Restaurant Marketing: Serving Your Message Hot!

Restaurant Marketing: Serving Your Message Hot

In the restaurant business, it’s sink or swim to the maximum degree. They say only 1 out of every 10 restaurants survives its first year in operation. When you launch your restaurant, there’s nothing that’s going to be more key than marketing it well.

If you know cooking and serving great food, you may have some questions about marketing strategy, and how to execute your brand launch. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best ways to market a new restaurant – answering questions like “where and how should I market my restaurant?”, “What should my marketing look like”, “Who should I market my restaurant to?” and “how will I know if my marketing is working?” Take a look!

Where and How to Market Your Restaurant

Restaurant Advertising is one of the fastest ways to push your restaurant business to its target market. A lot of where and how you market your new restaurant or eatery is going to depend on what type of food and atmosphere you offer. If you’re offering pizza deals and to-go sandwiches, you might want to target college campus areas, even high schools. Although it would hurt to hand out a few printed menus and brochures near office complexes for professionals on the go.

Always remember to have great photos of the food included! On the other hand, if you’re offering very high end, bistro dining experiences – you’re going to want to focus exclusively on the higher end portion of your city or other local community. In turn, your advertising should not talk about price at all – just the award winning status of your chef, your premiere location – and a brief description of a couple example dishes. The tone of your marketing should vary widely depending on the type of restaurant you are launching.

What Should my Marketing Look Like?

If you’re presenting your restaurant to people who’ve never, ever heard of it – you want to make sure the imagery of your marketing will make a splash. In this case you can’t afford simply to print black and white offer coupons or menus to stick under windshields in your area. In fact, you will definitely want to print out high quality, UV gloss coated water resistant marketing materials that will show pictures of your delicious foods.

Consider printing postcards or other mailers to send via direct mail marketing to homes and businesses in your area. These printed pieces can even contain scented ink that will help your future customers to engage, and savor the dining experience you’re offering. Marketing food is actually easier than some other products – because people always need it. The only question is, will you make yours seem like the best option?

The Best People to Market Restaurants

Sometimes, when you want to show how great your restaurant is going to be, all you have to do is show pictures of the food. However, sometimes it takes the right personality to talk about what the food means, and why a part of society should be excited about it.

Consider having your head chef appear on your marketing materials, or in a television spot. Consider a partnership advertisement with an already successful business person from your community. People like endorsements, it makes them feel better about any product – and brings a human touch to the marketing. Sometimes you need the right person to market your restaurant; and it very well could be you!

Why is Restaurant Marketing Really Unique?

Restaurants are an interesting business. While 9 out of 10 fail, others will last for decades while other businesses around them come and go. There’s a deep and powerful connection that comes from food – it’s not just another product, it’s our primal instinct.

You’re addressing both people’s inner, primal instincts as well as their societal brains; where they’re thinking about things like the cost of food, and how it makes them look to be seen eating there. There aren’t many other products that address both of these two worlds simultaneously – so you have to be bold, yet tread lightly at the same time. Restaurant marketing is truly unique.

How Will I know if My Marketing is working?

Assuming you’ve recently opened the doors to your restaurant, and people are steadily showing up – you might not care why! You should however, because as time moves forward and the initial buzz of people simply seeing a new restaurant in town, and wanting to try it fades away – you’ll want to know that you know how to bring people in through your marketing efforts.

A great way to track the marketing, and create new customers in the process – is to include a special offer discount, or coupon code with your marketing. Whether that’s on the radio, television, the web, or in print – so long as you isolate a unique code to each campaign – you’ll always be able to know what’s working, and what’s not.