While you would probably rather focus on your food than having to market your restaurant, it’s something you can’t ignore. You can have the best food in the city but it doesn’t mean much if no one is coming to your restaurant to try it. Marketing your restaurant doesn’t have to be a full-time job. Use these 7 easy restaurant and food truck marketing ideas to give your restaurant a boost and start seeing more customers.
1. Get Press
Getting press is much better than paying for an ad in a newspaper, magazine or website. People are much more likely to believe, and be less skeptical, of an article than an advertisement. While some people say “any publicity is good publicity”, that’s not always the case for restaurants. Before you go out of your way to start getting press, make sure that your food and service is consistently good to avoid and bad press or reviews.
Here are a few ideas to get your restaurant some good press:
- host an event
- impress food critics
- donate food or your chefs services to a charity
- start a publicity stunt
- write your own press for newspapers and magazines
2. Redesign Your Menu
Your menu is often what attracts many people to come to your restaurant in the first place. If your menu is old and bland it could give people the wrong idea about your restaurant. The planning, organizing and designing of your menu is very important in the marketing of your restaurant.
3. Use Your Website
Most people will search online to find their next location to eat out. Having a good website is crucial to getting these potential customers to come to your restaurant. However, just having a website isn’t always enough if no one is visiting it. You can use these 7 simple local SEO tips to get more people to visit your website and convert into customers.
Since mobile devices account for around 60 percent of all online traffic, it’s more important than ever to have a mobile friendly website for your restaurant.
4. Up-Sell
Finding new customers for your restaurant can be a difficult task, so why not get more out of the customers you already have? Increasing the average ticket size of each order can be one of the best ways to improve your sales.
Here are a few suggestions to increase your average order size:
- suggest drinks before taking food orders
- upsell more expensive drinks like wine to increase profit
- offer bottled carbonated water that costs more than regular flat water
- suggest appetizers before the main course
- offer side dishes with each meal like a salad or shrimp skewer
- make your desserts sound too good to pass up on
5. Host an Event
Hosting an event is a great way to get new people to come out and try your restaurant and it’s also a great way to get your regulars to keep coming back.
Here are a few event ideas for you to host next:
- new menu tastings
- business gatherings
- holiday parties
- live music shows
- charity fundraisers
6. Utilize Social Media
Using social media for restaurant marketing is more important now than ever before. Social media allows you to get the latest information about your restaurant out to your customers in the fastest way. Creating an online community around your restaurant builds trust with your customers which makes them much more likely to visit your restaurant over your competition.
7. Start Collecting Email Addresses
Email marketing is one of the fastest, cheapest and most efficient ways to advertise to your customers and get them to come back to your restaurant. It’s so easy to setup an optin form on your website to gather your customers, or potential customers, email addresses for your promotions. Setting up a weekly newsletter with your latest specials, events and new menu items is a great way to keep your restaurant fresh in peoples minds when they’re thinking about where to eat out next.
