Restaurant Marketing Tips & Tricks for Every Budget

In the restaurant industry, you don’t merely want to survive, you want to thrive. With the industry growing substantially each year, competition is stiff, and you must stand out if you want to be successful.

Drawing new customers into your restaurant takes more than good faith and word of mouth these days. You need to have a solid marketing strategy in place that will persuade people to visit your restaurant time and time again.

In this article, you will find useful restaurant marketing tips fit for every budget:

Restaurant marketing tips that don’t cost anything

If you are just starting or don’t have a big marketing budget, don’t worry. You can still promote your restaurant with zero investment. Check out these marketing tips that won’t eat into your profit:

1. Leverage social media

More and more businesses are discovering the marketing power and affordability that social media provides:

• Social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for getting people’s mouths watering and sparking their hunger with an irresistible food image;
• Twitter, on the other hand, is better for sharing news and having conversations with your audience;
• Facebook has begun to eclipse Google with its ability to provide business details and customer reviews;
• TikTok is the newcomer that the younger generation uses to watch entertaining videos. With a bit of effort, you can make your restaurant go viral!

If you are looking for inspiration on what to include in your posts to encourage followers to become clients, here are some restaurant marketing tips designed for social media:

• User-generated content: share photos and videos that your restaurant is tagged in to show people that clients who visited you had a good time;
• Mouth-watering photos of food: with a direct link to your menu to allow hungry customers to order immediately:
• Behind-the-scenes videos: create a connection with your followers by showing them what daily life in a restaurant looks like;
• Cooking tips: share your knowledge with your fans by teaching them recipes and cooking techniques.

Read more: How to Attract More Customers to Your Restaurant Using Social Media

2. Install a free online ordering system

Marketing only works if you pair it with an excellent customer experience. Therefore, if you want to sell your food online, you need the free online ordering system from GloriaFood that has built-in marketing functions. You will enjoy:

• A streamlined online ordering process;
• Ease of use, both for you and your customers;
• The ability to send people discounts to get them to place the first order;
• An email marketing module that helps you increase retention by encouraging customers to order again;
• A Promotions module to add attractive discounts at the top of the online menu;
• A flyer creator to persuade people from your area to visit you.

Learn how to set up online ordering in less than 10 minutes following these easy steps:

You can also use the personalized menu link we provide to enable Facebook ordering through Facebook’s Start Order button. The link also works in the bio of any social media platform. That way, you can accept orders on your website and also on social media.

Read more: 7 Reasons Why an In-House Online Ordering System is the Best Choice

3. Get on all review platforms

Around 84% of people say they trust an online review as though it were a personal recommendation. Therefore, one of the best marketing tips is to cultivate your presence on the review sites available in your area, such as:

• Google: the go-to search engine for restaurant reviews. Fill in your Google Business Profile with all the required information such as updated working hours, link to the website, and types of services (dine-in, takeaway, online ordering);
• TripAdvisor: if you want to attract more tourists to your restaurant, ensure that you add an exact address and a link to your delicious menu;
• Yelp: encourage clients to write positive reviews that will persuade even more people to give your restaurant a chance.

Furthermore, you can share good customer reviews on social media as social proof that your business offers great food and great service that shouldn’t be missed.

Read more: The Importance of Online Reviews for Restaurants & How to Get More

4. Celebrate a variety of holidays

From Valentine’s Day to New Year, there are plenty of holidays throughout the year that people celebrate despite their backgrounds. Holidays like these are perfect opportunities for restaurants to market their services and draw in new crowds.

This is why it’s essential to work with the best writing services to craft advertisements and social media posts that will appeal to your audience.

Whether it’s a romantic dinner or an after-work celebration, people want to get together and enjoy these special days. Customers are more than willing to pay for holiday lunches and dinners in restaurants.

If you are looking for holiday inspiration, check out our free downloadable holiday calendar:

Food holiday calendar & promotion ideas for 2024

If your restaurant doesn’t create special campaigns or at least do some marketing for these holidays, it’s losing out on revenue. Holiday campaigns can attract new customers like a moth to a flame and build life-long traditions.

For instance, KFC has become the one and only dining establishment to visit on Christmas Day in Japan. This campaign, which began in 1970, is still going strong and its sales on holiday are often ten times more than usual. Now that is effective holiday marketing!

Read more: Restaurant Holiday Marketing & Planning: How to Get Ready for the End of 2024

5. Partner with local businesses

If you are looking for restaurant marketing tips that will make you popular in the local community, you are in the right place. Consider partnering with local businesses to do some mutual promotion and enhance the customer experience.

Here are a couple of ideas:

• Wineries: you can add their wine to your menu and organize wine-tasting events, and they can refer hungry customers to you;
• Craft breweries: appeal to beer aficionados by adding local craft beers to your menu;
• Specialty coffee roasters: coffee is more than welcome after a hearty meal, and it is even better if it is a specialty one from a local roaster.
• Local producers: you can source some of your ingredients locally and promote their origin on the menu and social media;
• Local artists: you can help local artists launch their music careers by offering them a place to perform.

Read more: How Restaurant Partnerships Can Help Your Business Grow

Restaurant marketing tips that require a small budget

These marketing tips for restaurants only require a small investment for a big reward. Ensure that you access your data analytics to measure their efficiency and make improvements where necessary.

6. Offer perks to encourage loyalty

Special discounts and freebies can serve as rewards for current customers while also attracting new ones along the way. Customers love to feel appreciated, and when they do, they’ll shout about it from the hilltops. When your restaurant earns a reputation for offering great perks, new customers will pile in by the dozens.

