8 Powerful Strategies to Market Your Restaurant

DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as legal, accounting, tax, HR or other professional advice. You are responsible for you and your businesses' legal and regulatory compliance. Contact your attorney, accountant, or any other relevant professional for specific advice related to your own needs and circumstances.

From building a website to social media to more traditional advertising methods, here are 8 ways to improve your restaurant marketing and set your business up for success. 

A restaurant loyalty program is designed to fit the needs of every individual restaurant. While you may ask, “What’s the point?,” the truth is that loyalty programs encourage consumers to come back time and time again. 

Creating a loyalty program for your restaurant can be easier than you think. With many POS Systems on the market now including loyalty programs within the software, restaurants can create, edit and manage their loyalty programs without the need for a third party software. Additionally, if you have a cloud based POS system like KwickPOS, you can customize your loyalty program from any device with ease. 

Customer loyalty programs are also a way to not just retain customers but ensure that they come back for more. Loyalty programs do a great job at collecting customer information such as phone numbers and email addresses. With these email addresses and phone numbers, you can easily send sms ads and email campaigns to customers who are more likely to patronize your business versus a brand new customer.

Rewarding customers with free items, build up points, discounts, coupons and more via a restaurant loyalty program can increase your revenue off of the very customers who already frequent your restaurant. 

It is important to note that approximately 75% of consumers are using social media to research businesses and brands they potentially want to patronize. But social media marketing isn’t just about posting randomly to one or two platforms in hopes that your business will go viral. An effective social media marketing strategy can take a lot of work and money to truly make a difference in your business’s brand awareness. But fear not, here is a list of easy and effective ways to promote your restaurant without taking up too much of your busy day or spending much money.

Spotlight your mouth watering food: What attracts people more than pretty words describing your food are high quality images and videos that will truly sell your menu items. If you have a phone or, even better, a camera, you can take some shots of your food, drinks, desserts and more. Add them to your menu, post on social media, google, so on and so forth to give your customers a more visual depiction of your flavorful menu items.

Feature your staff: Consumers don’t just want to look at your services or food, they want to feel a connection with you and your staff. Especially for smaller establishments, being personable and showing your staff enjoying working at your restaurant, is a great way to increase loyalty and engagement. Diners want to come to a warm and inviting place. Display that warmth on social media via you and your staff to create a “face” for your restaurant’s brand. 

Dig into Trends: Look at what others are doing to build their brand on social media. Making trendy posts and videos can increase your followers and engagement, albeit over time. Finding trending audio or emulating other people’s posts can help you increase the amount of content available to post quickly and at times effortlessly.

No matter how many platforms you choose to post on, creating consistent content over time will help increase your restaurant’s awareness in addition to allowing new and current customers to be more engaged, supportive, and invested in your business.

Gift cards are one of the best kept secrets in revenue making in the restaurant and retail industry. Many think of gift cards just as a simple marketing tool yet, if used properly, it can become another great revenue stream for your business.

Offering restaurant gift cards is a great method of advertising as you are essentially getting paid to promote your business. It shows trust and loyalty from your customers who are willing to introduce your restaurant to friends, family, coworkers and more. Combined with a bit of word-of-mouth marketing, you could gain new customers all referred by your current patrons. 

With pretty designs that show off your food, logo and/or brand, you can attract people to buy your physical gift cards. Having themes such as holidays, birthdays and more could also boost gift card sales, commonly during any gift giving season.

But how do gift cards make you money? To learn more, read our blog post, Gift Cards: The Secret to Earning More while Gaining More Customers, dedicated to the topic.

Google is an important part of any consumer’s buying journey. Most people rely on google to see reviews, get business information and more to make their purchasing decisions. For restaurants, it’s incredibly important to have a visible presence on the search engine. 

Many people will often use google to search up a restaurant before they decide to dine there. Google My Business (GMB) listings allow for crucial business information to be highlighted when potential diners search for your restaurant or similar ones. Restaurants can add their phone number, website, online ordering sites, business hours, location and more onto their Google My Business page. Other useful information to include in your listing could include reservation pages or even a merchandise e-store.

Creating and updating your GMB page can be time consuming and confusing. However, at ZBS, we can help you optimize your GMB listings and help oversee, update and sync your information across multiple platforms. To learn more, contact us today or fill out our contact form for more information.

Even though modern day marketing often focuses on digital formats such as social media, restaurants shouldn’t shy away from traditional methods of marketing either.

Often channels such as sending direct mail can, at times, reach your target market easier than scrapping for views on Instagram. The type of direct mail you send can also differ depending on what the end goal is for your mailing campaign. Sending coupons or special offers to potential customers can increase the amount of dine in customers you have which could be great for many new restaurants who do not yet have notability within the community. Mailing or passing out your take out menus could also increase sales, but in a different way. Take out menus often have website links, phone numbers and more which make for easy ordering. Putting on links to your online ordering websites or even listing the platforms your restaurant can also increase sales, many of which could potentially come from phone and online order platforms.

Other forms of traditional marketing could include making flyers, partnering with local radio stations and advertising on TV. While the latter two could be incredibly expensive for smaller businesses, printing and handing out flyers could be a more cost effective way to get your business’s name out there.

The dreaded reviews. Of course there is the high of good reviews, when they’re good they boost your business’s reputation. However, bad reviews could bring down your ratings and decrease your community’s trust in your restaurant. While there is no way to completely avoid bad reviews, there are methods to decrease their impact all the while letting the great reviews shine. 

First off, having personal conversations with your customers via reviews can grow your relationships with the very people you serve. Replying to both positive and negative reviews are a great way to show that you are attentive to the thoughts of your customers and can take feedback. Replying to as much feedback as possible on Google, Facebook, Yelp and similar sites is a great way to encourage positive reviewers to come back and hopefully turn some of the bad reviews into better ones.

But another way to try and control your reviews is by implementing a customer review function via your POS system. KwickPOS has an easy to use customer review application that can allow you to control what reviews get posted and forwarded to big review sites such as Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews and Yelp. Via your POS, you can set which reviews (based on star ratings) will be held for review and which are automatically posted. For example, you could set all reviews three stars and under to go under review before posting while four stars and up are automatically posted onto review sites. While not every bad review can be eliminated, some restaurants have seen boosts in their overall ratings directly after using the customer review function. To read more about the customer review function on the KwickPOS, read our blog post about How the Customer Review function on your POS can increase your overall ratings on Google, Yelp & Facebook.

Your community is your customer base and the people you interact with on a daily basis. They are your bread and butter and the people you should cater to the most. Giving back to your community is not only a great way to partake in philanthropy but also a way to promote your business at the same time. 

Sponsoring schools, sports and charity events is a great way to support good causes, especially those you believe in, while getting your restaurant’s name out there. Your business and its position can be elevated to one that is a pillar within the community. 

Other methods could include hosting events at your restaurant, hosting sporting events, game nights, themed events, etc. Promoting these special events can also bring people who wouldn’t normally come to your establishment while bringing your community closer together.

By Livie Wang