Have A Restaurant Marketing Strategy That Targets Your Ideal Customer

Copyright (c) 2011 Baz Rothwell

It's all too easy to throw away money and resources by doing blanket advertising. A prime example here is the Yellow Pages, you pay mega money for mini exposure. These type of telephone directories are dying off, you only have to look at the size of it to realise they are fighting a losing battle to keep advertisers.

If you are still using Yellow Pages, in your restaurant marketing strategy, then it should not be for more than a one line listing, with your restaurant name, address and phone number, which is free.

Ask the next 10 people you see if they can remember when they last looked in the YP.

Then ask them when was the last time they did an online search through Google, Yahoo or one of the other search engines.

Look online for your style of restaurant in your city by doing a Google search. A map will appear on page 1 with several flags indicating those restaurants in your area. You should be there too, it's free!

The moral of the story - if you want to use blanket advertising, pick the free options, there are plenty to choose from. You should be focussed on finding much more targeted options, then building your restaurant marketing strategy.

However, you first have to know exactly who your current customers are and who your potential customers are. They will probably not be the same. If you are looking to expand your offering by opening more hours, for different meals or by providing 'off-site' catering (delivery, take-away etc), the customer profile might be different.

This is one of the major reasons why lots of restaurants, who decide to open for lunch, struggle with their customer numbers. They have not taken into consideration that the customer profile may be different.

Your food offering must match the customer profile and vice versa. Look at your typical customer and decide how you would describe him/her. Work out the profile and demographics of your customers and then make a list of where you would find more of them. That is the area that you want to target your marketing.

It's very important to have a restaurant marketing strategy to reach your typical customer, if you look at twitter or facebook, you may find local groups that fit the bill, then you can strike up a conversation with that group.

Another way to approach your ideal customer is to use your current customer base. People tend to be cliquish and they will associate with others like themselves or who have the same interests or professions. Builders know more tradesmen, shopkeepers know other shopkeepers, lawyers other legal eagles. I'm sure you get the picture, but just one more. Stay at home moms know other stay at home moms and they love to drink coffee, have lunch and talk about, well, everything.

Once you have identified your ideal customers, you can then start to find them, research local websites to try to find where they hang out online and look for forums. Offline find the streets where they are likely to live, target them will leaflets, mailings or surveys.

Make your restaurant the 'in' place for your target group, by providing the best amenities for that group, whether it be internet access, a relaxing bar area, private dining, baby changing area or whatever is appropriate.

When you have identified where you can find them, you will then know the best way to use your restaurant marketing strategies, to promote your restaurant to them.


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It is critical that you have a restaurant marketing strategy. To get a free 5 part e-course of marketing strategies by a 40 year veteran of the leisure industry, Baz Rothwell, go to http://bit.ly/dSra0k Contact Baz through http://restaurantmarketingguy.com for a free consultation.