Best Marketing Strategies For Restaurants

Let’s face it – the restaurant biz is crazy competitive these days. You’ve got places popping up left and right, all vying for the same crowd of hungry diners. And with so many tasty options, it can be hard to make your eatery stand out from the pack. 

But don’t throw in the towel just yet! 

With a few smart marketing tricks up your sleeve, you can fill those seats and keep ’em coming back for more. We are dishing out all my juiciest tips to help get more folks through your doors and chowing down on your signature dishes. It’s a multi-course marketing feast – let’s tuck in! 

Course #1: Bring in Local Diners with SEO 

If you really want to start raking in the locals, you must get savvy with search engines. After all, when Joe Schmo is craving a hot meal, he’ll first whip out his smartphone and Google “best pizza places near me.” And if your website doesn’t show up, sayonara customers! 

That’s where local SEO comes in. It’s all about optimizing your website so you show up at the tippy top of those nearby search results. Make sure your address, hours, menu, and other tasty deets are front and center. Sprinkle in some location keywords here and there too, like your city and zip code. 

Pro tip: While you’re at it, claim and flesh out your Google Business listing. It’s a total freebie and puts your digs on the map for Maps searches. 

Course #2: Get Social and Show Off 

In this day and age, if you’re not on social media, you’re missing a huge piece of the marketing pie. It’s honestly a must for restaurants to be active on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever the kids are using these days. 

This is your chance to give your place some real personality and connect with diners on a personal level. Share droolworthy food pics that’ll have folks desperately swiping through for more. Brag about your juiciest specials and most delish dishes. Heck, go wild and show off your quirky decorations or fun staff! 

Having an authentic brand voice and being active in the comments helps build up major rapport. Pretty soon, your fans will be doing all the marketing for you as they share, regram, and rave about your posts to their pals. 

Course #3: Stay Top of Mind with Email 

I know, I know…email is sooooo early 2000s. But you’d be surprised how well it keeps working as a little marketing nudge to keep people coming back. Start building up your contact list by collecting emails from folks who visit your website or dine in. Once you’ve got those digits locked in, you can hit ’em up with all your latest news and deals. A quick monthly newsletter works wonders for reminding people about yourhappy hour deals, limited-time menus, and mouth-watering events. You can even get a little more advanced and automated by setting up email campaigns for things like: 

•Wishing loyal customers a happy birthday (with a free treat, wink wink) 

•Tempting recent no-shows back in with a tasty discount code  

•Sharing fresh blog posts and recipes to show off your culinary genius 

Course #4: Embrace the Delivery Craze 

These days, it seems like every restaurant under the sun is partnering up with those uberpopular food delivery apps. There’s a darn good reason that trend is showing no signs of slowing down – it seriously brings in the bucks!  

Diners are getting increasingly hooked on the cozy convenience of skipping the dishes and letting their favorite eats come straight to their doorsteps. And you’d better believe they’re scrolling and searching platforms like DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats to scope out all their local delivery options. 

By getting your restaurant up on those delivery services, you’re opening the floodgates to an entirely new crop of would-be diners. Plus, you make it stupid easy for your existing patrons to keep ordering from you, even on their laziest nights vegging on the couch. 

Course #5: Get Guests ‘Gramming 

In the social-obsessed world we live in, pretty much everyone wants to be a foodfluencer. And that means one thing for restaurants: a constant stream of free advertisement from diners! The key is finding ways to entice and encourage them to snap and share. 

There’s the obvious move of ensuring every dish is plated to perfection for maximum double-taps. But you can take it a step further by giving folks tangible incentives to post, like a discount code or freebie item in return for tagging your location. Reposting and regramming that droolworthy user-generated content is a total no-brainer to boost your online presence. 

Course #6: Roll Out Irresistible Promos  

Everybody loves hearing those magic words: special, discount, freebie. We just can’t resist a hot deal! Take advantage of that psychological pull by constantly pumping out tempting promos and offers to bring in new faces. Maybe it’s a half-off deal one night a week to drum up biz on slower days. Or a free appetizer that’ll get folks jacked to come try out your full menu. You could even level-up to a multi-course prix fixe deal that celebrates certain holidays or ingredients when they’re in season. 

Think about targeting specific crowds too, like early-bird specials for the dinner-at-4 p.m. retiree group or fun kid-friendly packages to attract more young families. There’s a discount idea for every type of diner out there – you’ve just gotta get creative and switched up to keep people excited. 

Course #7: Give ‘Em Service They Can’t Refuse 

Alright, this one may seem like an obvious no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how many restaurants completely drop the ball here: providing kick-ass customer service is a marketing strategy that should never be overlooked! You can run hyper-targeted Insta ads and SEO-optimized websites until the cows come home. But if you don’t have a warm, welcoming environment with truly exceptional hospitality, you’ll just be spinning your wheels and wasting money. 

Train your staff up to deliver a friendly, attentive experience that makes every guest feel like a VIP from the moment they walk through the doors. Top it off with consistently delicious eats using fresh quality ingredients and you’ve got the recipe for pure customer satisfaction. Those happy campers won’t be able to stop babbling about your place to all their friends, family, and coworkers. 

The buzz will spread like wildfire, bringing in tons of new foot traffic on pure word-of-mouth recommendations alone. Talk about a marketing windfall! So there you have it – a seven-course meal of marketing goodness to help put more butts in seats and get folks clamoring for your stellar cuisine. It’ll take some work to get all these strategies firing on all cylinders, but worth it to stay competitive and show ’em who’s the big cheese in the neighborhood restaurant scene!