Restaurant Marketing Is Complex But Is It Also Simple?

Copyright (c) 2011 Baz Rothwell

You may well have no idea where to begin your restaurant marketing. Often not knowing where to begin can be the very reason why you don't even get started!

So in order to get things into perspective you need to have a plan for what you want to achieve and why. Ask yourself the following questions:

1) What am I looking to achieve?
2) Which part of my restaurant do I need to focus on or improve?
3) Who would be my ideal customers for this area?
4) Where will I find them? And
5) How can I best target these customers with my restaurant marketing?

Try to be as specific as possible when answering the questions as this will allow you to be much more targeted with your restaurant marketing approach. Let's take an example here. Your answers may be something like this:-

1) I am looking to be the restaurant of choice for local business lunches and entertainment.
2) Weekday lunches.
3) Businesses that entertain clients on a regular basis or who hold business lunch meetings among themselves.
4) Local organisations that have regular callers trying to sell them stuff, bank managers, accountants and other professions that entertain clients.
5) Contacting local Chamber of Commerce, dropping flyers or making personal calls to these specific professions. Online advertising targeted at local business owners.

These answers are very short, your answers could be more complete and focussed, remember that they are designed for the sole purpose of marketing your restaurant. Therefore you need your answers to lead you to the correct conclusion. Whatever your answers are, they need to be modeled on your offering or service.

By this I mean if you want to offer a special lunch deal or menu that is modestly priced to capture a wider audience, then your target audience will not be those listed above. You will want to be targeting local office workers, shop staff etc and you will be looking for quantity and turning around your covers quickly. In the example above you would be seeking a longer lingering lunch with a price tag that reflects good service and a good menu and more than likely a good range of wines.

Questions 1 and 2 are very similar but question 2 will give you a good starting point, by figuring out your spare capacity it will give you an indication of where to take this line of questioning.

Then it is simply a matter of matching the best restaurant marketing tactic to your 5th questions.


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Baz Rothwell is a restaurant marketing specialist with over 40 years experience in the leisure industry. He has compiled a free 5 part e-course to help you get started with your Restaurant Marketing. Get it free by going to http://bit.ly/dSra0k right now.