These days, with the hospitality market as saturated as it is, small incentives like this help draw people to your restaurant. Perks like these can help generate buzz and get customers in the door:

• Birthday emails with freebies
• Special discounts like 2-for-1 offers
• Rewards points for repeat purchases

New customers who come in for a discount and have a positive experience in your restaurant are likely to return. Studies show that restaurant customers who have a positive experience will spend 37% more. So, perks can help attract new customers who will happily pay more for an excellent service.

Read more: How to Increase Customer Loyalty in a Restaurant

7. Use irresistible promotions

Sometimes clients need a small incentive to order. If they find your food attractive, a promotion will seal the deal and make them press the order button. Therefore, if you want to get more customers and increase the average order value, start adding irresistible promotions to your menu.

Here are a couple of tried and tested options:

• Free delivery
• % discount on the whole check
• % discount on a specific category
• Buy one, get one free
• Combo meals
• Free item for orders over a certain amount of money

The good news is that you can set up a variety of promotions in minutes if you use the online ordering system from GloriaFood. They will appear at the top of the menu, where they can’t be missed.

Follow these steps to set up your first promo today:

Read more: How to Use Restaurant Promotion Templates Effectively to Boost Sales

8. Attract customers with email marketing

Are you looking for restaurant marketing tips that can increase the number of loyal customers? Look no further and try email marketing.

By constantly messaging your previous customers about your promotions, you ensure they are constantly reminded of the great experience they had at your restaurant.

If you want to do email marketing the easy way, automate the campaigns with the Autopilot module from GloriaFood that will help you:

• Encourage second orders: turn one-time customers into regulars with this campaign that emails clients who recently placed their first order with hard-to-say-no-to promotions;
• Re-engage clients: this campaign is perfect if you want to foster client loyalty. Once you set it up, it will message 60% of the customers who ordered the least recently in the last 6 months with irresistible promotions;
• Prevent cart abandonment: do your customers often add menu items to their cart, but don’t order? Autopilot sends them a gentle reminder 1 to 2 hours after they started an order to encourage them to finish the process.

Run your email marketing on Autopilot by following the steps in this video tutorial:

Read more: Restaurant Email Marketing Done Right: 12 Ideas to Woo Customers

9. Organize contests

When you are just starting, you will have to work a bit harder to gain visibility. If you want to increase visibility and engagement in a short amount of time, organize contests on social media. They could be as simple as like and share or as complicated as a treasure hunt.

Check out these ideas:

• Have people comment what their favorite dish from your menu is to win a free meal for two;
• Encourage clients to post a picture of their online orders from your restaurant in their Instagram stories and tag you for a chance to win a free order that amounts to $100;
• Make a video showing where you hide discount coupons around your location and have people look for them.

Read more: 20 Restaurant Contest Ideas That Will Delight Your Customers

10. Create experiences in the form of events

Some of the best restaurant marketing techniques imply creating unforgettable experiences for your clients. If you notice some days are slower than others and your location is mostly empty, spice things up with some enticing events that are sure to fill up your seats.

Try out these ideas:

• Music nights, where you invite artists or even turn the restaurant into party central with a DJ;
• Quiz nights with different themes your customers are interested in;
• Cooking classes where interested clients can learn from your chef;
• Menu-tasting events, where you get your chef to experiment with new dishes.

Read more: 15 Restaurant Event Ideas to Get Customers Through the Door

Restaurant marketing tips that are worth the investment

Sometimes, you need to spend money to make money. Once you implement all the free and cheap restaurant marketing tips and increase your profit, it is time to get to the next step: high stakes, high reward.

11. Get a branded mobile app

Would you like to become a usual occurrence in your customers’ minds? To have them see your name every time they use their phone? Then you need to get yourself a restaurant-branded app that allows customers to order easily and fast.

You can get one from GloriaFood that has the following features:

• Customized with your logo and colors;
• Only shows your menu;
• Can be easily downloaded, just like any native app;
• Makes online ordering a breeze for all your clients.

Read more: How to Boost Restaurant Sales Using a Mobile App

12. Create paid ads to reach a new audience

It can take time to see results organically. All your SEO efforts and social media posts will help you increase your visibility and attract more clients, but you will have to wait. If you want to achieve your goals faster, consider investing in paid ads on the main channels:

• Google: so your website can appear on the first page when people search for keywords related to your restaurant, before other competitors;
• Facebook and Instagram: you can target the ads to your audience by selecting demographics, location, interests, and behavior.

Read more: 10 Facebook Ad Targeting Tips to Boost Restaurant Conversions

13. Collaborate with influencers

There is a reason some content creators are called influencers: because they can influence their followers to buy certain products. If you choose the right ones, you will have a high conversion rate because fans trust the influencers’ recommendations.

Follow these restaurant marketing tips to choose the best influencer for your business:

• Choose locally: your clients are local, so the influencer should be too. This way, you know their audience is the same as yours;
• Start small: if you don’t want to spend a lot of money, start with small influencers that don’t have a very big following yet;
• Focus on food influencers: you want to collaborate with an influencer who is passionate about food, so their recommendation seems natural, not forced, and just for money;
• Research past collaborations: look over their feed at the sponsored post to see what type of content they produced before and if it aligns with your brand.

Read more: Restaurant Influencer Marketing Guide: Tips for a Successful Collaboration

The takeaway

A powerful marketing strategy can

• bring more customers to your restaurant,
• grow your brand,
• and increase restaurant sales.

Nonetheless, before you can get started marketing your brand, you need to devote some time to your mission statement and planning. Once you have a better grasp of what your restaurant offers and who it caters to, you can dive into marketing it to your target audience.

Connecting with your customers will help attract them to your restaurant in the first place and keep them coming back for more. Hopefully, these restaurant marketing tips will help your restaurant grow like many other businesses before.

This article is a guest post.