How to Market a Restaurant

Restaurant marketing is something that you may find a little stressful and intimidating. But, with the right help and support, it doesn’t need to be. How else is your target customer base going to learn of your restaurant’s existence if you are not doing all in your power to promote it and get your brand out there? Restaurant marketing ideas for the modern age we live in revolve around the internet, websites, social media, influencers and other techniques.

At Greenseed we have the experience and skills in all forms of restaurant marketing to ensure your business attracts customers and increases in popularity. To help you understand what you can do, we have put together a list of some of the most effective and efficient restaurant marketing ideas.

Build your digital presence

In this day and age, a website is a non-negotiable thing for any modern restaurant. As an absolute bare minimum, you should have a simple website with a homepage, an about us page, menu pages or PDF downloads, and a contact us page with full directions to your physical locations and Google maps.

However, in order to effectively build your online presence, you should think also about adding a blog, a photo gallery showing not just images of your restaurant, but many of the dishes you serve, and a reviews page along with a handy FAQ page. You also need to set up a Google Business Profile for your restaurant. Having this in place will mean that your restaurant will appear in local search results on Google, and Google Maps and in regular search results it means you will get a box in the right-hand Knowledge Panel.

You need to do more than just set up your profile here though, as you need to optimise it if you want it to appear in the special Local-3 pack or rank higher than your competitors in Google Maps. If you don’t optimise it properly, you could fail to attract any customers to your business profile. This listing alone contains a lot of useful and potentially converting information such as:

• Your full contact information (including full postal address, phone number, email address and website URL)
• Common questions and answers about your restaurant and food
• Popular times to dine there (other information like the best times to dine there, when you are likely to get a seat etc.)
• Google Reviews
• Reviews outside of Google
• Photo Gallery
• Category your business is listed in
• From the Business section
• Posts, any posts that you have published from your Google Business Profile page
• As well as optimising it, you need to make sure that you regularly update the information there as it changes. There is a lot of evidence to show that people who like dining out and ordering takeaways like to do their research online. Around 89% of all consumers research diners online.

At Greenseed, we understand that this can feel very challenging, especially if you are not particularly tech-savvy and just want to produce great food and make sure people have a great time at your eatery. That’s why we are here to help and can ensure you have a website that does a lot of the marketing work for you.

Encourage returning customers using email marketing

One great way to market your restaurant is by encouraging all new customers to sign up for your email marketing list. You can use an email newsletter to showcase new menu items with dates when they are likely to be added, any special events coming up, vouchers and coupons, customer reviews and stories, and a lot more. It doesn’t necessarily even need to be a weekly thing. Just something you send out regularly enough to keep customers in the loop about your business. Many users prefer it if it is not weekly because then their inbox is not getting flooded.

New to email marketing? Or simply find it a bit confusing? Don’t worry, as Greenseed are here to help.

Feature in local press

While you could pay for an advertisement in the local newspaper, there is another, even easier way you could get some local marketing for free. As printed press and media are very much a slowly dying thing, journalists working in regional and local newspapers are always on the look for easy and quick stories.

So why not give them one? You can do this by perhaps staging a special event. A launch party or maybe even a charity gala – something that will draw the attention of the residents and press to your business.

If you can also work on building a relationship with the local press, whether it’s newspapers or TV stations and news programmes, you will have a lot of great opportunities in the future to promote your restaurant.

The team at Greenseed can help identify the best local newspapers and other media outlets that you should consider making contact with to promote your business.

Utilise influencer marketing

Love it or hate it, influence marketing is here to stay. For businesses like restaurants and other eateries, just like yours, this is a perfect way to get the word out to a wider audience about your dining establishment. Find YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers and Food Bloggers to align with. Consider inviting them to your launch party or to visit your restaurant. Whatever their medium, if you can get them talking positively about your restaurant and brand via a social media shout-out, a review, a blog post or even a video review, you may see a considerable increase in interest in your eatery.

For even the most tech-savvy individuals, influencer marketing can be an intimidating area of digital marketing. At Greenseed we can help develop a superb and effective influencer marketing strategy, aligning your brand with an influencer with a strong social media platform following and who is a good match for your goals, beliefs and mission.

Social Media is your best friend

Social media marketing is not something you should be afraid of. People find it a little intimidating. And while we are not going to lie – there is a lot more to any effective social media marketing strategy than just having a profile page – it’s not something you should shy away from. Most people that connect online tend to do so through social media. It’s where they are – so you want to promote your business where your target audience is.

Social media accounts are a great way to open up communication with your customers and interested followers. You can directly promote to them, discuss changes etc.

The team at Greenseed can transform that dusty old Insta account you have or Facebook that you have into an effective social media marketing tool.

Start Loyalty Programs

A great way to encourage more people to dine at your restaurant is by offering an incentive-filled loyalty program. You could offer them money off after so many visits or special deals on special occasions and important dates.

One of the simplest restaurant marketing strategies, but undoubtedly one of the most effective as most people nowadays enjoy being regarded as loyal customers and gaining benefits because of it.

Use of booking platforms and delivery services

Another almost non-negotiable thing in this modern area is if you have a takeaway option already in place or could accommodate a takeaway option while still maintaining your in-restaurant business, then you should offer delivery services and make use of booking platforms. JustEat, UberEats and Deliveroo are just three options open to you. While you may have to pay out to these companies for being featured on their platforms, the benefits often far outweigh the downsides.

It gives you a platform where there is already an active customer base, everything is taken care of, and you simply in many situations just have to confirm orders and then do what you do best – fulfilling them. If they provide delivery drivers, then even better. If not, you should still consider adding a delivery team to your existing staff list.

Greenseed can help you make sense of the dizzying number of different delivery services and booking platforms available right now and help you work out which works best for your restaurant, the type of customer you attract and want to attract and your location.

Encourage Reviews

When it comes to dining out, more than many other things, customers have become very savvy over the last few decades and prefer to choose based on the experience of others. Therefore, when your customers have finished their meal, you could offer them the opportunity to fill out a review online. Online reviews are incredibly useful as they show people what they can expect from your restaurant and it adds trusted weight to the information you share about your restaurant.

Greenseed can help you to develop a subtle and seamless way to get those reviews from your customers. We can also sign you up and have you represented on the big review sites that people see as authoritative places online.