To boost your restaurant sales, you need to come up with the best restaurant marketing ideas. It will help increase the number of customers visiting your restaurant while enhancing profit levels.
Whether you have opened a new restaurant or want to grow your existing business, considering the best marketing strategies for restaurants helps you achieve success goals. Also, you can double your revenue next year.
However, an impressive deal of competition among restaurant chain operators is going on. To take your restaurant business to the next level, here we have mentioned unique restaurant marketing strategies.
Table of Contents
Restaurant Marketing Ideas To Get New Customers
1. Gain Customer Attention With Stealth Marketing
Being a restaurant owner, you know that running a business requires problem-solving skills and adaptability to trends or customers’ expectations. The best way to fulfill your customer’s needs is to know their interest and what they are looking for. To build an emotional connection with your audience, you require stealth marketing strategies.
Through stealth marketing, you can create a buzz among the audience without letting people know that products or services are being marketed to them. This marketing strategy plays a significant role in developing curiosity in the minds of people about your restaurant services. However, people also know stealth marketing as undercover or guerrilla marketing.
Under a stealth restaurant marketing plan, you can showcase your food offers on roads, malls, walls, etc., as it works best for appealing to larger audiences. You can find the best example of stealth marketing below. Here the restaurant serving fast food creatively showcases its food item on the road to attract a customer’s attention.
Even if your restaurant marketing budget is limited, you can implement a stealth marketing strategy. Through this, you can get people to talk about your restaurant quickly while increasing your customer base.
Related Article: Cook Up Your Home: Tips to Turn Your Home Into a Restaurant
2. Consider Micro-Influencer Marketing For More Online Exposure
7 out of 10 restaurants are shutting down within 18 months of launch. Therefore, it is crucial to implement creative marketing ideas for restaurants that want to achieve success goals. To get successful, your restaurant has to be noticed by every customer in your area.
To enhance your business online exposure, consider a micro-influencer marketing strategy. It works exceptionally well for your restaurant as it is operated in a specific area and you need to target a particular customer segment.
There are micro-influencers like food bloggers, restaurant reviewers, Vloggers, and social media influencers online that help you drive maximum customers. They have a huge number of followers on social media. So. collaborating with these micro-influencers is the best way to reach out to your targeted customers.
Among all social media channels, Instagram and YouTube have emerged as the best for influencer marketing. This is because customers get attracted more by seeing delicious photos and videos of food items.
Above is the example of such a renowned food blogger in the United States who has 1.7 million followers on Instagram and 272K subscribers on YouTube.
And the second example shown below is of a YouTube influencer having 5.97 million subscribers reviewing one of the fast-food restaurants in America.
What if these influencers review your restaurant’s food on their profile? Then your business reaches the maximum number of customers while enhancing its online presence.
3. Develop a Brand’s Identity For Your Restaurant
Creating a solid brand identity will help potential customers know about your business’s powerful points. Also, food lovers will figure out why to order food from your restaurant rather than competitors. Therefore, it is considered the best restaurant marketing plan to attract new customers.
To develop a strong brand identity first you need to know who your target audience is considering age, gender, interest, and much more. Then know your goals and create logos or business cards to give your brand a voice. Always remember that your brand should reflect your vision.
The best way to represent or enhance your restaurant brand is to start YouTube advertising. According to statistics, 15-24 year-olds in the United States use YouTube.
Posting videos on YouTube about your restaurant’s delicious food menu items is the best way to drive awareness about your brand to potential customers. On the other side, you can also earn money from YouTube ads. They have a partner program that can be your extra revenue stream.
Note: One of the effective restaurant marketing ideas is to be consistent and unique to build your brand as it is the way to attract new customers to your restaurant.
4. Keep Your Website Simple Yet Attractive
The Internet has become an important part of individuals’ lives to search for answers to everything. Whether it’s to purchase something online or find a service, suffering is much simpler than opening the telephone directory or paper.
In this way, a professionally designed website is the best way to build your restaurant business online presence. You need to develop a simple, functional yet attractive website that helps you convert browsers to customers.
You can increase customer conversion up to 70% with a simple and easy-to-navigate website. Above is an example of an elegant yet functional restaurant website.
Remember that your website should always be mobile-friendly, i.e., responsive. This is because people are now using mobile phones more than desktops. You can say it is the best restaurant grand opening marketing plan that helps you attract new customers via mobile phone.
5. Build a Strong Social Media Presence
In the competitive food industry, ignoring social media marketing can be very harmful to your business growth. Have the aim to build a strong social media presence as a part of your restaurant marketing plan. It helps you attract new customers to your restaurant business.
Make a Facebook business page, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram account to share pictures, special discount offers, and exclusive coupons. Likewise, remain active on social media platforms so that the consumers know about your restaurant’s recent updates.
