Proven Local Marketing Ideas for Restaurants to Attract More Customers
We all know that the hospitality industry is quite competitive these days, especially in the food and drink sector. Still, that doesn’t seem to stop new restaurants from popping up and standing out in such an environment.
Curious, isn’t it? Well, if you look at the bigger picture, everyone loves to eat, and everyone needs to eat, which means that the demand for delicious food will never go out of demand. Not to mention the fact that people are quite open to trying out different recipes, quirky dishes, combined cultural cuisines, and a mix of this and that.
Therefore, if you have something unique up your sleeve at your restaurant, it won’t be long before people become interested in your offers. However, getting their attention is the tricky part, which is why you’ll need to implement a few local marketing ideas for restaurants and make people aware of your existence.
But don’t worry; marketing your restaurant sounds more challenging than it actually is. You have to be creative with your approach. That said, let’s have a look at some of these marketing ideas that you can start implementing right away.
Local Restaurant Marketing Ideas You Can Implement Immediately
More often than not, you’ll hear people say something along the lines of “Hey, a new place opened nearby; we should check it out.” Why is that, you ask? Because people want to explore and experiment with different foods.
Therefore, all you need is the right marketing campaign that will build awareness for your restaurant. If you don’t know where to start or how you should contact Kōvly Studio and allow industry experts to help you out.
There’s no time like the present, as they say, so here are a few local marketing ideas you can start implementing right now.
1. Loyalty Marketing
As you may already know, it costs you more to acquire a new customer than to retain one [1]. By how much, depends on the circumstances. Needless to say, returning customers are likely to spend more and are more open to trying your new products.
For restaurants, acquiring a new customer can be as simple as a passerby walking in because they were hungry or something smelled irresistibly well for them to keep walking. Once that happens, you have to lock the doors and never let them go.
Jokes aside, taking people hostage isn’t the right way to retain them. Instead, reward them for their patronage, and they’ll come back for more. Now, what is the best way to do that? Well, that entirely depends on your goals, but a well-designed loyalty program should do the trick. Such a loyalty program can include anything from:
Exceptional service and delicious food.
Discounts.
Coupons.
Free reservations.
Free meals.
Example of a well-designed loyalty program:
The Pizza Hut has one of the simplest and most efficient loyalty programs. For every dollar spent at the restaurant, you get two points that you can redeem for a free pizza.
So, for instance, after spending $100 at Pizza Hut, you get 200 points that you can redeem for ANY™ medium-sized pizza. Simple, yet effective.
And, if you’re a loyal customer for a long time, Pizza Hut will throw in exclusive rewards, birthday surprises, and much more as a bonus.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the be-all and end-all of marketing strategies for any business in any industry. The reason why it’s so important is that this strategy builds awareness, credibility and authority for your business using various tactics and approaches. It cuts through all the online noise and helps you reach your customers despite the competitiveness of the market you operate in.
Most importantly, you can launch an SEO campaign at any time with any budget. All you need is a website, which will be the main focal point for your endeavors.
You can do the majority of the basic stuff yourself, but if you want better results, it would be a good idea to hire professionals that offer digital marketing services. Speaking of which, here are a few things you can do to kickstart your SEO campaign [2].
Make your website SEO-friendly.
Create useful and meaningful content.
Use internal and backlinks to build authority.
Conduct a thorough keyword research.
Use Google Console and Analytics to monitor results and tweak your efforts.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is still considered to be the king of all marketing strategies. Not only is it effective at drawing your audience to your restaurant, but it’s also one of the most cost-effective marketing channels of all time.
In other words, you don’t have to spend much on email marketing campaigns to gain positive results, and you’ll always get a high ROI (Return On Investment).
What’s really great about email is that you control the channel, as well as control the ebb and flow of your campaigns. That said, here are some tips to make email marketing work in your favor:
Use personalized content.
Leverage email segmentation.
Include your loyalty program in email marketing.
Use A/B testing to boost the efficacy of your campaigns.
4. Local Influencers
If you wish to spread the word about your restaurant fast, you better get in touch with local influencers. This type of marketing can get you noticed quickly due to influencer endorsements. The result is that their audience becomes your customers.
If you offer delicious food and exceptional service, word-of-mouth through social media and other channels will do the rest. People will start mentioning you, providing reviews, tagging you on their social media posts, and so on. Impress the initial crowd, and soon, an avalanche of patrons will be at your doorstep.
The only catch is getting an influencer onboard. They usually want something in return for their endorsement. You won’t know what that is, exactly, until you reach out to influencers and see what they have to say. At the end of the day, you’ll surely work something out.
5. Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
If we look at SEO as an organic approach to marketing your restaurant, search advertising would be the paid approach. So, what’s the difference? Technically, both tactics will yield the same results.
However, search advertising gets you what you need faster. For example, SEO takes time before your content gets to the first page of SERPs, and you must do a lot of optimizing, ranking, and other stuff to get there.
SEA skips most of the steps and places your ad copy on the first page of search results right away. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay a fee to Google or Bing or whichever search engine you’re advertising on. This is actually a great approach if you need to see viable results quickly.
