Social Marketing: Insights from Meta’s Restaurant Summit

On October 1st in Chicago, Meta’s Restaurant Summit brought together more than 100 marketers from some of the most recognizable franchises in the industry for a buffet of diverse programming, discussion, and exploration into the world of restaurants.

The day served up a multi-course menu of timely topics designed to empower restaurant marketers, including tapping into industry trends, deploying strong loyalty app campaigns, boosting ad performance with AI-powered tools, and the importance of storytelling and upleveling brand creative.

Advertising for the Hungry Consumer

Digital channels are playing their greatest role in shopping to date, and it’s well known that many diners are looking up restaurant menus before visiting.

“Webrooming,” or researching online before buying in person, has risen 1.95x over the last four years, showing that the food and beverage journey for shoppers often starts in the digital world. Between Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, Meta offers a vast ecosystem of products for consumers to find and interact with consumer brands, and the demands of interaction are ever evolving.

Today’s digital consumers want more than one-way messaging. In fact, 74 percent of online adults say they want to be able to communicate with businesses in the same way they communicate with friends and family through messaging¹. This is where social media is uniquely positioned to help restaurants win big. Connecting with customers across Meta’s messaging platforms enables personal engagement on people's preferred channels, and offers a plethora of touchpoints for advertisers to tap into.

One establishment that has utilized WhatsApp to digitally connect with their community is Wendy’s.

“At Wendy’s, we engage with our audiences by ‘making friends and inviting them to lunch.’ This strategy is rooted in listening to our consumers and showing up authentically in the spaces they take an active part in,” Lauren Morton, Wendy’s Manager of Social & Partnership Engagement Strategy.

The proof is, well, in the pudding. A GFK study of over 12,000 adults across 12 countries, found that more shopping journeys that lead to purchases start on Meta technologies than on any other platform², and for restaurants specifically, Meta ads were the second highest contributor to incremental sales after TV³. Talk about a cherry on top!

The AI Advantage

Part of the secret sauce behind the performance of Meta’s ads suite is bringing automation into the kitchen. Our ads ecosystem has been powered by ever-evolving AI for over a decade now, connecting people with what matters most to them and businesses with engaged and hungry communities.

It’s no wonder that advertisers are interested in using the latest ad products we’ve brought to market. A study of more than one million ad campaigns showed that every dollar spent on our ads drives an average $3.71 in returns for businesses. And when advertisers used Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, one of our AI-powered Advantage products, they drove an average of $4.52 in ROAS⁴. In an industry where margins matter significantly, these tools can make an enormous difference in the impact of campaigns.

Kitchen: Creative

Now, for the table setting. What kind of creative works best in restaurant and food advertising? It turns out that there are several important factors that repeatedly show up in effective creative campaigns.

●  First, human connection was the most effective factor in successful campaigns. Ads that emphasized human connection with techniques like tight framing and eye contact were 81 percent more effective than campaigns without⁵. Treat people like they’re at an intimate dinner party to capture their attention and interest.

●  Prominent product featuring is the second most important creative lever. Don’t be afraid to show a close up of burgers on the grill or sizzling hot french fries.

●  Finally, stay dynamic, and serve your courses efficiently. Quick cuts, fast transitions, and movement keep viewers engaged.

Need a little creative boost to get cookin’? AI-powered tools like Advantage+ can enhance creative by animating, expanding, and diversifying content options. Over a million advertisers used Meta’s Gen AI tools in the past month to support their creative output. The result? Using Advantage+ Creative resulted in an 11 percent higher click-through rate and 7.6 percent higher conversion rate than ads without.

What’s Next

Meta provides a spread of options to meet consumers where they are and in formats they’re already comfortable with. Using AI-enabled tools and showing authenticity in creative are great pathways to building a loyal following of foodies. Tap into the massive scale of our ecosystem if you’re ready to dine with the 3.2 billion-strong community⁶ that uses one of our apps every day.

Sources

1. Business Messaging Usage Research by Kantar. (Meta-commissioned online study of 6,508 online adults in BR, MX, ID, TH, VN, UK, DE, ES, FR, IN, US, H, MY), March 2024. “The Total Economic ImpactTM of WhatsApp Business Platform For Marketing and Sales, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, February 2023. 

2. “Discovery-Led Shopping Study” by GFK (Meta-commissioned online survey of 12,000+ respondents ages 18–74 in the AU, BR, CA, DE, FR, GB, IN, ID, JP, KR, MX and US) Q2 2022. Qualifying respondents shop online at least twice a month and made an online purchase of beauty, furniture, electronics and/or apparel in the past 3 months at the time of the study; questions cited A01, A07a/b, A09, A13, A32.

3. “Custom Sales MMM Study” by Nielsen, US only (study of 5 Restaurant advertisers covering June 2020 – June 2022 commissioned by Meta), April 2023; “Custom Brand MMM Study” by Nielsen, US only (study of 5 restaurant advertisers covering June 2020 – June 2022). 

4. Meta Study, June 2024.

5. Kantar ran 5 LIFT ROI studies for US, Canada, Germany, France, and Thailand markets, analyzing campaigns and creatives aired in calendar Years 2021-2023: 56,984 creatives, 1,295 campaigns and 13.1 billion impressions. Adoption rate is the percentage of total campaigns where a feature is present 

6. Meta Q2’24 Earnings, July 2024. 

Top photo courtesy of Meta