Staying active and sharing unique food articles and special offer posts on social media platforms will help you book clients through social media. The more likes, comments, or shares on your social media post the more chances of customers clicking a website link in your post increases.
There are social media management platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer to schedule or share your posts on different social platforms as per specific location time.
6. Go For SEO Services – The Primary Source of Leads
It doesn’t matter how attractive your restaurant website is if you don’t notice it on the first page of the Google search engine. Customers often search on Google to find the best restaurant nearby.
If your restaurant is on the first page of Google, then the chances of customers visiting your website increase. It is possible when you hire SEO services from the leading marketing agency in the United States.
Search engine optimization i.e., SEO ensures that your restaurant offers are easily found by customers on both organic and local search results. It includes various techniques that enhance brand awareness and leads. Also, it helps you to increase your website speed while improving customer experience.
Overall, SEO is one of the reliable restaurant marketing ideas that help you get ahead of your competitors in your area.
7. Set up your Yelp business profile
If you are a restaurant owner who wants to attract more customers for business growth, then you should get your company registered with online directories like Yelp.
It is the online directory that customers visit to get details about some of the best restaurants near their location. In this mobile phone era, more and more people are using services like Yelp to find places to eat, drink, and be entertained.
Creating a business profile on Yelp can help you get more customers for years to come. With quality food delivery and taste, customers are likely to give positive reviews.
These reviews are examined by other browsers searching for restaurants nearby. Thus, the customer lands on your website easily. It is one of the unique restaurant promotion ideas.
8. Focus on email marketing
Email advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate sales for your restaurant business. It does not just help you generate more leads and boost sales but also build great customer relationships.
If you need your restaurant business to become popular among targeted audiences, then email marketing is the best strategy to consider. It gives you quick outcomes at a low cost and thus is considered one of the successful restaurant marketing ideas.
Here you can send out an email newsletter to your targeted customers once or twice a week. Your newsletter must include special menu items, food-eating benefits or tips, or special offers. It is the best way to spread out recent updates about your restaurant services to customers.
There are many free email newsletter templates available online, which you can consider for creative design ideas. If the customers feel connected to your newsletter, then they will surely visit your website and contact you.
Below is an example of a pizza restaurant newsletter having some basic details about their menu and offers.
9. Start Blogging To Increase Sales
To run a successful business, all you need is a customer coming to your restaurant or ordering food online. It can only be possible when customers know about your business offers or services. Often food lovers search online and visit particular restaurant websites for the best deals and bookings.
One of the best ways to get customers to your website is through posting or writing interesting food blogs. Creating a blog helps you in building a communication bridge between your brand and customers. If you consider developing the content frequently, then it will give your restaurant business a powerful voice.
Blogging is known as one of the best restaurant marketing ideas. It has many benefits like providing value to your readers, getting organic clients, increasing website search, and much more. With less effort and expense, you can attract customers to your restaurant website through blogging.
From your restaurant’s food recipes and techniques, staff bios, behind-the-scenes stories, latest updates and offers, and local happenings to accolades, all are the best blog topics to start with. Keep in mind that your key goal should be to educate guests about your restaurant before they visit the place.
10. Engage your Customers with Personalized Loyalty Programs
Today, customers will make a purchase or order something from the business if they feel beneficial. If you want to attract new customers to your restaurant business, then consider building personalized loyalty programs. This is because there is no point in offering the audiences what they are not looking for.
A loyalty program is one of the best restaurant marketing strategies that encourage customers to return to restaurants that they frequently visit. Therefore, it is very essential to develop a loyalty program that is tailored to your customers.
Likewise, you can create a loyalty card with one of the below ideas and provide it to customers visiting your restaurant.
Some possibilities of developing personalized loyalty programs:
- Offer personalized gifts when a customer redeems earn points.
- Invite them to offline restaurant events.
- Provide convenience for free food delivery or no waiting for parking.
- Offer a free gift on their specific number of visits to your restaurant.
If you want your customer to get engaged with your loyalty programs, then know who your loyal customers are and what they desire. Knowing all these, provide them all and ensure your loyalty program is easy to join.
Amazon and Apple are companies that are brilliant examples of brand loyalty while growing their business without losing customers.
The Takeaway
Running a successful restaurant business requires focus and commitment. Focus on how to increase sales and commitment to give your best customer experience.
But what if you get all in one? It can amaze you! Considering the above restaurant marketing ideas will help you attract new customers and increase annual revenue.
Everything it covers from getting an attractive website, enhancing social media presence, and collaborating with micro-influencers to other marketing plans.
Just follow these restaurant marketing strategies and watch the line of customers outside your restaurant or attend plenty of phone calls for food delivery.
Your one step in the world of marketing can change the map to your business success.
