People eat with their eyes first. Getting food in front of diners’ eyes before they enter a restaurant is the key ingredient to filling seats with new and existing patrons. That’s what FoodieVideos.TV founder Damon Thompson explains to restaurant owners. Being foodie himself, Thompson blends his love of food with his experience in video production and provides restaurant owners with the missing ingredient needed to get their food in front of the eyes of new diners.
“I love food, and because I love food I understand the things that get people excited to want to sit down and dine,” says Thompson. FoodieVideos.TV creates high quality promotional videos with beauty shots of the food preparation, finished dishes, decor of each restaurant, and testimonials from the chef and diners. “Our goal is to make the restaurant, chef, and signature dishes look as good as they are.” Once the video is complete, the restaurants are then able to showcase a full-length video on their websites. A smaller video is then cut from the original promo. “With the smaller videos, we’re able to do mobile marketing through our strategic partner,” he says. That service tweets out the videos, handles Facebook integration, and sends out offers directly to restaurants’ guests through text messages.
With the rise in popularity of television food shows like Bravo’s Top Chef, it’s no surprise that diners enjoy viewing the action of dishes being prepared and hearing chefs talk about their process. “People love seeing the process, even if they can’t duplicate it at home, and seeing that gets them hungry!” says Thompson, who is a member of the National Restaurant Association.
Research shows that whether it’s a landing page video, one used for email marketing, webinars or search marketing, having a video will convert more users. Zappos reports that product pages with video convert 6-30% better than ones without. Vidyard reports over 100% increase in conversions by using video.
Thompson points to the example of a once-failing cajun restaurant in the greater Detroit region that turned to FoodieVideos.TV to help them with their marketing. Executive Chef Brian LeBoeuf’s Crooked Bayou Cafe is located in Fowlerville Michigan, a rural area about 45 minutes from Detroit. “When we first went out there, there wasn’t much traffic coming into the restaurant,” says Thompson. “He was practically giving away food and we still didn’t have enough people to fill the restaurant to make it look full for the video!” Sending the videos through social media and mobile marketing helped Crooked Bayou Cafe attract diners from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and beyond. The result-Crooked Bayou Cafe is now thriving.
FoodieVideosTV.com was created under Thompson’s award-winning video production company, iMultimedia Services, which has produced hundreds of promotional videos for Fortune 500 corporations and small businesses. What ultimately satisfies the self-proclaimed foodie’s appetite is the ability to provide creative, compelling videos that get diners interested in visiting new restaurants.
To learn more about using foodie videos in restaurant marketing visit FoodieVideos.TV.