8 Amazing Strategies To Advertising A New Restaurant

It’s the first month of the new year and you’ve just opened your dream restaurant. Take note, your dream restaurant. So as much as possible you want everything to work out smoothly, from the in-house operations to advertising. I can help you on the latter.

There are a few essential steps you can take, as a restaurant owner, when advertising a restaurant for the first time. Here are some tips.

1.    Google is your best friend
Proceed to www.google.com and search for restaurant review websites in your city. Click on some of the hits at the top and write a short review of your restaurant, including operation hours and what you have to offer. This helps get the word out about your restaurant on the Internet, also known as online restaurant marketing.

A restaurant consultant will tell you that online marketing is your best bet if you really want to advertise.

2.    Take-home menus
Most restaurant owners take this for granted, and this is where you come in. Take-home menus help customers decide who to call between your restaurant and Restaurant X for lunch-time delivery.

Assign one of your employees to distribute take-home menus at the door as customers leave the establishment. Include all your menu items and their prices, as well as your contact information.

3.    Spread them around town
Invest on a small budget to have your take-home menus placed strategically in convenient stores, in break rooms at local offices, and in schools around town. It’s the most effective way to inform the townspeople what your restaurant has to offer.

4.    Advertise on the local newspaper
Ask the local paper to write a short introductory article or, if possible, a review of your restaurant. Since your restaurant is new, I bet they’d be interested to cover. Prepare a small budget for this one, too.

5.    Advertise on the local radio
It doesn’t hurt to ask the local radio stations if they would appreciate you bringing them a free complimentary breakfast or lunch as a way to welcome your new business into the neighborhood. They might just plug your restaurant for free.

6.    Promos, promos
Start a coupon promo to encourage both casual customers and patrons to keep coming back. For example, they get free coffee for accumulating 10 chef salad coupons.

7.    Networking
If Google is your best friend, then word-of-mouth is the wife you’re destined to love forever. Talk to your friends about exciting things happening in your restaurant to get them talking to their friends. Maybe even offer them a free dessert for bringing a new customer to your restaurant.

8.    Show your presence
Participate in local events. As a local restaurant owner, offer to serve free food and drinks in exchange for advertisement. For example, serve simple sandwiches wrapped in personalized tissues that reads, “Catering provided by [your restaurant name and contact number].”

These tips are great for new restaurants since you don’t really need to set aside a large budget just to get them started—unlike building and maintaining a restaurant website. Anyway, a combination of these restaurant marketing strategies should give your business some decent exposure, enough to fuel your next big marketing campaign.

Put Yourself In Their Shoes: Why You Should Become A Customer In Your Own Restaurant

For some reason, the title of a short story I read a long time ago called “Put Yourself In My Shoes” came to me as I sat down to write this article.

Last month I came across an article by Rohit Bhargava on the internet. The article had an interesting title, “Forget Eating Your Own Dog Food - Just Try Buying it…” Rohit believes the best way to understand the customer is to experience your own product and services yourself – from the initial awareness up to the purchase period. That means every single step of the way.

It makes sense. If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you’d see things from their perspective. It might explain why your restaurant business is booming, or being unprofitable.

So how do you put this into practice?

The first step is to create a portrait of your ideal diner. What is her social status? Has she eaten at your restaurant or is this her first time? Is she a local or an out-of-town visitor? Is she here to conduct a business meeting or is the meal purely for leisure?

Answering these questions will help you put together an image of your prospective client.

Next stop is establishing a visible online presence. A successful restaurant internet marketing plan is when your restaurant is visible no matter what the ideal client is looking for. If your restaurant is only visible to those looking for it, then you need to reconsider your online marketing mix.

Search for restaurants in your city using Yahoo!, Google, Ask—any other popular search engines. Are you in the Top 20 list of local restaurants? Too bad if you’re not – your online visibility is minimal. If you’re in it, are the descriptions about your restaurant accurate and appealing to first-time diners?

Also look for your restaurant on Facebook and Twitter to check the social media community for fans and detractors.

Last but not the least, it’s time to check your website’s usability first-hand. Pretend you’re a potential diner looking for a place to eat and came across your restaurant’s website.

• Is the address, phone number and email address clearly visible on every page of the website?
• Do you have a dedicated page showing directions to your restaurant’s location?
• Is the menu available online? Is it in an easy-to-read format?
• Can you order online?