But if everyone pays for the same thing, how does the search engine determine who will appear first? Now comes the tricky part. Even though you pay to push your ads to the front of the queue, you must still have a great quality score to claim the first spot on SERPs. This so-called quality score is determined by a few factors:
Keyword relevancy
Expected clickthrough rate
Landing page experience
How your ad matches user intent
6. Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Once again, we’re back to SEO, but this time, it’s a bit more specific. Now, we’ll focus on local SEO and its importance for your restaurant.
Therefore, if you look at SEO as a way to establish your presence and visibility in the entire online market, local SEO is designed to help your business grow in a specific area or location, hence the name.
At the center of it all is the Google My Business directory, which you must optimize for if you want viable results. Here’s how you can do that:
Claim your Google My Business profile.
Provide accurate information, such as an address, phone number, open hours, etc.
Choose a category (i.e., restaurant) and write a short “from business description.”
Add quality images, photos, and videos.
Include questions and answers most relevant to your potential customers.
Acquire and post user reviews.
Post regularly on your profile, just like you would on social media.
Respond to user feedback.
Update information when and if necessary.
7. Use Restaurant Reservation Apps
As mentioned before, building awareness for your restaurant is of the utmost importance, especially when you’re just starting out. The more people know about your place, the more customers you’re going to have.
For this to happen, you’ll have to leverage every tool at your disposal. Fortunately, there are plenty of those available to you, and some of the most efficient tools include restaurant reservation apps.
While these apps help you manage occupancy and reservations to further boost revenue, they also act as a marketing tool at the same time. Each app has unique features you can leverage to improve customer service, engagement, retention, and more.
8. Coupons
Everyone loves coupons, and everyone loves getting coupons, especially if those yield discounts on food and beverages. This marketing tactic will get you the attention you need faster than you realize. What’s more, coupons can be used in both traditional local store marketing ideas for restaurants and online approaches.
After all, why not maximize your reach when you have an opportunity to do so? A good incentive is sometimes all that’s needed to boost customer acquisition and retention. What kind of coupon strategy you’ll implement is entirely up to you.
You can go for discounts only, buy one get one free deals, or some other kind of specialized promotion. As long as the strategy resonates with both your customers’ needs and your business goals, you can’t go wrong with coupons.
9. Foodie Photos
Have you ever seen a photo of a meal and you could practically smell and taste the food already? Those kinds of photos seal the deal for people who can’t decide whether to try your dishes or not. So, make plenty of those and don’t hesitate to use them.
Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for foodie photos as these networks are more about visual discovery than anything else. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use such photos for other marketing endeavors. You can’t overdo it with pictures of food because people simply can’t get enough of those.
Elevate Your Restaurant Marketing Ideas with Kōvly Studio
If you have amazing marketing ideas for your restaurant, we can turn them into reality, and even if you don’t have any ideas, we’ll come up with a few together.
At Kōvly Studio, we have the expertise that delivers, and our team of professionals is committed to helping your business grow in every sense of the word. Feel free to check out our restaurant branding case study and see how we helped other businesses thrive. Our services include:
Brand Strategy and design
Website design and development
Marketing planning and implementation
Content management
And much, much more. So don’t hesitate to contact Kōvly Studio today, and together, we will find the best way to ensure that your restaurant reaches new heights.
Conclusion: Local Marketing Ideas for Restaurants - A Recipe for Success
Even though the online market is crowded and competitive, it doesn’t mean that your restaurant can’t stand out from the others.
Creative and innovative local marketing ideas for restaurants are all that’s needed to spread the word and capture the attention of your customers.
Once you get their attention, it’s down to your delicious food and exceptional service to ensure that these customers keep coming back for more.
FAQs
How to market your restaurant locally?
If you operate from a specific location or area, the best way to promote your restaurant would be to leverage local SEO. This will generate awareness, visibility, and credibility for your restaurant, especially when potential customers use search queries that include keywords, such as “near me” or “in this city/town/area”. If you wish to ensure people know about your place, you can also contact local influencers and see if you can work something out for them to endorse you to their local audience.
What is the best marketing strategy for restaurants?
That depends on your business goals and needs. The reality is that there is no single marketing strategy that can be deemed the best. Instead, the best approach is to use a combination of various marketing tactics and strategies to drive the results you need.
How do I attract customers to my restaurant?
The number one thing you need to do to attract customers to your restaurant is build awareness and visibility. If people don’t know that your restaurant exists, they won’t stop by for a quick bite. Therefore, use a mix of marketing strategies that excel at creating visibility for your restaurant, such as social media marketing, SEO, and so on. You want to extend your reach as much as possible so that more people will be interested in the food you have to offer.
What are the 7 Ps of service marketing in restaurants?
To build a standout restaurant known for its service and food quality, you need to get the 7 Ps of service marketing right. Focus on offering a high-quality product, pricing it appropriately, and using smart promotion to attract customers. Choose the right place or location, hire and train the right people, streamline your processes for smooth service, and ensure strong physical evidence—like ambiance, cleanliness, and presentation—to reinforce your brand.
