5 Ways to Use YouTube Video Cards for Restaurants

Does your restaurant create a lot of YouTube videos?

Are you getting a lot of views on your videos, but not a lot of traffic back to your website or diners coming into your restaurant?

What if you could convert more of your YouTube viewers into regular visitors to your website and get more customers eating at your restaurant?

In this article, we’ll teach you how to use YouTube Video Cards for restaurants.
 

What are YouTube Video Cards?

YouTube Video Cards are a way to add an interactive component to your YouTube videos.

Previously, if you wanted to get people who watched your YouTube videos to view your menu, check out your weekly specials, or join your mailing list, you needed a very compelling call-to-action.

You may have used YouTube annotations. or included a link in the description of your videos to do this.

While this was a good way to generate engagement with viewers, if they were viewing your video on a mobile device, annotations didn’t work.

With YouTube Video Cards, this eliminates this issue. Now viewers can see and click on YouTube Video Cards on your videos from anywhere!

If you want to learn how to add cards to your videos, watch this short video tutorial.

I've also included a downloadable bonus guide with step-by-step instructions and additional ideas on how you can use YouTube Video Cards in your restaurant. You can get it by clicking the link below.
 

 
Now that you have a better understanding about cards, let’s take a look at some ways to use YouTube Video Cards in your own restaurant.
 

5 Ways to Use YouTube Video Cards for Restaurants

1. Promote your restaurant’s menu

One you to use YouTube Video Cards for restaurants is to promote your menu.

The Palm Restaurant often shares great videos on how to make some of their famous dishes. For example, their Steak and Spinach recipe.

This is a great opportunity to drive viewers back to their website to learn more about other items on their menu.

They can also use this as a way to engage with their viewers through YouTube comments and to gather feedback and ideas about other YouTube videos their viewers might want to see from their restaurant.

By engaging with viewers, this can also help your restaurant grow your YouTube subscribers.
 

2. Encourage customers to book a reservation

Do you have a promotional video about your restaurant on your YouTube channel?

Instead of relying on viewers to type in your website address, if you have a way for them to book a reservation on your site, consider creating YouTube Video Cards for your restaurant.

This way you encourage them to take action while they are salivating over the food presented in your video.
 

3. Make a donation to a good cause

Are you looking to expand your restaurant? Maybe you’re running a fundraiser for an event?

If you need help with funding, you can create YouTube Video Cards to help increase donations.

A great way to use this type of card is to create a short video telling viewers about your next project or fundraiser that you need help with.

By including a video card, they can immediately take action to help support it.
 

4. Sell merchandise

Does your restaurant offer merchandise with your logo on it? For example, t-shirts, sweatshirts, or beer glasses?

Don’t just rely on customers to buy your merchandise when they are eating at your restaurant.

You can include YouTube Video Cards in your videos to promote your restaurants merchandise.

This gives your restaurant another channel to be able to reach restaurant patrons.

To learn more about approved retailers, be sure to look over the list of whitelisted external URLs that are allowed.
 

5. Get Your Best Customers Involved

Does your restaurant maintain an email list of customers?

If you don’t yet have a list, don’t worry, you can start building one now using tools such as Aweber.

If you already have an email list, be sure you segment your list. This way you can customize the emails you send based on what your customers are interested in.

For example, if your restaurant is running a special on beef dishes on your menu, you could send an email to just those customers.

Not only will this excite your customers, but you can also run a very targeted campaign focused on just customers interested in that area.

Through targeting, you’ll also help increase your chances of getting those customers into your restaurant in the process.

Putting this in the context of YouTube videos, if you have videos teaching viewers about different cuts of meat, you could add a YouTube Video Card that encourages them to optin to your email list on your website to get notified about new content about beef (blog posts, videos, specials, new menu items) or you could provide a downloadable guide that goes more in-depth into the different cuts of meat that you talk about in your videos.
 

Wrap-up

YouTube Video Cards can be a powerful tool to help your restaurant grow its presence using YouTube videos. You can also learn more about your customers and what they are interested.

We hope these ideas on using YouTube Video Cards for restaurants have given you some ideas for your own restaurant.

By adding cards to your YouTube videos, this can increase the number of people viewing your menu, booking a reservation, or telling their friends about your restaurant.

Now that you know about cards and some ways to use YouTube Video Cards for restaurants, how do you plan to use them in your own restaurant?

Share your ideas on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.