It’s probably going to take a while to get all of this done, but believe me, and Rohit Bhargava, it’s worth every ounce of effort and penny you put into it. The idea is to thrust your restaurant’s name out there on the World Wide Web, and eliminate every obstacle that stands between the ideal diner and your front door.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. You might just find something useful – a new marketing idea or opportunity – you didn’t know was there from the beginning.

The Untold Secret Of Google’s New App For Restaurant Food Safety

Food safety is always a concern for restaurant operators. Simply put, you won’t be getting any repeat business if your customers are contracting salmonella or E. coli—food-borne diseases—after eating in your restaurant.

It might hurt your business, but consumer safety is what Google hopes to achieve with its latest project.

How does Google, a search engine company, plan to accomplish this?

It’s easy. Google has already launched a similar application called Flu Trends. Flu Trends works by tracking relevant search queries like “flu medication” or “flu symptoms” and identifies them by geographical area. Nowadays people search the internet first before going to the doctor. Google hopes this new trend would help cement the significance of its new application by identifying outbreaks even before local hospitals could report them.

The new project for restaurants is similar to Flu Trends. But instead of flu-related searches, the new project will look for food illnesses-related searches.

Google is confident their new project could identify food poisoning outbreaks 7 to 10 days faster than CDC’s (or Center for Disease Control) current system. I’m amazed at what search engine technology could do these days.

But as a restaurant owner, you ought to be a little hesitant to praise this new development. I personally see it as a double-edged sword.

Sure, we all want what’s best for our customers. But what if Google, with this overwhelming amount of data in their hands, starts naming names and points out restaurants whose customers are getting sick all of a sudden? Knowing Google’s popularity, those restaurants would be six feet under in a mere couple days. Seven or ten days later CDC’s official statement would come out, freeing the restaurant of any responsibility for the outbreak, but it is simply too late.

An ambitious project like Google’s could make or break someone’s good prospects. It’s useful, but something’s only truly useful if we make good use of it.

I hate to end an article on a sad note. The project is still in the works though, and I’m interested to see how it will start affecting local restaurants in the months to come.

Restaurant Marketing Tool: If You Don’t Create A Mobile Ad On Google Mobile Maps Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

I know Google. I know how Google works, that it’s been doing online ads for a long time. Google has always been a great restaurant marketing tool. I’m sure you know Google, too. But here is the thing. The rise of mobile phone users has led Google to unveil their newest technology: Mobile Ad.

Are you aware of the endless restaurant marketing possibilities brought on by this Google? To get a free taste, watch this video.

What is Mobile Ad?
Mobile Ad is a simple ad program created by Google for mobile phone web users. It lets any business—big or small—to place ads targeting customers on the go. It is similar to Google Maps, but Mobile Ad works on your mobile phone web browser.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Mobile ad could become the next big restaurant marketing tool.

The concept is simple: Mobile Ad allows customers to come to you. If you watched the video, you’ll see even foreigners will be able to locate your place with no trouble at all.

The important thing is to put your restaurant on the map by advertising on Mobile Ad. If you don’t take advantage of this right away, some other restaurant will be getting all the customers.

Why is Mobile Ad critical to your success?
Simply put, people love new technology.

Chad Hurley, the CEO of YouTube, attended the World Economic Summit at Davos, Switzerland and mentioned that he thinks mobile web is growing at a faster rate than any other thing online.

I myself am noticing a similar trend. My notebook used to be my best friend. Now I don’t even open it to do simple functions like getting directions or searching for a restaurant. I just flip open my mobile phone and that’s that.

Take it from someone who knows the score. If that video didn’t convince you about Mobile Ad being a great restaurant marketing tool, at least listen to Chad Hurley. He said so himself mobile web is going to be the next big thing. Be there when it happens.

Google’s Mobile Ad will be the next great restaurant marketing tool.

Five Big Reasons Why A Restaurant Marketing Blog Is Essential To Your Success

Blogging is funny. If you’re reading this article, do I really need to explain why your restaurant business needs its own blog website? This article is evidence in itself!

Anyway let’s get down to business, and allow me to explain why a restaurant marketing blog website is essential to your business success.

