How’s it cooking? Is your restaurant booked up every night, or could you do with a bit of a boost? Here are my ten practical tips to help market your restaurant, reach new customers and increase loyalty with your existing fans.
My 10 proven tips for marketing your cafe or restaurant
1. Make sure you can be found online
Is your restaurant well-known amongst local foodies? Great! What about tourists and other visitors? You’re missing out if you don’t make sure your restaurant has a strong presence online - especially in a place like Brighton which gets around 9 million tourists every year.
The first step you should do is to claim your Google Business Profile. It's a free listing for your restaurant on Google and arguably the most important tool to improve your local ranking on Google.
Keep your Google Business Profile (GBP) updated with a link to book, contact details, opening hours, your menu and regular updates. Make sure you respond to reviews, particularly negative ones. You can (and should) also post updates on GBP. They are essentially free advertising for your business. Don't make the mistake of just recycling your social media posts here though. These posts aren't aimed at your followers. They are seen by people who haven't previously been exposed to your restaurant, so treat them as ads instead.
While Google still owns the online search, you can maximise your visibility by also claiming and optimising your Apple Business Connect (ABC) profile. ABC is used by Apple map, and it's quickly growing its share of searches.
Bing has also its own business listing called Bing Places for Business. Claiming your business pages on all three and optimising them for the best experience, is a quick, free and easy way of boosting your visibility.
Google puts a lot of weight on the usability and speed of your website. Check your site speed on Google’s page speed tool to see how yours fares.
You should also make sure that your website is optimised for search engines, such as Google or Yahoo. There are free online tools available to check your website for any nagging SEO issues. I would recommend Ahrefs site audit as your first port of call.
2. Send emails that stand out
Email is probably the best way to consistently grow your brand and engage with your customers. But because there is a lot of competition in those inboxes, so you need to do it right!
There are over 4 billion daily email users in the world. Make sure you own your audience. Not Meta, not LinkedIn. You. At the same time, respect their inbox. These are your fans, your people - treat them kindly.
Personalised and well-written emails are a powerful, yet cost-effective way of nurturing loyalty and engaging with your customers. Tell your regulars about seasonal offers or new dishes on the menu. Share the story behind your business. Explain how you source your ingredients and work with the local community.
3. Use offers and discounts to get customers through the door
Nobody wants to be constantly discounting, I get it. If you’re constantly running offers, like some chains do, customers learn to expect them from you and are reluctant to pay the full price for their meal.
Saying that offers and freebies are a great way of getting your customers through the door, especially when the economy is tough. You should have costed every item on your menu to make sure your offers and discounts aren’t hitting your bottom line too hard.
Try one of these ideas for promotions:
- Bills runs a popular 'free bottle of Prosecco on your birthday' promo for their email subscribers. Could you do the same?
- Offer a free drink or a dessert when ordering one of your high-margin dishes.
- Early bird set menu or promo to fill up quiet times.
- Kids eat free (or almost free) during school holidays.
- Discounts for NHS workers and students.
- Happy Hour on quiet times.
- Industry discounts for hospitality.
- BOGOF for certain menu items.
4. Encourage word of mouth and reviews
Word-of-mouth marketing simply means recommendations by your happy customers. The key to recommendations is of course good customer experience. According to a 2021 Trust in Advertising Study by Nielsen, 88% of the consumers surveyed said they trusted recommendations from people they know above all other forms of marketing.
You can’t control what your customers tell their friends and family in real-life situations, but you can choose to encourage word of mouth and react to reviews in the online world.
Most booking platforms now have a tool to encourage diners to leave a review. Make sure to feature your social media platforms (particularly Facebook and Instagram) in your menus. Many customers are happy to document their eating-out adventures on social media, and as long as you provide them with a delightful experience, this is all free advertising.
Train your front of house staff to ask happy customers to leave you a Google or Tripadvisor review. Respond to the reviews, particularly the bad ones! No matter how awful the customers might have been, you need to respond to them with empathy and acknowledge their feelings even if you don’t agree with them. This will redeem you in the eyes of other customers.
5. Engage with your community on social media
Social media is a great way of engaging with your customers, and showcasing your food and the vibe of your restaurant. If you’re looking to attract a younger clientele, a beautiful Instagram feed is a must.
Social media can also be a terrible time drain, not to mention following the trends and changes in algorithms.
Creating a weekly, or ideally monthly content plan will help you to manage the workload. Remember, you don’t need to post every day. Neither do you need to be on every single social media platform. Focus on platforms where your customers spend time and where you feel the most at ease.
Keep in mind that we use social media to interact with our friends, and occasionally businesses. You should treat it as a place for two-way communication, not just a sales tool. Talk with your customers, not at your customers.
This doesn't mean you can’t post any sales messages on social media. A good rule of thumb is to follow the 80/20 rule of social media marketing. It states that 20% of your posts promote your venue, while 80% is there to educate, entertain or inform.
While it's getting harder and harder to reach customers with organic (unpaid) social media posts, Facebook groups are still getting engagement. Make sure you join the relevant local groups and participate in the conversation.
Treat your locals with special offers. Organise events and support local schools or charities to build relationships with your community. After all, they are likely to become your regulars and spread the word about your amazing food.
Use the relevant geotags, hashtags and alt text to make sure the social media algorithms will show your posts to as many customers as possible.
