It’s that time of the year again when you add a little sparkle to your social media campaigns to tantalize the customers with exciting offers. Things are already looking up for the restaurant industry as this Thanksgiving Eve saw a 23% increase in guest counts and sales. With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time you got your social media campaigns all set and ready to go.

The number of people you can reach via social media is incredible. A lot of people have shared that they discovered a particular restaurant by their social media posts.

Here are some simple and fun ideas to reach out to your customers and create brand value. Such marketing strategies also help boost repeat visits to the website.

Christmas movies quiz

One of the best things to do during the holiday season is to gather around with your family, hot chocolate in hand, and binge on Christmas movies all day long. From classics like Home Alone, Elf and It’s A Wonderful Life to the latest releases like Klaus, Last Christmas, and The Knight Before Christmas, there’s a lot to help us get into the holiday spirit.

For instance: You can leave out the clues on your website banners, or simply rename a few dishes after popular holiday-themed movies. Let your customers find those dishes and share the screenshot on social media pages. This is a great way to egg on user-generated content.

Such campaigns work really well on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The lucky winner can receive a gift card from your restaurant or even a free meal. This could be a fun way to get new customers interested in your brand.

Holiday recipe

Come holiday season and Google searches for food and drinks recipes skyrocket. Millions of Americans visit cooking websites during this time of the year. Back in 2014, 86 million consumers spent an average of 25 minutes using these websites. This number will only have increased now.

Why not capitalize on this trend and share some interesting holiday recipes on your social media. The dishes do not necessarily have to be the ones you serve on your menu but you can certainly align the recipes to the theme of your restaurant.

For instance, if you are an organic restaurant, you can share some healthy recipes that help steer clear of the dreaded holiday weight or if you specialize in desserts, give some unique baking tips.

You can also create a microsite or add a landing page to your existing online ordering website to execute this campaign.

Partner with a charity

For most of us, holiday means family time, gifts, good food, warmth and lots of happiness. But there are many who are not lucky enough to share the same holiday experiences. So why not spread the cheer and spark the spirit of giving, by helping a local charity with an engaging social media campaign.

For example, if you’re partnering with a children’s charity, you can use a fun hashtag like #ToysTuesday where you encourage customers to donate toys to charities like Make-A-Wish Foundation or Toys For Tots every Tuesday leading up to Christmas.

With social media ordering offered by Restolabs, you can also start a campaign where when a customer orders food up to a certain amount from Facebook, you donate an equal amount of food to homeless shelters.

Sharing best and worst Christmas stories

Social media is all about building close relationships between the customer and the brand. These platforms allow you to be highly interactive and what better way to interact than by sharing Christmas stories.

Doing this will also help create a community as the customers will not only be interacting with you but also among themselves. Twitter would be the best medium to launch this campaign. You can make it more challenging and urge the users to be creative by asking them to thread the story within 280 characters (the limit that Twitter allows).

You can eventually pick the story which got the most reactions as the winner and give them exciting prizes that also help promote your restaurant.

Promote the holiday specials

Holidays are a great time for your chefs to experiment in the kitchen and show off their hidden skills by offering exclusive new items on the menu. During the holiday season, many people cook at home with their families and they require extra incentives to order in food.

Serving only the regular dishes is not going to entice your customers to your restaurant, but if you whip up something different and exciting, that’s sure to grab their attention.

Use your social media pages to extensively promote the holiday specials and ensure there’s enough buzz every single day. Be innovative but don’t go overboard with the campaign.

Ten-second takeaway: Festive season coupled with such eccentric social media campaigns open up the opportunity for the brand to come in touch with a lot of new customers. Make sure you capture all customer data amidst the crazy volume of incoming orders. You can then utilize the data for future promotions and marketing.

Let the festivities begin!

The competition is fierce but nothing that can’t be fought through. With the right strategy, you can capture the attention of your customers and get the largest slice of the pie as possible.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Let us know your ideas in the comment section below!