Key takeaways

• Restaurant marketing is critical for converting potential customers as well as turning new customers into loyal customers
• Many restaurant marketing tips are either free or cost very little and should be a top priority for restaurant owners
• Social media platforms like Yelp Connect, restaurant websites, and great photos are just a few restaurant marketing ideas that can broaden your customer base

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A strong restaurant marketing plan is vital for growing and maintaining your customer base in the restaurant business. High-quality food, atmosphere, and service obviously set the foundation for a successful restaurant, but a solid restaurant marketing strategy is ultimately responsible for creating brand awareness among potential customers. Once you bring new customers through your doors, more marketing efforts can turn them into loyal customers and also amplify their voice for word-of-mouth marketing.

Creating a restaurant marketing plan is similar to creating a business plan: It doesn’t need to be a long, formal document but rather a fluid list of restaurant marketing ideas that changes over time. And while every restaurant has a different dining experience, target audience, and marketing budget, here are five common digital restaurant marketing tactics to implement that leverage our ever-online society.

1. Create a restaurant website

Whether you’re opening a new restaurant or have been managing the same place for decades, a good website should be square one for any restaurant owner’s marketing plan. It solidifies both your online presence and your established business in the restaurant industry.

Restaurants are limited in the way they can display their menu items, specials, and other information on social media platforms. Getting visitors onto your restaurant website allows them to engage with your brand more deeply, as well as make reservations and even place orders. 

For a low monthly fee, general build-your-own website platforms make creating a restaurant website simple and inexpensive. BentoBox caters specifically to restaurants and includes features to easily display your menu, phone number, and other essential information for your customers. 

The best restaurant websites have robust search engine optimization or SEO. If you have some spare cash in your budget, you could employ the services of an online marketing agency. They could use the skills of SEO food bloggers to drive traffic to your website, helping you to appear on the first page of Google with search terms that reflect your customer base.

A website generates awareness among people who never would’ve found out about your restaurant otherwise. And if you decide to invest in Google ads, Facebook ads, or any other paid digital marketing, your website will likely be the go-to destination link for those potential customers.

2. Manage your time across social media platforms effectively

You may be active on social media personally, but creating and managing social media marketing campaigns probably isn’t what you signed up for when you got into the restaurant business. Things are busy enough offline, so it’s important to make social media work as a marketing tool without becoming tied to your mobile device. 

Here’s how:

• Prioritize social media platforms used by your target audience: Even the biggest social media platforms differ in their user base. Facebook appeals to an older generation, while TikTok and Snapchat attract a younger audience. Instagram casts a wider net and will likely be one of your go-to social media platforms for its breadth.
• Use a social media scheduling tool: This lets you post to multiple platforms at once, as well as tailor your content to what your customers are looking for. Consider platforms like Yelp Connect that specialize in social media for restaurants.
• Monitor your engagement and optimize your posts accordingly: Engagement is the number of likes, comments, and shares you get on each post. Higher engagement means people are more interested in your content and more likely to walk through your doors in real life. If you see a particular type of post generates more engagement, create more posts like it.

3. Use Yelp Connect to reach customers who are already interested

Building your restaurant brand via traditional social media can be difficult, especially when a lot of people are scrolling away to see what their friends are up to rather than hunting for promotions. Using Yelp Connect offers a less intrusive and more authentic alternative. When people are using the Yelp app, they are already on a mission to find a local restaurant to eat at or even a new joint in a city they’re visiting.

Yelp Connect lets you personalize this experience for users by being able to share your most current stories. Just made an exciting new hire? Revamped your patio? Starting a new delivery service with online ordering? New menu? Share the information that you know will be interesting, and the algorithm will ensure that both new and existing customers from your demographic will see your posts. Make sure your food photos will make users crave your dishes and let your online marketing convert with well-written copy.

Then, you can check to see who engages the most with your posts with details stats. Use this information to target your posts to those showing true interest. Rinse and repeat.

4. Work with social media influencers that meet your needs

Influencers, or individuals with large, targeted social media followings, are an exciting marketing channel for restaurants. In the same way that a newspaper’s subscribers are more likely to visit you after reading an article about your restaurant, an influencer’s followers can do the same. 

But just because someone has a lot of followers doesn’t mean they will create effective marketing for your business. Before you give out free meals to influencers in exchange for exposure, consider the following:

• Look up their profiles and evaluate their engagement: Each post should average 1-5% engagement. In other words, if someone has 100,000 followers and they only get 10 likes per post, there’s a strong chance that most of those followers are fake. A profile of that size should be getting 1,000+ likes per post.
• Don’t be afraid to walk away: If an influencer asks for more than you want to deliver or becomes pushy, exit the deal before agreeing to anything. In these scenarios, you don’t need to work with someone who isn’t a good fit. 
• Tell them the hashtag you want to promote: When you develop a new marketing plan, sharing the hashtag is imperative. Make sure your influencer is on board with your brand identity and using the hashtags you want to include.

5. Yelp Ads can target your demographic perfectly

Paid digital marketing can be an extremely effective way to identify new customers. Local search ads find people at the beginning of their customer journey when they’re deciding where to dine. Consider all the times you do a quick Google search when fancying a certain type of food in your town for an impromptu dinner out. It’s usually the results at the top of the page with good images of food and decor that will catch your eye, right?

You can pay Google or Facebook to help advertise your restaurant to secure top-of-the-page placement, but why not start with Yelp? More people visit Yelp (178 million unique monthly views per month) than any other review site and they’re already on the hunt for food, so an advertisement is more likely to convert.

If you can put your restaurant website or Yelp page (once you’ve claimed your business) front and center during that initial search period, you’ve got a much greater chance of getting that curious and hungry person to come your way. 

When it comes to local search ads, Yelp offers some great options for restaurants of all types. Impressions are free, and you only pay when somebody clicks an ad. With daily budgeting built in, a sudden surge of interest won’t break the bank either. You can also choose your target audience, track your results, and more.

Restaurant marketing keeps your restaurant relevant

These days if you don’t have a presence online, you may as well not exist. Many people like to take pictures of their food before eating it, sharing user-generated content they will share online with their followers creating free advertising for your restaurant. But you must entice customers into your doors first before this positive cycle of sharing can begin.

Remember to create a restaurant website to make your online presence respectable. Manage your time across social media platforms and use Yelp Connect to reach out to people that are already interested. Utilize the mass followers of social media influencers to remind people that you have the best restaurant in your area.  Yelp Ads is arguably the best solution for paid advertising as it has the greatest reach within the restaurant industry.

As you experiment with new restaurant marketing ideas, your workload will likely increase. It’s important to use software to keep operations running smoothly. Yelp Guest Manager is a software solution that focuses on front-of-house management, helping with bookings and reservations, waitlist management, table management, floor plans, and takeout/to-go orders. 

It integrates with your Yelp Connect page for better two-way communication with diners. In fact, restaurants that start using Yelp Guest Manager experience up to twice the traffic on their Yelp Business Page.*Get a demo today!

*Yelp Internal Data 2021. Based on average results from a sample study of restaurants that purchased Guest Manager for at least 90 days (in Q2-Q3 2021) versus the 90 days prior to making a purchase. Results may vary.

By: Thomas Board