Opening and running a small new restaurant is an achievement in itself. It takes a different level of creativity, business knowledge, a fantastic menu altogether to get a restaurant going.
Simultaneously, you also need a marketing strategy that keeps customers coming back to your restaurant. With such a strategy, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the local competitors.
Do you own a small restaurant that needs a smashing marketing strategy? Well, you’re at the right place.
In this blog post, let’s explore how you can market your small restaurant with a cutting-edge marketing strategy. You’ll learn about various ways to ensure a fully booked dining hall at your restaurant every week.
What Do You Mean By Small Restaurant Marketing Strategy?
An impactful small restaurant marketing strategy involves brand identity and mission of your restaurant, its online tactics, digital marketing strategies, and traditional marketing strategies.
Furthermore, it also consists of various tactics for customer retention and engagement, such as review management and building customer loyalty. All these aspects are specifically important as restaurants are localized businesses, making it important to attract the local target audience.
Small Restaurant Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for First-Timers
If you’re looking to market your small restaurant, here are some essential things you need to do:
-
Developing a Brand Identity of Your Restaurant:
The brand identity of your restaurant includes aspects from its logo to its mission statement. What is it that makes your restaurant stand out in your locality? What is its unique selling point? Your restaurant’s brand identity is shaped by the food, ambiance, and the dining experience it offers.
To develop the brand identity of your small restaurant, you should:
- Study your target audience and determine your ideal customer.
- Keep on improving your focus on your restaurant’s priorities, mission statement, and purpose.
- Develop a distinct brand voice that showcases the mission statement of your restaurant.
- Keep evolving your brand identity based on the results of your marketing campaigns.
-
Start Establishing an Influential Online Presence:
Unless you don’t develop an online strategy for your restaurant, it won’t exist online. Ahrefs conducted research that shows that around 27 million individuals around the world search for “restaurants near me” every month. Essentially, a major chunk of these searches happen in the US.
For a small restaurant, having a strong online presence matters the most. Your website will act as the primary promotional material for your restaurant. It’s where customers get to know your story and mission statement, go through your menu, and find your contact details.
As your restaurant keeps on establishing itself, your online presence should scale accordingly. As time evolves, you should keep on redesigning your website.
You should even consider adding live chatboxes to make engagement more seamless. These chat boxes can help customers reserve a table via online medium or order a meal. Such options further enhance your online user experience.
Similarly, you need to link all your social media accounts to engage with customers on a personal front. This will further increase your chances for positive word-of-mouth publicity for your small diners and food joints.
Blending your online presence with the best SEO practices is also helpful as it makes it smooth for potential customers to find your restaurant online.
-
Adopt Traditional Marketing Tactics:
While strategizing your marketing campaign, consider implementing traditional marketing strategies. Print ads, geo-targeted online ads, hanging flyers in neighbouring buildings, and mailing advertisements help you reach the right target audience at a local level.
If you also want to ensure the relevance of your traditional marketing campaigns with your target audience, infuse your brand identity with it. You should also consider following the best industry practices while implementing such strategies for better outcomes.
-
Offer a User-Friendly Online Reservation Experience:
Online food ordering and delivery have increased 300% since 2014. If your restaurant isn’t offering online ordering facilities, you’re missing an opportunity to engage with new customers and improve your bond with current customers.
Most importantly, online ordering systems help small restaurants to increase their sales without much effort. There are many softwares available in the market that will streamline the online ordering processes for restaurants in an effective manner.
-
Measure the Effectiveness of Your Campaign and Make Alterations:
It is essential to know which marketing campaign for your restaurant is working and giving the best ROI. You should identify the areas of improvement where you need to make changes that are suitable for your campaign’s success.
Many people tend to wait for the campaign to end to assess its results. However, you need to track the campaign’s data and recognize the areas where changes are required. By doing so, you’ll be able to get a better ROI than you might have expected.
What are the Common Impactful Marketing Tactics for Small Restaurants?
Making a name for yourself is a big challenge, especially when you’re a small restaurant owner. The fact that the culinary industry is crowded makes it more challenging for people who’ve recently launched small restaurants.
As a new restaurant owner, apart from attracting customers, you also need convince them to try your diner for the first time. It’s all about creating a first impression in culinary terms. So the main question is: how to introduce yourself in an impactful way to your locality?
Well, if you want to hit the right chords with your target audience, you should:
- Invest some time to develop a unique brand identity.
- Stay active on social media to engage with potential customers on a personal front.
- Make your grand opening more exquisite to entice customers and establish a warm and receptive reputation.
Similarly, you should also consider creating loyalty programs and utilizing user-generated content. Customers participating in loyalty programs have an 80% chance to choose the business providing such facilities over its competitors.
Similarly, sharing pictures and videos clicked by guests at your restaurant can provide viewers a glimpse of their dining experience. Share content generated by customers on every social media platform and online campaigns with their permission.
To Summarize
Opening and running a small restaurant can be a big task, especially if you’re new to the culinary industry. It can become quite overwhelming if you don’t know how to promote your restaurant.
That’s when you need some advanced marketing tactics that will help you attract potential customers and drive more sales to your restaurant. This is possible with SrveUP. We not only help you establish a strong local presence for your new restaurant, but we also ensure you reach the right target audience and drive more conversions effortlessly.
Hence, join hands with us and drive your potential customers to your restaurant with our spiced up and personalized SEO strategies.