In another article, I talked about the decline of other advertising methods—newspaper ads, Yellow Pages ads, etc. I don’t mean to be harsh, but these platforms are simply no longer effective, and advertising through them is like throwing away good money into the roast pit. People are looking elsewhere for information: the Internet. On the Internet, blogs rule. In blogs, content is king.

I admit that sometimes no amount of words will convince a person with so much at stake, especially a restaurant operator, who’d rather spend his time managing the business than typing cutesy words on the Internet. But before you put your foot down, I recommend you check out these popular restaurant marketing blogs from Dairy Queen and Tyson Chicken.

Another popular blog website is KogiBBQ. See for yourself what a good restaurant marketing blog did for a small rolling store that sells tacos.

But to answer the question why it’s important, let me go into the details…

• Easily recognized by major search engines
• Helps identify your customers’ problems
• Allows you to share interesting and valuable information to your customers
• Works as a guide to your products and services without looking like an advertising gimmick
• It’s a great platform to cultivate your own fan base

1. Easily recognized by major search engines
Did you know that thousands—no, millions—of Internet users set their homepage to Google? Same goes for Yahoo! In fact I have Yahoo! as my homepage on my home computer. All this is absolutely free marketing. Imagine all those money used to pay for commercials turning into direct profit for you instead of being handed over to those TV executives.

2. Helps identify your customers’ problems
When you talk about new menu items and services on your restaurant marketing blog, your followers get the chance to react and post problems they might have with it. This is a good thing. As a restaurant operator, it’s important that you keep in touch with what your customers think about your little operation.

3. Allows you to share interesting and valuable information to your customers
A restaurant marketing blog is a two-way conversation platform. Customers get to share their problems, you get to communicate new and interesting tidbits about your restaurant.

4. Works as a guide to your products and services without looking like an advertising gimmick
A restaurant marketing blog is essentially a complete guide to your restaurant’s services. It’s effective, too. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for a TV commercial that says, “Hey, come to our restaurant. We have the best sausages in town”, you get to write about why your sausages are special, and let your followers decide if they want to try it or not.

5. It’s a great platform to cultivate your own fan base
A restaurant marketing blog is where you pamper your fans and followers outside the restaurant. Make them feel like they’re a part of your little operation, and I’m sure they’ll stick around much longer than if you chose not to blog about your restaurant.

Look at all the benefits of a restaurant marketing blog. Check the examples I mentioned. If you had made up your mind not to start a blog, I hope these will get you to reconsider. I’m going to spell it out for you here: there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain in starting a restaurant marketing blog.

Three Steps To Improving Your Restaurant Marketing During Slow Economy

Last year was a hard year for restaurant operators thanks to the recession. I should know. I have friends who are thinking about throwing down the apron for good, or else cut back significantly on their budget. “This business is getting nowhere,” my friends tell me. They all sing the same tune.

Experts are saying it’s okay to cut back during down times. But if there’s one thing you shouldn’t shy away from, they say, it’s marketing. This video explains the critical points of why you shouldn’t cut back on marketing and how to steer it so it works to your advantage… even during a recession.

Here’s a brief summary of the pointers discussed in the video.

• Step up your online marketing
• Determine what works, what doesn’t
• Invest on the right campaigns

Step up your online marketing
The logic is that recession is a time when most businesses pull their shutters down for good, or else cut back on their advertising campaigns. This creates the perfect opportunity for your business to take center stage. So step up and increase your online marketing campaigns. I say online marketing because, in most cases, advertising on the Internet is free or cheap at the very least.

Determine what works, what doesn’t
There’s a saying that goes, “You’ll never know whether you succeed or failed if you don’t measure your efforts.”

So okay. I’m not sure if there’s a saying that goes like that – sorry! But I definitely heard that from somewhere, and I want you to see the value of that phrase here. Organize your marketing campaigns, and then by the end of the month, try to figure out which ones work and which ones don’t. What comes next ought to be self-explanatory: slash those campaigns that don’t work.

Invest on the right campaigns
Repeat the same marketing strategy of whichever campaign works. For example, if you paid 20 cents to advertise on Google and got $600 worth of catering business out of it, you’d do well to tell yourself, “Hey, this actually works. Maybe I’ll keep advertising here instead of that other website.”

In the previous pointer, I told you to cut back on failed campaigns. Here I’m telling you to start investing more especially on those that pay for themselves.

The video talks about business in general. But it sure works wonders for restaurant marketing, too.