Restaurants are always looking for ways to grow the number of people walking through their doors. So they go out and run tv ads, radio ads and newspaper ads to get eyes and ears on their business.
All of these marketing tactic are targeted to the offline world where most of the advertising isn’t even targeted. But there is a better way for you to get content out about your restaurant that will your restaurant the cutting edge it needs to compete locally.
When working with the Shreveport, Bossier City and Minden La restaurant market, I tend to lean more toward helping them getting found online. This is by far the best form of marketing and to be honest the cheapest way to go versus breaking the bank on advertising.
Using Web 2.0 Sites
Here is a little trick you can do that will allow anyone in your local market who has a phone, computer or just any device they can search on to find your restaurant locally.
I us this a lot with restaurants in shreveport, and I found out that over 1600 people per month search for the keyword “shreveport restaurants” Wow that’s a lot of people who are hungry, and ready to eat. So Why not position yourself in front of those people by getting found online.
So all you need to do is to us web 2.0 websites to gain that competitive edge over the other local restaurants. I’ve done my research, and will tell you that none of the restaurants in your market are doing it so you implementing it will be very easy.
Web 2.0 sites are just free basic sites you can set up on their platform that allows you to create any content you want. All you do is sign up for an account pick a website theme and start posting content..just that simple.
Now The Secrete
What you want to do is to dominate the local market by putting as much content as possible online that is center around the name of your city, and the word “restaurant”.
Example: Shreveport Restaurants, Atlanta Restaurants and ect..
So all you have to do is to create a piece of content each day which should only take you about an hour when it comes from signing up for one of those web 2.0 websites to posting something about your restaurant.
You can write something about the local restaurant market are special, and events you all have plan. You can write about anything you want as long as its 300 to 500 words to satisfy the search engines.
What you are looking to achieve with this is that you will be building up local content surrounding the keyword people are searching for. So if they’re looking for restaurants in your city then you should be the first business they find because you created more content then the competition. So make sure you add your contact information such as phone, address and your website if you have one so people can locate your restaurant.
Now go dominate your local market with the best kept secrete for restaurants.
All comments, views and opinions are welcome below.
Studies shows that 90 percent of business your restaurant gets comes from a 30 mile radius. This tells us that people will get into their cars and drive at least 30 minutes to eat at a restaurant of their choice.
So as a restaurant owner or manager its important that you position the restaurant to be found locally online by searches. These are the people who are searching from Iphones, Ipad, laptops and so forth.
They’er on Google searching for a restaurant to eat at with their loves ones or just a place to mingle and have a few drinks. Plus if you know it or not many people are not from your city so their notion is to search online for a restaurant, and those who put the work into be found will be found.
Google Your Business Name
First thing I do when working with any restaurant owners in my surrounding cites such as Shreveport, Bossier City or Minden La. Is that I will Google their name to see what comes up.
I’m doing this to see if they even have an online presence from the jump-start. My goal is to see if they even have a website, and if not encourage them to get one setup asap. Just Google “Coleman Marketing Group” and you will see that I dominate the top results so I control the information about my business.
Next I’m looking to see how many places is my business is listed when it comes to profile website like Yellow Page, Super Pages and Yelp. These are just free business profiles sites that list general information about your business.
This range from your restaurant business hours, locations, website and ect..So just for this reason these sites are extremely important for you to be found locally by those searching for restaurants in your area.
Put Your Restaurant Online
The only thing you have to do is think about your city name and/or the surrounding cities name. The reason for this is that people are going to search for the following to find local restaurants..
1. Restaurants in Dallas
2. Orlando Fl Restaurants
3. Restaurants in Shreveport La (1600 people search this term each month)
4. Chicago Restaurants
5. and so on…
All you have to do is set up free profiles on these list of 55 top local directories for your restaurant. You just sign up for a free account and enter all informationconcerning your restaurant business. But make sure you use “Your City Name + Restaurants” in the title and description when describing your business.
Now I will tell you now that most of your local competitors is not doing this. Their out running expensive ads on the local radio, TV and newspapers crossing their fingers hoping someone is listen.
But you’re not spending a dime on advertising, and will be putting your business right in front of those customers who are looking to eat in your town or city. Being found online is the best marketing and the easiest thing you can be doing for your restaurant if done right.
Time is everything to a restaurant management team or owner who are trying to market their business on little time. Most restaurants are busy from sun up to sun down just prepping to serving customers.
So the time to market that restaurant in their given market seems so far from realty. The management team doesn’t really know too much about marketing a restaurant because their expertise is mostly in customer service.
