Supercharge your restaurant’s digital marketing strategy with this comprehensive guide.
Why Download This Digital Marketing Guide?
With lots of competition in the restaurant industry and technology constantly changing, it’s no longer enough for restaurants to simply make great food and hope customers will share good reviews organically by word of mouth. These shifts in competition and technology require restaurant owners to employ new, creative ways of encouraging customers to dine with, and order from, their businesses. Cue a digital marketing plan for restaurants.
To stand out in a vibrant food scene today, you need to leverage technology and restaurant digital marketing. We’ve created this free, downloadable guide to creating a digital marketing strategy for restaurants in 2024 to help you understand and successfully implement the most relevant online strategies. This guide also saves you the cost of hiring marketing agencies because you can choose the marketing strategies that suit your business and customers best, and that work with your budget.
If you’re looking for some more context before clicking the download button on this digital marketing plan for restaurants, keep reading to learn what restaurant digital marketing is and why it’s important, and to discover restaurant digital marketing ideas and tactics you should be implementing in your own business.
What is Restaurant Digital Marketing?
Marketing is the practice of promoting a business or selling products and services to a specific customer base. Restaurant digital marketing is a discipline of marketing that leverages technology and online tactics to spread the word about foodservice businesses. Depending on your restaurant type and customers, different marketing tools will be more effective.
Examples of these tools include, social media advertising platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), email marketing (e.g. sending email newsletters), and SEO (optimizing a restaurant’s website so that it can be easily discovered by search engines).
By using each tool effectively, you can reap the benefits of digital marketing for your business.
Why Are Digital Marketing Strategies Important for Restaurants?
A digital marketing plan for restaurants is important because it offers restaurants various ways of leveraging technology to benefit both the business and customers:
- Reach customers where they are: With our Diner Report showing that 37% of Millennials saying online reviews help them decide where to eat and 28% of Gen Z saying that social media influences their decision, you need a strong restaurant digital marketing plan if you want customers to find your business.
- Control over your restaurant brand perception: Digital marketing gives you more control than word-of-mouth marketing.
- Expand your reach for a reasonable cost: Digital marketing can be more affordable than traditional marketing channels, like print advertising and commercials.
- Boost your customer engagement: Your online presence – through social media and your website – gives customers opportunities to interact with you, which helps build customer loyalty and increase sales in the long run.
- Improve customer experience: With your restaurant details online, customers will have a better experience because they can easily read your menu beforehand or order from your website or a connected third-party app.
Now that you know what restaurant digital marketing is and why it’s important, below are some marketing strategies you can employ and learn more about by downloading the guide.
Restaurant Digital Marketing Ideas
Here’s an overview of the restaurant digital marketing strategies you’ll learn more about when you download our free Restaurant Marketing Guide.
Search Engine Optimization
Of the 51% of people who turn to the internet for restaurant recommendations, 31% of them rely on search engines to find these gems. Restaurant websites with good SEO are more likely to appear at the top of the results page and lead people to their venue.
So, if your restaurant is hard to find online, you could be missing out on valuable customers. In our digital marketing guide for restaurants, we explain how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to generate website traffic for your business that ultimately turns into foot traffic.
And if you don’t have a website yet, you can easily create one with platforms like Wix and Squarespace where you can use a free template specifically for restaurants to start your website. You can customize the template to highlight your brand voice, while optimizing for SEO to entice customers to order from or visit your restaurant.
Social Media
If you want to be noticed online, you can’t ignore social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. With nine in 10 restaurants using social media to promote their businesses, you need to get online or risk being left behind. This marketing plan guide shares best practices for posting engaging content and growing your audience, such as how often you should post on Facebook versus Instagram, and how to cross-promote your Instagram content on Facebook.
Third-Party Apps and Advertising
Although apps for reviews, reservations, and takeout and delivery are popular among customers, restaurants often overlook them as strategic marketing channels. We share hot tips for making the most of each of these third-party apps to spread the word about your restaurant to people who can become new customers, such as by purchasing advertising or priority listing placement.
WiFi Marketing
Offering free WiFi in exchange for customers’ contact information is a great way to take advantage of technology and grow your email marketing list. Our digital marketing guide for restaurants suggests several WiFi marketing strategies to implement at your restaurant, such as advertising your current specials.
Email Marketing
Email marketing has the highest return on investment of any other marketing tactic, making it a good place to invest your time. We explain how restaurants can make the most of this powerful communication channel.
Loyalty Programs
Did you know adopting a loyalty program can increase sales by up to 30%? When customers are rewarded for eating from your restaurant, they’re more likely to become repeat customers. In this guide, you’ll learn what to look for in a loyalty solution for your restaurant. Plus, if you already use POS technology, it’ll be easier for you to set up a program and monitor its success.
With in-depth information on these marketing channels, our restaurant marketing ultimate guide has everything you need to start setting goals and measuring the success of your marketing plans. Download the free guide today.
