Please note: This was originally published on West Michigan Business Blog. Reprinted with the author’s permission.
I like restaurants, I like frequenting the local ones, the nots….not-national, not-franchised, etc. It is great when new restaurants opens up, and I get quite excited to try out the place. Unfortunately, many of these restaurants end up closing their doors shortly after opening. This could be for a number of reasons: lousy food, bad service, not enough customers, and lack of publicity. Now I understand that opening and running a restaurant is quite an undertaking and it must be extremely difficult work. But nothing irritates me more than seeing a newly opened restaurant not promoting and marketing themselves. There are a plethora of free marketing options that every restaurant should take advantage of, but few do. In no way should your restaurant fail because of lack of promotion. Below is my list of unproven, untested, marketing and promotion tips that are must haves for every new restaurant that wants to get noticed.
Get Listed – Get your restaurant on the map! Google, and Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing, Judysbook, urbanspoon, grnow, whatever. Each has a system in place where you can claim your restaurant or add a new place to the map to post your restaurant. You can often enter in lots of pertinent information, that consumers are looking for, like: hours of operations, what type of food you carry, website, credit card information, etc. The point is to make it easy for someone who uses these sites to find you. If you are a Mexican restaurant and I am in mood for Mexican I want to be able to search Mexican food near Holland, Mi in Google and get your restaurant on there. How much does this cost? Nothing!
Social Media – Get a Twitter account, make friends with all the locals you can find. Announce your grand opening, your happy hour specials, you lunch time menu, new menu updates, or coupons for Twitter users only (this will allow you to track leads as well). The possibilities are endless. While you are at it might as well get a Facebook page up and encourage people to become fans. Join the local networks use your tweets to refer back to your Facebook page and vice-versa. If and when you do get customers in the store tell them about your social media efforts, encourage them to join or follow you. Not everyone will but some will and they will spread the word. Again the cost of this marketing effort? Nothing!
Website – This one gets me all the time, but as a restaurant you need a website. You need a website where you have your name, address, phone, hours of operation, a pdf of a menu (very important), and maybe a map. Yes, websites cost money but there are various websites that offer free hosting and free do it yourself design. Will it look awesome, no but at least you have a place where customers can check you out before committing to walking into your restaurant. Check of weebly for free websites, or use your Facebook fan page. Keep it simple, and again the cost can be free. Oh and make sure you post your website URL everywhere where you are listed.
Carry-Out Menus – Make copies of your menu and have them available for people to bring home. If I see a new place I will stop in scope it out and ask for a carry-out menu in order to plan a return visit to eat at your restaurant. Quite a concept, so please make plenty of copies of your carry-out menu because I hate hearing “oh we ran out”, or even worse “we don’t have any” Why not? Ok so there is some cost involved with this one, but a simple black and white menu on white paper is fine with me. Just make it happen.
Promote Locally – Every town or municipalities has some sort of website where they promote local businesses, find these and promote yourself. Examples: Downtown Holland, another holland one, chamber of commerces, Visit Grand Rapids, Downtown Grand Rapids.
Contact Newspapers – Our local area newspapers seem to love doing stories on new restaurants. Go ahead and search for restaurants on your newspaper’s website and lots of things will pop up. Write a press release and send it out to them and see what happens. Click here for a list. Cost of writing a press release… nothing again.
If you want to support your favorite restaurant or a new one in your area, print out this post and hand it to them. If you like these ideas or need help implementing them, send me an email at wmbizblog@gmail.com. Just remember that there are many ways to get publicity and traffic to your restaurant which will not cost you money.
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