Here are some examples of restaurant promotion ideas that work. And if that’s not enough, we also provide practical rules on how to create your own highly successful restaurant marketing companies.
Know your customer base
Before we delve into specific ideas for promoting a restaurant, it is important to recall the obvious: no promotion will be successful without prior identification, analysis and understanding of your existing and target customers. Conducting a promotion that does not seduce your audience is a waste of energy. And, unfortunately, this happens all the time.
Ask yourself: are you near office buildings? Stadium? Are your clients usually older or younger? What motivates your customers, experience or price? Start here. And you will find that coming up with ideas for promoting a restaurant will be much easier than before. Ideas that will drive repeat visits will be much easier than before.
Redefine Your Business Tasks
Restaurant promotions exist to help restaurants overcome difficulties unique to their business.
Is there an inefficient area of activity that you can pay attention to? Or the time of day when the staff is idle?
Some operational issues can be identified and overcome by simply talking to your team. But the main problems are best solved based on data and analytics from your restaurant outlet.
Income or press to promote?
This may seem strange, as we tend to think that promotions in restaurants are aimed at increasing revenue. But many successful promotions are aimed at creating recognition for the business.
Press can be more effective for business than revenue-oriented promotions. Since the brand recognition that they generate goes far beyond the dollars and cents attributed to one advertising company.
Think about it: an income-oriented promotion, when guests are given a discount on a certain menu item, or checking them for a certain period of time will affect your business only if the promotion is valid; The press has a much longer lifespan for promotion. May even encourage visits to your restaurant for weeks or months from the original publication date. Depending on when someone is faced with lighting.
And finally, it is important to know the fields of each menu item – both food and drinks. This helps you create creative offer packages that together still give you the value you want.
It’s best to advertise high margin offers as the leader in the rest of your menu. But it’s more important to understand your marginality as the back of your hand. Then you would know not only how deep you can make a discount, but also so that you can make more informed purchasing decisions and determine the ways for your inventory to go further.
Use a larger event
Share around the next major event, such as a local sporting event, concert or festival. It helps to run a business. It forms awareness of your restaurant for a much larger audience who attends this large event. In fact, you are also obsessed with the marketing ideas of this event. For example, you can bring a 5% discount to people who have a ticket to a local sports game. Or a discount on any purchase before a concert that takes place nearby.
Charities and Celebrities
Attracting a celebrity or a well-known local enthusiast may seem like an expensive test. But we succeeded in luring them, saying that a certain part of the proceeds goes to charity of their choice. This not only involves people in the restaurant, but also allows you to generate goodwill, awareness and, possibly, attract celebrities at a lower price. An example is bar night. With the participation of celebrities from 16:00 to 18:00 and the transfer of all proceeds from pizza to the local fire station or to the food bank.
Holidays as a way of promotion
Identify the holiday your audience loves. Make sure that other local competitors do nothing and go no further. Halloween costume contests are examples. In a contest where the best costumes receive gifts or prizes. Also, different offers for each of the twelve days of Christmas. The promotion not only brings business, but also makes your customers share links and tag you with the content they promote on their social networks.
Options and fixed price
Collect many offers with higher margins. Combine them with other sentences that usually seem unattainable. For example, wine with a higher price. Or offer a fixed-price menu with one or two additional offers. Those that someone would normally not buy, then add it up, see how much it will cost, and a 10-20% discount.
Some restaurant POS systems can help you see what is selling better and worse. Reporting this decision with reliable sales and inventory reports. Examples include a reduced-price menu, which includes an appetizer, main course, dessert and a bottle of wine, or a set menu during rush hour for lunch.
Dogon offers
Another right strategy for promotion is a significant discount on that part of your menu, which is rarely used alone. The idea here is that someone will come for an item at a significant discount, but will eventually acquire many other items before paying their bill.
Examples of this are discounted salted pretzels. Their purchase will force someone to buy drinks, or offer a free first craft beer. In the end, this will lead to the fact that a person will drink or buy more. They are often called “catch-up sentences.” Since they are used to force someone to make their first purchase and encourages them to buy more.
Downtime
This is a proven and real type of promotion. Here you can run any assortment of promotions when you have little time or the staff is not busy enough. Although your margin may be more profitable, it helps you recover some fixed costs. Engaging people with “slow” periods, such as Tuesday or Wednesday, or offers that start at 16:00 and end at 17:30 are classic examples of this to help you engage people right before (or after) getting used to them.
Community Events
Promotions aimed at solving community problems or excitement are always a useful way to grow a business. Perhaps there was a local sports team that lost funding. The house that caught fire. Or just a local organization that is looking for funds. Allowing these organizations to use institutions on their network and, as a bonus, they will do everything for you.
Buy in bulk and in stores
If the consumer buys a certain threshold of the offer, he is entitled to a discount or free additional cost. As in the case of increasing loyalty, the key here is to know the threshold of the normal amount that someone spends on a certain product, and then offer a small discount if they spend a little more. Classic examples include offering $ 5 off your appetizer with a gift card for $ 50 or more, or something like “buy two wing bucket and get a free extra beer.”
Launches and novelties
The last major promotion idea is promotions for new launches of menu items or store openings. You must have invested in these new parts of your restaurant. Although their value may seem obvious to you. Sometimes a quick start can help speed up a new offer, thereby reducing any lost early earnings.
A great example of this is Chic-Fil-A. They recently offered the first 100 people who order in a new place free food for a year. This not only involved people in their store early. But it also had a huge influence of the press and led to the discovery, turning more into a party.
These are just a few ideas for promoting restaurants to get the attention of visitors. How do you promote your restaurant?