Someone wise had once said, “Nothing brings people together like good food!”
But, what if the locals of your city don’t know that you serve good food? Would that be your fault or that of those individuals who are craving to eat the best food out there at a high-end restaurant?
The answer to this is it’s clearly your fault, and you’re lacking on the marketing front. Now, you might think that marketing can cost you a lot! But that’s not the case when you do it on a budget.
In this insightful blog post, you’ll learn about how you can create a restaurant marketing budget. So, let’s begin!
Why a Restaurant Marketing Budget Matters
Some of the reasons why a restaurant marketing budget matters are as follows:-
- Planning in the right manner: A budget will allow you to allocate the funds with a strategic approach. It will help you focus on the best marketing channels that are much more aligned with your business goals.
- Better ROI tracking: With a proper budget in place, you will be able to track the amount you need to spend to measure the ROI of your campaigns. This thorough data will help you in bettering your future marketing decisions and make much better decisions.
- Controlling the costs: A chalked-out budget will help you prevent overspending and will ensure that you keep a check at every step of the way.
- Attracting new and old customers: When you have a marketing budget in place and if it is spent as per your preferences, chances are it will prove to be a game-changer for your restaurant. It will ensure that you get several new customers for your restaurant and even persuade your loyal customers to visit more often.
- Data-driven decision making: Analyzing the marketing campaign’s performance as per the data will help you make data-driven decisions, which will provide you with better results. By having a budget in place, you will be able to better utilize the available funds for the marketing platforms that are providing the best results.
- Building brand awareness: Doing marketing and branding on a budget is bound to increase the awareness about your restaurant and its offerings among your target audience.
- Growth for the future: When you have a thought-out marketing budget in place, you will give way to the sustainable growth of your restaurant in the future.
Steps to Create a Restaurant Marketing Budget
1. Know Your Restaurant’s Financials First
The first step in making a restaurant budget is to analyze where your restaurant stands in terms of finances. It’s not just limited to knowing about the total revenue generated but also understanding the profit margins, fixed costs, alongside variable costs. For this purpose, you can dive into the profit and loss statements, keep a check on the cash flow, and even find out the key performance indicators(KPIs). Some of these KPIs can be the customer acquisition costs and the average customer spend.
2. Define Your Marketing Goals
Have you ever asked yourself what you want to achieve with your restaurant marketing campaigns? Whether you want to get better brand awareness, more foot traffic, increased online orders, or many more repeat customers? These questions will help you define your marketing goals. You can utilize the SMART marketing goals, which stand for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This strategic approach will ensure that you achieve your marketing goals on a budget and get a great return on investment.
3. Identify Your Target Audience
If you’re trying to attract every type of foodie to your restaurant, you are going to spend the majority of your budget much more quickly. The worst thing is that you won’t get the desired results even after spending your whole budget. That’s why understanding your ideal customers holds so much importance. Some of the factors that you can consider to identify your target audience are their age, location, income level, lifestyle, and even their dining preferences. Furthermore, know whether you’re targeting young working professionals, families, or people belonging to a particular culture and religion.
For this purpose, you can conduct market research and even analyze your existing customer data. Furthermore, you can even create customer personas to get a much deeper understanding of your target audience. Once you are clear about who you want to attract, it’ll become a whole lot easier to choose the ideal marketing channels for maximum impact on a limited budget.
4. Choose the Right Marketing Channels
Once you have all your goals and target audience in your mind, you can opt for the most beneficial marketing channels. By leveraging these channels in the ideal manner, you will be able to connect with the customers that you want and even persuade them to visit your restaurant. Some of those marketing channels are social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, PPC, and content marketing.
Don’t forget to factor in your total budget while you’re opting for the marketing channels. You also need to keep in mind that some channels can be a lot better for building brand awareness, while other channels can drive immediate sales. So, opt for the right marketing channels as per your budget.
5. Choose the Right Marketing Channels
Once you know about the best marketing channels that you will leverage, you need to allocate the right amount of budget for each marketing channel. This breakdown of the budget should be according to your marketing goals and even the potential of each one of these channels to reach your ideal customer base.
While allocating the budget, you can consider the different types of costs that are associated with each of these channels. If you’re realistic about the costs involved, you will get a lot better ROI for your specific objectives.
6. Monitor Performance and Adjust Regularly
You have to understand that your marketing budget isn’t just a simple document. Instead, it’s a living plan which will require regular monitoring and even tweaking according to the performance data. You can track the most important metrics according to your chosen channels. Some of those key metrics can be website traffic, social media engagement, lead generation, and conversion rates.
Each one of the marketing platforms provides analytics tools to gather the data and know what’s working and what’s not. In case a particular channel isn’t providing you with the desired results, you can reallocate the budget to other strategies that are much more impactful. By regularly monitoring the performance, you will be able to optimize your budget spending and maximize your ROI.
Tips to Stretch a Small Budget Further
Even if your marketing budget is minimal, there are plenty of ways that you can follow to utilize every dollar. Some of those ways are as follows:-
- Get plenty of organic social media reach with the help of engaging social media posts.
- Utilize the power of email marketing to nurture your existing customers and provide them with several reasons to visit your restaurant again.
- Give a boost to your word-of-mouth marketing by providing top-notch customer service and through referral programs.
- Don’t forget to leverage local SEO for your restaurant’s website to get plenty of new customers who are searching for “restaurant near me” on Google.
Conclusion
Budgeting is one of the most important things you can do before taking the plunge into marketing your restaurant. In fact, regularly assessing and tweaking your marketing practices as per the performance metrics and the remaining funds is crucial as well.
So, you need to take a proactive approach that involves data-driven decision-making to invest in the right marketing channels. Furthermore, you need to build much stronger connections with your existing customers and attract new customers with your marketing campaign. It will ensure that your restaurant becomes the talk of the town, and that too, while being on budget.
Do you want to get budget-friendly restaurant marketing services? If your answer is in the affirmative, you need to get in touch with SrveUP. We are one of the leading restaurant marketing agencies in North America. We will ensure that you get plenty of foot traffic and online orders for your restaurant, and that too, while being on a budget. Contact us now to book our cost-effective restaurant marketing services.
FAQ:
Q. How much should a restaurant spend on marketing?
The marketing budget of each restaurant depends on a lot of factors, and there can’t be a one-size-fits-all budget. However, a starting point can be allocated 3-6% of the gross revenue towards your marketing budget. In case you want to grow your restaurant rapidly, you can allocate 6-10% of the gross revenue towards your marketing budget.
Q. What’s the most cost-effective marketing channel for a small restaurant?
There are plenty of budget-friendly marketing channels that can be leveraged by small restaurants. However, the best marketing is local SEO without a doubt. This marketing channel will attract several local customers to your restaurant.
Q. What are the common mistakes to avoid when creating a restaurant marketing budget?
Some of the most common mistakes that you can avoid while creating a restaurant marketing budget are as follows:-
- Failing to define proper marketing goals.
- Not knowing thoroughly about your target audience.
- Allocating the budget across too many channels.
- Not tracking or analyzing the results of your marketing campaign.
- Thinking of your restaurant marketing budget as a static document.
