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[M266]Marketing For A Restaurant

by Mario Churchill, Mar

There are several ideas listed below on how to go about marketing a restaurant.

? Guerilla Marketing? This involves using more than one type of smaller advertising ideas, instead of using larger, more costly advertising such as advertising on national TV. You can find other and more unique ways of advertising that are cheaper, and sometimes free.

The Top 10 Guerilla Marketing Tactics:

1. Signs? Create the biggest, most clever, unique sign for marketing your restaurant that your local community will allow. Make your restaurant stand out from all others.

2. Use Flyers? Have a grand opening and make sure everyone knows about it. You can offer a percentage off a meal, or free drinks with any order. You can also offer a percentage off any entr'e during the first week you are open. Above all be creative, and make your customers remember you and want to come back.

3. Samples? You can set up a table in front, with your most personable server handing out samples of your food. Breakfast muffins in the morning, or your best pasta dish in the afternoon will allow your customers to try a bit of your fare. You may also want to make up coupons for a dollar or so off a meal (within a certain time line). Have your friendly server tell them about the restaurant and make sure they are able to field simple questions from the public.

4. Loyalty Incentives? You can set up a system where a card is punched for each meal a customer buys. After 10 meals they will get the 11th one free, or a free dessert with their next meal. Whatever you can think of to add as an incentive to your repeat customers and keep them coming back.

5. PR Gimmicks? If you are offering a special on a certain dish, you can have your staff dress up in any way you feel will convey the mood, and hand out menus and cards or coupons. Above all be creative, remember you are not like everyone else. Make sure you compensate your employees for this.

6. The Best In Customer Service With a Smile? Make sure that all of your staff treat people with respect and make them feel as if they are special. They will tell others about the great treatment and prompt, courteous service they received at your restaurant. And your staff will get great tips.

7. Regular Promotions? Have a theme dinner special on the slower nights. ?Tuesday is Italian night with a candlelit dinner for two for $20?. You can also offer wine and cheese tastings as an appetizer. I'm sure if you think about it you can think of many tactics to market a restaurant by changing the menu a bit.

8. Sponsor a Contest? Having a fishbowl and collecting business cards will allow you to collect information about your customers and will help you build a mailing list for marketing a restaurant. You may also want to have a separate bowl where customers who do not own a business can participate. Give away a free dinner once a month as a token of your appreciation. You can add them to your customer base for marketing your restaurant.

9. Customer Comment Cards? This is a great way to collect names, birthdays, and email addresses of your customers. You can email them a special coupon a few weeks before their birthday. Ask for their anniversary date as well, and send coupons for a discount on a dinner for 2. This is also a wonderful way for anyone to market a restaurant.

10. A Website? Creating a simple website that includes your menu, the hours you are open, the type of payments you accept, and a few paragraphs on what the concept of your restaurant is and what specials and incentives you offer. This is a great tool when marketing a restaurant.

Marketing your restaurant online is a GREAT idea! Just to give you an idea how much potential there is - at Overture/Yahoo they get 26,045 searches a day for “american restaurant”. Yes, that is per day. “Chinese restaurant” is 19,975 searches per day. At theGrubClub.com one restaurant menu was viewed over 400 times in one month. The interest in finding restaurants online is growing at a staggering rate!.

So how do you get your piece of this pie? The first step is to have an online presence. If you don't have a web site for your restaurant go to www.TheGrubClub.com and post your menu there. Make sure to add a complete description of your establishment which may include type of food, location (downtown, suburbia), dress code and hours of operation. This site is free and once you have been approved for online publication you get your own web address. Something like: www.thegrubclub.com/a/your-restaurant-name. You can use this for all your online marketing and print advertising. Don't forget to give it out when someone calls and wants you to fax your menu to them. Sometimes it is actually easier for individuals to look up your menu online rather than receiving it by fax. You can also post it on you r door so that your customers may refer to in the future and also tell their friends.

Now start getting the word out online. The most important aspect of web advertisement is getting the attention of search engines. You want your potential and repeat customers to be able to find you easily if they cannot remember your web address. For example, if they type in “your restaurant your city” into a search engine like Google or Yahoo , you want to make sure your web marketing is up to par so your restaurant will come up in - at least - the top ten. The other thing your want is to have your restaurant mentioned on as many websites as possible with a link to your menu.

Blogs are a good place to start. Blogs are web sites that are actively being updated and commented on and Google loves them. Find blogs about restaurants, restaurant reviews or your local area and then ma ke comments relevant to the subject . Make sure to mention your restaurant and give out your web address. Do not under any circumstances post something not pertaining to the subject. Such action may result in upset ting the administrator of the site not getting your comment posted . Blogs are a great way to get information out to the public but the subject matter of each blog must remain complimentary. It is probably easier to comment about regional subjects and add your info at the bottom. ie, give directions to an art fair and sign it Bill James - Bill's Restaurant - www.thegrubclub.com/a/bills-restaurant. Be helpful and people will wonder about your restaurant and possibly check it out. It also helps with the search engines to have a link to your restaurant. A good place to search for blogs is www.technorati.com.

Forums are similar to Blogs except they are specifically for online discussions about a general area of interest. Unlike blogs there is no hunting for a forum. Sometime, it can take some work to find a forum about your subject. Since you are a restaurant you can start with http://www.foodservicei.com/forums/. People coming to this forum will be those in the industry but not patrons ; however, the participants don't really matter because you are actually working at getting links to your web site. I f you can find a forum about your city, area or region , you will be able to comment about events or issues and you might also get direct interest in your restaurant. Either way you win. You will need to register with most forums to make comments but they usually want minimal information about you. The biggest challenge to forums is finding them. Most restaurant forums are really just a place to post reviews. Technically, they are not really forums - they are travel guides.

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Both Mario Churchill & Rich Larsen are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Mario Churchill has sinced written about articles on various topics from Credit Cards, Anger Control and Credit Cards. Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on