Employees are busy, and the owners are there working themselves are off on business. So what most restaurants do is that they hire some big marketing firm (which is not good) and pay them thousands of dollars to implement things they would’ve been doing themselves for free.
I don’t want to see you guys spend money in today’s market that you just don’t have to spend. There are somethings you can do, and have one of the employee do early in the morning or even better during your lunch time.
Yes, only 1 hour a day of this form of marketing will allow your restaurant to be light years ahead of the local competition. Guarantee the other restaurants in your area are not doing what I’m about to tell you.
Plus this is totally free…
1. During lunch take an hour and sign up for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. This will only take you about a good solid 30 minutes to do because you will have to fill out all information concerning your business. With Facebook you will need a regular account to be able to set up your Restaurant Business Page. I did a step by step Facebook guide on setting up business pages on Facebook if this is something you’re not familiar with.
This should take mostly your whole lunch to do especially when it comes setting up the business page. Now that’s completed its times to market your business without the hassle of spending thousands of dollars.
2. During your next lunch….One of the easiest ways to promote your restaurant is to get content out online about it. Meaning you need to let the local community look behind the scene of the restaurant. This comes in the form of creating content that can be found in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Plus this content can be shared by the customers and the thousands of people who will come across it.
There are two ways of doing this which is the free way and the paid way. I will explain them both in full so you can determine the best method for your business as of today.
Free Method
You can set up a free domain website on sites like Blogger or WordPress. Theses websites give you the opportunity to setup free websites on their server. You don’t own the website at all because it’s just an exstenion of their websitewhich looks like this.
www.yourname.blogspot.com or www.yourname.wordpress.com
Theses sites are under your control in form of creating content but as far as that goes that’s the only authority you have over the site. You can post as much content as you want but they own it, and if they decide to shut you down at anytime then they can. So it’s very risky using their free domains in the long run but if you don’t have any money then its your best option as of today.
Paid Method
The best thing I recommend, and believe me I’m not saying this just for my heath is to get your own domain name such as something like this.
www.yourname.com
With your own domain you can do endless amounts of things that you can’t do on those free sites. You now have full control over everything under the sun, and own all your content so no one can just come along and shut you down over night.
So all you have to do is to get a domain from BlueHost, and get someone to setup the website up for you. The site doesn’t have to be spectacular just something that looks good, and able to express the restaurant views and content.
3. During your next lunch…Now the site is set up its time now to start writing content for the site during that one hour lunch every single day. The reason for this is because all the content you post on the site can be read by the customers, and those who are interested keeping up with your restaurant events, specials and more.
All I ask for this to work is to make sure you put the name of your city in the title and body of the content to let the search engines know that you’re trying to allow people in community to find this online.
Putting It all Together
All you have to do now for this to work like a charm is to create a piece of content each and everyday during lunch time. This can be you or an employee who is good at typing content that is at least 300 to 500 words.
This should take no more than 30 minutes to do during each lunch break. Take the next 30 minutes to read over the content, and add any photos of video and ect..that you want to add that benefits the customer.
Finally once that content is posted its time to share it on that Facebook Business Page you setup and on Twitter and Linkedin. Now you are sharing your content online so millions can see what you guys are doing at your local restaurant.
Next you want to make sure all your customers know about this website, and have them come over to leave comments and encourage them to share the content you write each day. Over time you will see more and more people coming into your restaurant on account of this marketing tactic if your consistent with it.
This is something I’m setting for the local restaurants in my surrounding area of Shreveport, Bossier City and Minden La. I’m making an effort to brining creative marketing strategies to help local businesses in my community. Hopefully this will give you the blue print of implementing this for your restaurant starting today.
All comments, views and opinions are welcome below.
When looking to promote your restaurant on a low-budget then you must get creative. In my local market of Shreveport, Bossier City and Minden La, I’m working to help our local restaurant owners market their business to the massive without spending too much on advertising.
So in this bog post I’m listing the 6 ways you can promote your restaurant in order to gain more customers at an affordable prices and free tactics. Here Goes…
Post an Ad
One of the most simple task you can do is to post an ad in your local newspaper. You may say that many restaurants are posting ads in the newspaper right? Not so
Most restaurants don’t even think about posting ads in the paper only because of the lack of knowing how effective it is. So create a special give away that get people in the doors, and see how the profits grow.
Give Out Coupons
This is very effective if the coupon is tempting enough for customers to redeem it. So come up with your best deal of all time, and put it out for the local public.
People love free stuff, and if its good enough they will be there in your restaurant. You can use sites such as Groupons or just create one yourself, and keep 100% of the profits versus given half of it away to Groupon.
