Succeeding in the restaurant business requires a lot in the way of planning. While it would be nice to think that your passion and dedication as a restaurant owner would be enough to attract diners and garner rave reviews, that’s not always the case. Restaurants have a high failure rate and one of the best ways to avoid the typical pitfalls is to have a well-thought-out restaurant marketing plan.
At Select Funding, we work with restaurant and bar owners to help them obtain the financing they need to attract customers and meet their growth goals. One of the potential uses for our small business financing is marketing, so with that in mind, here’s what you need to know about how to write a restaurant marketing strategy that works.
How Do You Attract Customers?
Attracting customers to eat at your restaurant or drink at your bar is necessary because without customers, your restaurant won’t be a success. There are many ways that you can attract customers, including the following:
- Promote your restaurant on social media. Posting on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok can help connect you with a local audience and show them what they could be enjoying if they visited your restaurant.
- Create an email marketing list. Collecting email addresses from your customers can help you incentivize them to return to your restaurant or use your catering services for an event. It can also encourage them to recommend you to their friends and family.
- Create special offers and events. A lot of restaurants and bars grow their businesses by hosting happy hours, watch parties for television events such as playoff games or popular series, and so on.
- Participate in the community. If your town or city has a restaurant week, street fair, or holiday event, participating can help you attract a whole new group of diners–especially if you can offer samples of your favorite menu items.
- Complete your Google Business profile. The best local businesses earn a coveted spot at the top of Google’s search results, and completing your business profile, making sure to include information about your hours, prices, and location, is the first step.
- Manage your customer reviews. You can encourage diners to review your establishment by including reviews on your website and displaying your Yelp rating in your restaurant. You may also want to print a review request on your receipts. Make sure to respond to all reviews, positive and negative, for the best results.
- Create a memorable customer experience. Everything from the decor in your dining room to the food to the service you provide has an impact on how diners experience your restaurant. Creating a positive experience for your customers is a great way to generate word of mouth recommendations.
Adopting one or more of these ideas can help you attract more customers to your restaurant and increase your profits.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
Before we reveal what should go into your restaurant marketing strategy, here’s what we mean when we talk about strategy. A marketing strategy is a long-term plan designed to help your business achieve its growth goals. This differentiates a strategy from tactics, which are typically short-term actions made in support of the strategy.
To be effective, your strategy should define whatever it is that makes your restaurant unique, taking into account the needs and desires of your target audience. You may sometimes hear marketing people refer to a marketing mix, which includes these things:
- Product, which is what your company sells. In a restaurant, that may mean a combination of your menu, service, and ambience.
- Price, which is self-explanatory and helps to define who your competitors and audience are.
- Place, which is your restaurant location(s) and what makes them unique.
- Promotion is a combination of all your marketing activities, including advertising, social media, word of mouth, and more.
Together, these are the four Ps of marketing. Any marketing strategy you devise should take all four into account if you want it to be effective.
What Does an Effective Restaurant Marketing Plan Look Like?
Now, let’s break down each section of a restaurant marketing plan to help you write one for your own establishment.
Identify Problem Areas
Before you start writing your marketing plan, take a minute to identify some areas for improvement. For example, you might not be earning as much on your lunch service as you’d like or you might want to increase your receipts on a slow night. Identifying issues ahead of time will help you with the next step.
Set Goals
The next thing to do is to set some SMART goals for business growth. As a reminder, a SMART goal is:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Increasing your revenue isn’t a SMART goal, but increasing your revenue by 10% in three months could be.
Audience Analysis
You can’t devise a marketing plan without understanding your audience. There are a variety of methods you can use to better understand your audience:
- Research your online communities and use demographics.
- Hand out survey cards to diners when you deliver their checks.
- Use your email list to conduct a survey using Survey Monkey or a similar service.
The information you collect will help you understand who’s most likely to patronize your restaurant and the best ways to reach them.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Here’s how a SWOT analysis might look for a restaurant:
- Strengths: Consistently delicious food, appealing menu
- Weaknesses: Lack of ambience, lack of online reviews or too many negative reviews
- Opportunities: Untapped market in a nearby town
- Threats: New restaurants in your area competing for business
You want your SWOT review to be as complete and comprehensive as possible. Keep in mind that your weaknesses indicate areas for improvement and your threats can point you in the direction of new opportunities.
Marketing Objectives
Your marketing objectives should be big-picture things that you can set your sights on and incorporate into your marketing strategy. Here are some examples:
- New customer acquisition
- Returning diners
- Brand awareness
Any of these things could be a good objective. Getting diners to return to your establishment, for example, is an objective that could be achieved by improving the customer experience, doing a better job of managing reviews, and engaging in social media and email marketing.
Marketing Strategies
With a handle on your audience and other factors, it’s time to turn your attention to specific marketing strategies.
Restaurant Website
Your website is your home base online and if it’s leaving something to be desired, a good first step in your marketing strategy would be to redesign and improve it.
Prospective diners should be able to learn about your restaurant on your website. Make sure to include your location, directions, contact information, hours, prices, and a complete menu.
Restaurant Social Media
Social media provides restaurants with multiple ways to connect with their customers. We suggest choosing no more than three social media sites to make sure you can keep your accounts active and have time to respond to your followers.
Since marketing a restaurant requires visuals, you might choose Instagram as your primary social media marketing outlet and then incorporate Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube to attract new customers.
Keep in mind that your social media marketing may include a combination of organic and paid posts such as Facebook ads to help you attract the largest possible audience.
Restaurant Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most affordable and effective ways to grow your restaurant business. Many diners will be happy to provide you with their email if they know they’ll get special offers, so make sure to market it that way.
Going forward, you can use email marketing to announce new menu items, promote events, and provide coupons and special offers to your most loyal customers.
Loyalty Marketing
Speaking of loyalty, you may want to consider instituting a customer loyalty program to encourage repeat visits to your restaurant.
Old school loyalty programs might have involved something as simple as a punch card, but today there are apps and software that you can use to reward your most loyal patrons.
Marketing Budget
The final element of your marketing plan is your budget. The amount you spend may depend on a variety of factors, including how long you’ve been in business and what your goals are. Here are some guidelines:
- New restaurants may need to allocate between 25% and 35% of revenue to marketing to attract diners and get the business off the ground.
- Established restaurants with consistent business may spend as little as 12% to 18% on marketing to maintain their revenue.
- Struggling restaurants may need to increase their marketing budget by 3%-10% of revenue to recover.
The last item may surprise you because it’s natural to want to cut back on spending when times are tough. Keep in mind that small business financing may be used to pay for marketing expenses, including advertising and promotions. You can even use equipment financing to purchase marketing software to help you achieve your goals!
Remember that your marketing strategy should be flexible. If you recognize that something isn’t working or you’re not spending enough, we recommend tweaking your strategy as needed.
Put Your Restaurant Marketing Strategy to Work with Small Business Financing
Marketing a restaurant or bar requires research, planning, and enough working capital to turn your goals into realities. The first step is writing a restaurant marketing strategy as we’ve outlined here.
Do you need working capital to execute your marketing strategy and turn your restaurant into a success? Select Funding can help! Click here to read about our restaurant financing options and apply today.
