Have you ever wondered about the different options available to help grow your restaurant business? Learning how to market and grow your restaurant business shouldn’t have to be a massively difficult challenge, and there are numerous excellent strategies you could implement to help market your restaurant. Fortunately, we have outlined the 10 great restaurant marketing tips you follows to ensure you’re getting the most from your restaurant marketing efforts.
But remember: every business is different, so don’t leave things to chance. Always keep a close eye on your marketing efforts accordingly to ensure you’re taking the right steps for your business.
10 Great Restaurant Marketing Tips You Should Know
The following ten marketing tips could be ideal if you’ve been looking to market your restaurant. However, if you’re still not sure how to market your restaurant, starting with the basics is always a good option.
#1 Create your Restaurant Website and Social Media
One of the first things you’ll need to do to improve how you market your restaurant is ensuring your website is working effectively. Regardless of whether you’re part of a large chain or if you’re just a small local store, customers these days expect to see a restaurant website as a matter of course.
As such, ensuring your website is easy to view and navigate is essential. Fortunately, creating your restaurant website is easier than ever with online website builders. Moreover, creating a social media presence on platforms such as Facebook can allow you to expand your reach further. Check out our article on how to create a restaurant website.
#2 Build a Restaurant App
In many cases, restaurants assume that having a working website alone is enough. However, this can be a major mistake, as it can leave potential customers losing interest in your brand before they even try your food.
Therefore, in addition to your new website, ensure that you have a fully functional restaurant app and online ordering platform to keep things simple for your customers. An effective restaurant app should be intuitively designed and allow your customers to place an order or book a table in minutes – so they don’t lose interest in your menu in the meantime! Check out our article on how to create a restaurant app.
Top Tip: Building a restaurant app from scratch with help from a developer is an incredibly time-consuming, expensive, and potentially frustrating process. And, even after all that, you may still struggle to convey to the designer what you want from your new app. So, why not try a restaurant app development software such as OrderAx instead?
OrderAx allows restaurant owners to effortlessly make a restaurant app that aligns with their business goals, including features such as direct bookings, notifications, customization, payment collection, store finders, and more.
#3 Look at SEO
Once you’ve got your website, social media, and restaurant app up and running, the next thing you may not have considered is to optimize for the search engines. Indeed, while every website should always provide genuinely helpful information for visitors, it’s also important to look at SEO to ensure your website will rank when someone searches for it.
Keyword research is often helpful in this regard to ensure your website has the best chances of appearing in front of as many customers as possible.
#4 Create a Google my Business Page
When looking for an online service provider, we often consult Google’s map recommendations without even thinking about it. Accordingly, forgetting to register their Google My Business details can be a mistake, as it could cause your restaurant to miss out on a lot of business.
Fortunately, registering for an account with Google My Business is incredibly quick, and you can quickly get started with this as such. Be sure to include a link to your new restaurant website and app pages to increase the chances of people following through.
#5 Encourage People to Share Content
Did you know that one of the best ways to market your restaurant business online is to encourage other people to share your content? Posting on social media can be incredibly powerful, especially if other people share the content with their friends. As such, be sure to encourage past customers to share your social media content to help the restaurant business grow.
#6 Ensure your Dishes Look Amazing
These days, when someone goes for a meal, it’s not uncommon for a snap of the meal to end up on social media (if it’s worth it!) As such, following on from the last point, ensuring your meals look mouthwatering is a great way to market your brand.
Every shared snap of a delicious meal can passively increase your restaurant’s reach, inspiring new potential customers to try your recipes. Remember: even if just one person shares a photo of their meal per day, that’s potentially hundreds – or even thousands – of people who’ll see your menu options. It’s free marketing at its best; so, you should absolutely take advantage of this opportunity.
#7 Reward Past Customers for Loyalty
One of the main drivers in terms of long-term restaurant success is customer loyalty. With this thought in mind, try to reward customers for their loyalty, be it through money off their next meal or even just a personalized service. Customers often appreciate being recognized and appreciated by your business. This appreciation will help encourage them to spread the word about your brand accordingly.
#8 Ask Customers for Feedback
If you’re struggling to work out how to market your restaurant effectively, something may be holding you back. As such, asking your customers for feedback on your current range can be an excellent way to identify (and overcome) any areas of weakness, helping make your marketing more appealing as a result.
#9 Try a Specials Menu
Did you know, as one of our top restaurant marketing tips, creating a “specials” menu could be an excellent step? Of course, you should only ever offer a specials menu if this is something you can easily manage in terms of supply.
However, creating a unique menu each week or night can help your recipes appeal to a broader range of people, thereby giving customers the chance to discover your brand even if the standard menu doesn’t appeal to them. Plus, there’s just something that little bit more exciting about a specials menu, encouraging customers who may have been on the fence to come along.
#10 Embrace all Reviews
As a business owner, we naturally only want good reviews. Unfortunately, the reality is that you’ll occasionally get bad reviews, be it for an off night’s service or from a grumpy customer.
Nevertheless, every review has the potential to help grow and strengthen your brand; therefore, be sure to embrace and reply to every review you receive. This helps show that your restaurant genuinely cares about its customers’ experiences. Leaving a calm and balanced reply to negative feedback can also help negate the damage these reviews could do and show your restaurant in a good light.