Restaurant Marketing Ideas To Boost Your Business in 2024

There exist many marketing ideas for attracting new customers to your restaurant or retaining existing ones. But if you want to find something fresh and creative to drive sales, we’ve collected some of them in this post! 

Before we talk about them, we’d recommend you set the goal first; based on them, your choice of ideas might differ. So, pick your strategy first:

• Do you want to attract new customers (reach)?
• Do you want to engage current clients (retention)?
• Do you want to increase overall brand awareness (long-term strategy)?
• Do you want to improve customer experiences (feedback and analysis for improvement)?
• Do you want to target your restaurant ads to more international visitors (reach)?

Since we don’t know which marketing, traditional or digital, you are looking to improve for your restaurant or cafe, or which goal is on top of your list, we’ve broadly categorized various marketing ideas for restaurants by how they are traditionally implemented.

This means you can easily jump to any needed part and test the idea you find profitable and attractive!

Rethink Traditional Restaurant Marketing Methods

Sharing food-quality facts and insight with your guests is a great marketing method to boost your restaurant’s credibility and transparency – but why not implement them within the traditional ways of reach? 

Printed Materials

Remember how McDonald’s changed their printed visuals replacing longer texts with simpler images, icons, and logos?  We can’t change how print ads work, but you can change the design and messages in your flyers and posters, as well as make the distribution of printed materials more engaging and creative. How to do that?

• Use bold colors, interesting facts, and impressive imagery to make your flyers and posters more catchy. Something funny and weird always works!
• Add interactive elements, including QR codes to simplify access to your website or tear-off tabs with special offers or coupons.
• Think of tactile elements to make your printed materials to make more people pay attention to them, thus, remember your brand.

Billboards

Does a restaurant need a billboard in 2024? We can’t answer this question for sure, but recent stats say that “24% of billboard viewers say they have visited a restaurant advertised on a billboard they saw while driving.”

It might be too early to ditch such traditional advertising methods as billboards – especially in high-traffic areas near the restaurant, which can trigger a craving and drive hungry customers right to your doorstep.

Festivals or Farmers Markets

Don’t ignore them. In various cultures, people love to celebrate the joys of life in the festival atmosphere. Set up a booth or food truck at local festivals or markets to show your restaurant logo and offerings. Sponsor local events or host theme nights to spread the message about your brand.

Optimize Digital Marketing Strategies

So many guests today find your restaurant on the internet, by simple googling, maps, or social networks.

Optimize your Google Business Profile Listing

One of the most popular restaurant and food-related searches like “restaurants,” and “restaurants near me,” commonly appear in the top 20 searches for many retailers. 

So, to target your local audience as well as international travelers, make sure to optimize your Google Business Profile listing. It’s a must-use tool for restaurants to manage online presence for your restaurant across Google Search and Maps.

• Ensure all your restaurant details are accurate and up-to-date: your restaurant address, phone number, website, and opening hours.
• Make sure your restaurant listing features fresh photos, descriptions of your menu and ambiance, and special offers. It’s a good practice to have both professional photos as well as those added by customers.
• Get your restaurant listed in online directories like Yelp, Zomato, TripAdvisor, and local business directories to boost its credibility in the ‘eyes’ of search engines. 
• Encourage your customers to write restaurant reviews on your Google business profile and respond to them.

Build a restaurant website and optimize it for local search

A professional website is not just a must-have for a restaurant business, it will increase the visibility of your website for local searches like ‘restaurants near me’ as well.

When it comes to SEO, to date, there are over 200 factors in Google’s algorithm; for a restaurant website, not all of them have the same weight. Which are more significant to rank your restaurant site higher in the search engines?

1. Include relevant keywords throughout your website content, such as your restaurant name, cuisine type, and location. 
2. Optimize your website for mobile devices, because people use the “near me” searches usually on their smartphones.
3. Integrate booking solutions on your site to enable clients to book a table in advance or order catering services.
4. Add your food menu with prices.
5. Test your online ordering system if you have any on your website.
6. Make mobile experiences perfect.

Develop a Mobile App to Improve a Loyalty Program

Implementing a loyalty program for a restaurant makes sense to encourage repeat customers and word of mouth, developing a dedicated mobile app for a better loyalty program is even more reasonable. In addition to just loyalty bonuses, a business can realize a ton more handy instruments for a customer, including table booking and table choice, online payments, food ordering, and other things that work for your restaurant. It’s all so much easier from a dedicated mobile app.

Consider Integrating a Restaurant Customer Data Platform

Such a tool can give you a single view of your customers, which has influence on smarter marketing and operations decisions. With CDPs, you can segment your guests to target high-value customers and personalize their experience. It’s one of the best modern tools to increase guest frequency, win back lost business, and certainly find new customers at a lower cost.

Creative Restaurant Marketing Ideas

Creative restaurant marketing ideas are not just a pleasure to implement, customers love taking part in creative activities as well!

Some Influencers are not that Expensive

Among innovative marketing techniques, a lead role has influencer partnerships. But don’t be scared away by the big costs you might need to pay to people that have made themselves popular. For example, many Instagram influencers and travel bloggers are ready to post a positive review about your restaurant – guess how – in exchange for a meal!

Run ongoing Foodie Photo Awards

Target millennials who love taking food photos or choose a season-proof theme and a specific hashtag with your restaurant business name. Update contest rules as needed (e.g., require location tagging.

Video Advertising (with chefs!)

Take your audience behind the scenes with a Facebook Live tour of your restaurant. Show them the kitchen in action, introduce them to your chefs, and let them experience the atmosphere online before a visit. Run a video session with your chef and customers or let your chef answer frequently asked questions – or even share culinary secrets!

Concluding on Restaurant Marketing Trends

Where to focus your energy when implementing restaurant marketing ideas? Some of them are truly time-consuming, such as developing a mobile app, others are easier to follow but require a creative approach. We can’t stress enough the following methods, though:

• Always keep the restaurant reputation management high on your list (Google reviews, social media, site reviews).
• Make your restaurant website optimized for local search, smooth food ordering, easy table booking, and easy customer reviews.
• Get creative and make use of ideas where your customers can create the needed content to glorify your restaurant.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also find these related articles informative:

• 8 Effective Driving School Marketing Ideas
• 5 Fresh Spa Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Business
• 10 Holiday Promotion Ideas for Service Businesses
• Hair Salon Marketing Ideas