6. Advertise on social media
While posting on social media is free, the algorithm (especially on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram) means only a fraction of your followers will see your post. In fact, the average engagement rate for an organic (not promoted) Facebook or Instagram post in 2023 is under 2%.
The good news is that social media ads are still one of the cheapest ways of getting your restaurant in front of thousands of eyeballs. With strategic social media advertising, you can deliver ads to specific audiences by targeting cities, postcodes, interests, dietary requirements and so on.
Video tends to outperform static images on Meta ads. Motion, sound and storytelling of video ads simply have a higher chance of catching a user’s eye as they scroll through their social media feed.
Make sure to create authentic and attention-grabbing visuals, and test different headlines and ad copy to get the best return on investment for your budget.
Things to keep in mind when creating social media ads:
Video usually outperforms static images.
Use beautiful pictures of your food. Hire a professional for a photo shoot if needed. Do not use stock images.
Avoid clunky sales language. Read your reviews and mimic the language used by your happy customers.
Optimise your photos and videos for mobile (portrait format).
Capture the video viewer's attention in the first 5 seconds.
Design your video for sound-off viewing.
Add text and/or captions to your video.
Make sure the first sentence of your ad caption is attention-grabbing and encourages you to click "see more".
Target specific audiences (postcodes, dietary requirements, parents, age groups etc.).
Set up a pixel on your website to track traffic and conversions from your ad.
7. Work with local destination marketing organisations
You may already be a member of your local destination marketing organisation, like Visit Brighton. If not, it’s worth considering a membership.
It comes with a cost (the annual cost for a restaurant to join Visit Brighton in 2023 is £440+VAT), but it also comes with benefits like increased visibility, valuable backlinks and social media support. Visit Brighton also hosts press and influencer trips to Brighton. Being a member is your chance to get international and British press sent to your establishment.
Restaurants Brighton isn't strictly a destination marketing organisation, but a private company promoting restaurants in Brighton. Over the years they have gained a reputation among locals and visitors looking for quality places to eat in Brighton. Membership will give you visibility on their website, newsletters and social media. They also get a lot of website traffic from people looking for places to eat.
Becoming a member is only the first step. Once you’re a member, make sure to regularly feed news about your restaurant to your partnership manager.
8. Get high-quality food pictures
If you haven’t already, now is the time to get serious about high-quality food pictures. We humans are visual creatures. Professional photography makes a good first impression and is key to attracting new customers. You will need them for your website, socials and newsletters.
You should have at least one photoshoot each year. While beautiful pictures of the food are always a priority for restaurants, photos of your customers enjoying themsleves are also important for social media and other promotions.
9. Work with influencers
Whether you like it or not, influencers are here to stay, and they can really help you promote your restaurant at a minimal cost.
Celebrities, like the Kardashians, have millions of followers. It costs an arm and a leg to work with them. And guess what? Even if their endorsement reaches millions of people, there is little trust in what they say.
You should look at working with "foodie" micro-influencers. They are social media users who fall within the 1,000-100,000 follower bracket. Some even like to separate those with less than 10,000 followers and call them nano-influencers. As a small local business, nano-influencers are also worth working with, especially if they’re focused on food.
Most influencers are happy to create content for you in return for a free meal and drinks. Always offer a complimentary meal on a plus-one basis - nobody wants to eat alone. You can also ask them to focus on certain things, like new dishes on the menu or your vegan offering.
Don't be too obsessed with the follower numbers. Influencers with a smaller following may still have an active community and be very influential.
I have worked with influencers for years, and have a solid black book of Brighton and Sussex influencer contacts. I would love to help you get started on your influencer work if you don’t know where to start.
10. Reward loyalty
You’ve done all the hard work to get people through your door - congratulations! The next steps are keeping them happy, making sure they tell others and come back.
I don’t need to tell you how competitive the restaurant business is. Customer loyalty and retention are key to steady, growing revenue.
There are many ways of rewarding loyalty, from stamp cards to loyalty apps. You will ideally also want to collect their data ie. email addresses (don’t forget to ask for their consent!) so you can keep in touch in the future.
How to build a marketing strategy for your restaurant or cafe
These ten practical tips are a surefire way to give your restaurant a bit of a boost, but they are tools rather than a strategy.
Your restaurant marketing strategy is your overall game plan to bring in more customers. It should include:
Your restaurant’s value proposition
Your product, pricing and promotion
The key messaging
Your target market
Competitor analysis
Marketing budget
Content creation and campaigns
The goals and KPIs
Your marketing strategy will work as a basis for the annual marketing plan. This is a more practical action plan for various campaigns and the tools used to run them.
Need help with marketing your restaurant?
Do you need help marketing your restaurant? I have loved working with Brighton restaurants and hospitality businesses, such as Curry Leaf Cafe in Brighton Lanes.
You can book me for a short one-day, high-intensity session to solve a specific challenge, for example figuring out who your target audience should be, finding your restaurant’s unique positioning or running a campaign for a new menu launch.
You can also “subscribe” to my services. Together we will create a marketing plan for your business. My role may include managing your social media, Facebook ads, email marketing and optimising your website for better Google ranking. We will meet on a regular basis to tweak your strategy and execution.
Or drop me an email - let's chat!
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