Stepping into the world of restaurants is a move no one takes lightly, but that’s because no one just falls into the role of restaurateur. No one. It’s about as deliberate as any career can ever be, one that demands unrelenting passion, a love of food in your bones, a desire to entertain and a deep understanding of trends and what sort of experience other people crave; experiences that other people will pay for.

It’s a good job too because launching a successful restaurant demands so much forward thinking and detailed planning. There’s coming up with your restaurant concept, deciding on a menu, speaking to interior designers about the layout, bringing on board contractors to make your vision a reality, speaking to the experts at Restaurant Solutions Inc so you can focus on the food while they focus on your finances, finding the perfect place to launch, hiring the right staff, making the kitchen a safe place to work fast and finding the money to make all this happen. And even then, once all this has fallen into place, you’re going to have to market the sh*t out of yourself in order to get people through your doors and fight the good fight against all that competition out there.

So, without further ado, here are some amazing marketing ideas, techniques, and strategies that all-but guarantee your restaurant will become the talk of the town and grab the attention of everyone that has a grumbling belly:

 

1. Tease The #Foodies

Instagram basically became famous for encouraging people to do something that had never before been done in human history: to take photos of their food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, kebabs, snacks – everything that can be eaten now has a place on Instagram – the social media platform that kickstarted the food porn revolution. Alas, the very best way to promote your restaurant online is through the medium of high-quality, mouth-watering drool-inducing photos. There’s no other way of putting it. Photographic content is what grabs people’s attention these days, so you need to get some delicious looking snaps of your food and then plaster them all over your website and across your social media pages. Period.

 

2. Make People More Loyal

How you do this is totally up to you. If you still enjoy the more old school ways of doing things, then keep people loyal with a punch card where they can get a free meal or a free drink when they buy X amount of such and such. If, however, you want to keep up with the times, you need to accept apps are the little bit cooler and easier, which means you should partner up with an online food app to encourage visitors to check out your restaurant through gamification and customer loyalty programs. In the same way punch cards work, try offering a free purchase or a discount to anyone that visits your fine establishment a certain number of times.

 

3. Google+ Is Everything

If you just read the term Google+ and involuntarily shrugged and rolled your eyes, you need to check yourself before you wreck your restaurant because setting up your Google+ profile is as important as heck. The reason for this is simple: When someone searches for a business in Google, its Knowledge Graph provides said business’ details in the sidebar, and that information almost always comes from Google+. Soo having your business set up for that is going to give your restaurant a huge advantage in the form of prime online real estate, known more commonly as the Top Of Page 1.

 

4. Locally Target Ads

For a lot of businesses, the key to online success is using their products or the audience as the main keyword. But in the restaurant game, keeping things local is the secret to success. This is because most hungry people aren’t going to travel across their state to grab a bite to eat; they’re going to eat locally. So, to get the most value out of your online marketing efforts, focus almost all of your energy on geo-targeted ads. Not only will this see you save a large chunk of change, your efforts will be targeted to those within a certain radius of where you are, meaning a better conversion rate. Thankfully, everyone from Google to Facebook to Instagram offer geo-targeting ad options, so make sure you use this to your advantage.

 

5. Never Neglect Newsletters

Forget what you might have heard, or what social media is trying to do, email marketing is still number one in the game. Don’t worry, we’re not saying you need to spend 4 hours every week designing a new newsletter to send out. In fact, we would advise against it. Pinging one out a month is much more way to see success develop because you won’t be angering anyone by invading their inbox all the time. As for what you can put in them, use these email newsletters as your chance to celebrate milestones, successes, great reviews, new menu items, your specials board, blog posts and discount codes. Things that will encourage your customers to keep coming back to your place.

 

6. Share User-Generated Content

In today’s society, people crave a bit of personal bond. They want to know they are valued and that there are humans behind all the digital facades, which is why user-generated content is such an amazing tool to use. It gives you the chance to develop personal tete-a-tetes and enjoy intimate engagement with your followers. It could be that you have a “diner of the month” competition, or a photo contest whereby customers share photos of their meal and the winner gets a free meal for two. Another great way to get this marketing ball rolling is to set up your own hashtag so that people can find all your images in one place. Whatever you decide, though, sharing and promoting user-generated content not only builds on your brand, it shows your customers that you really appreciate them, and that’s what will turn the one-off-diners into die-hard disciples.