If you have been in the restaurant industry, you would surely know how competitive this business can be in the presence of several types of countless restaurants in all corners of the world. In order to survive and make profits in such an environment, you must market your restaurant efficiently. In the modern world, different creative restaurant marketing campaigns are being introduced by great franchises.
A small or recently-launched restaurant may not afford to spend too much money on marketing, which can be quite expensive at times. However, you can surely adopt many amazing marketing tools, which are either free of cost or you have to spend very less, and can go a long way in helping you promote your business. Let’s have a look at some of these tools:
Email Marketing
You can sign up with an email marketing service provider like Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or iContact. This type of marketing can surely help you popularize your restaurant in the area. All the above mentioned email marketing service providers offer a free marketing software which you can use to spread your message across. You should ask for email addresses of your customers on your website or run giveaway programs and send them newsletters every week or on monthly basis.
Social Media Marketing
Over the last few years, social networking websites have become increasingly powerful. Apart from being a tool of staying in touch with your friends or family members, social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are an effective tool of promoting your products or services. You should create a page of your restaurant on Facebook and ask more and more people to join it. The menu changes or special deals can be communicated to a large audience through social media. Ask your friends and family members to share the page of your restaurant with their friends as well.
Review Websites
No matter how technically advanced we have become, word of mouth remains one of the most authentic sources of marketing. You should submit the reviews of your restaurant on review websites like Urban Spoon, City Search and Yelp. This would assist you in conveying the message to thousands of people and should definitely bring more and more customers to your restaurant.
Quality of Food
You can bring a customer to your restaurant once with good marketing but it is only the quality of food and atmosphere you offer that will urge them to visit your restaurant again. On top of that, if the quality of your food is of the highest standard, your restaurant will automatically become popular in the area as people will recommend your restaurant to their friends, colleagues or family members. Therefore, we can state that the overall standard of your restaurant can also be an indirect marketing tool.