The discovery service

Formerly Urbanspoon, Zomato provides you with in-depth information on go-to places around you. It allows you to respond to guest reviews, add photos to your page and update key information about your establishment. Fail to claim your Zomato page and you won’t be able to do any of this. Don’t miss out; claim your page today.

13. Airbnb: The travel booking platform getting interested in restaurants

Airbnb customers in 16 U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Charleston, Austin, Seattle, and New Orleans are now able to book restaurants through the lodging-reservations service. The short-term vacation rental company announced a few months ago that it has officially partnered with the restaurant booking system Resy. Reservations can be for tables, prime seating, and prix-fixe dinners, and Airbnb noted that in the future it will consider offering exclusive tables for Airbnb users, as well as social dining experiences where guests can share a meal and meet other Airbnb travelers.

In 2017, Airbnb registered on their U.S. website over 44 millions users, and is projected to have over 86 millions of users by 2021. In the face of such an audience, it is more than worth it to have your restaurant listed on Airbnb. Even though most people still use the platform for short-term vacation rental, the restaurant booking platform is a way to attract more eyes on your business, and will probably grow in the next few years.

14. Mapquest: The mapping service

With over 35 millions of users every month, Mapquest is one of the largest online map services and can help bring local customers right to your restaurant. Trusted by drivers, this listing is great for businesses seeking to attract any type of customers in the direct area. To be seen in this driving app is a must for your establishment.