Get Social
Can’t tell you how many people are on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. But one thing I do know if I had a restaurant, and looking to market it to thousands of local customers then I’m signing up.
Just signing up is not enough because you need to know how to customize your profiles for local searchers. Meaning you need to have the right photos, information on those profiles sites to be found and heard. Lots goes into this but done right can mean thousands of new customers without breaking the bank.
Create a Video
One of over looked restaurant marketing tactics I see from owners who I talk to are the use of video. People today are more likely to watch a video versus reading anything. “Call Us Lazy”
So make a simple video of the restaurant, and post it online on your YouTube Channel for the restaurant. PLus share that video on the social sites you signed up for.
Next inform the customers about you guys new video of the menu, staff, owners and just simple video of customers coming in and out of the restaurant. Now you have something all your customers can share on their social platforms which equals free marketing. Wink Wink
Two for One
Sometimes it best to have those deals that forces people to buy two of something to get that third item for free. It’s be something like buying two entrees and get two deserts for free, which is something you’re not losing any money on because the prices of the entree will pretty much cover any lost.
Building Local Profiles
I can write all day about local profiles sites such a Yellow Pages, Super Pages, Mante and too many more to even name. These are just sites where you can start building an online presence by creating free accounts for your restaurant.
This will make your restaurant even easier to find online only if setup correctly. You hear me say this all the time about setting up things correctly because I have realize over the years if it’s not done right then you’re not getting the results you want.
So make your profile fully customizing and completing your profile so it ranks as high as it can in the search engines, and on that given profile site. If you don’t do this then your time setting these up will be wasteful.
There are thousands of these profile type sites but the ones above is a great start to build that online presence.
I have created the ultimate guide to restaurant marketing ideas that you can use to dominate your local market today. This is not rocket science when you just sit back, and think about what it takes to market your restaurant.
All it takes is some planing, and implementing which translates into results of more customers and profits.
Today is your lucky day if you’re looking to promote your restaurant for free to thousands of people in your community and city by just using Facebook. The time has come for you to grow your restaurant massively in a matter of weeks if you implement the strategies you will be reading about in a moment.
For over 13 years now, I have been doing online and offline marketing for myself and thousands of businesses locally and across the world. One thing I stress is that no matter if you have a snow cone stand or a fortunate 500 company like Best Buy, if you can implement simple and effective marketing tactics, then you can dominate your local market.
How to Promote Your Restaurant
Now, I’m not going to get too much into analyzing your local competition in your town because that can take all day, and honestly, that’s all on the shoulders of the marketing people you’re using to help grow your restaurant.
What I want to talk about, which is part of a chapter I wrote in my local marketing domination guide that takes you through five chapters on how to analyze, research, and dominate your local market with business profiles, video marketing and one of my favorite for a restaurant business is Facebook.
Attracting Customers on Facebook
People ask me many times at events that I’m hosting, how do I promote my restaurant business? You would think most people who are in this industry are knowledgeable on getting customers through the doors consistently, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
So what I’m going to reveal to you all today are the steps to promoting your restaurant on Facebook to thousands of potential customers daily.
What you want to do first is have a meeting with the staff and let them know about your goals for the next 3, 6 to 12 months when it comes to the restaurant. You would like to tell them that you’re going to be pushing towards getting more social media customers to the restaurant.
The reason for this meeting is because you must get each one of your employees on board for this to work. It works for Facebook because everyone has an account from our mom, dad to family, and friends.
Your employees have an account, and their family and friends have it also, which means lots of promoters to get this kicked off. So overall, you will like to inform them that the growth of the restaurant means lots more tips and raises soon.
Second, just spend about a week posting photos of random customers coming in and out of the restaurant. You want photos posted of the highest volume days so people can see that this is the place to be because people are packing the place. Now, unfortunately, these days are usually the weekend for most restaurants, but I’m going to show you how to have your restaurant packed daily by using Facebook, possibly.
Third, is to create a coupon that no one in their right mind can resist. Now, this coupon doesn’t have to put you in a position to lose money, but it does have to be good enough for you to break even or make just a little off of it.
If you guys ever used Groupon, then you will know that if you go on there to find a deal, then you will find it. Most of those coupons are anywhere from 50% off to 90% off of something that the restaurant is offering. So, if you do not know how to create coupons, then the Facebook local marketing guide will walk you through it.
After you create your awesome coupon that will just be irresistible to anyone who comes across it, it is time to post that coupon on your restaurant Facebook page, which you must “spotlight” so that it stays on the top of your updates. Now you have a coupon that people can click on, download, and redeem in your restaurant. “light build a moment.”
If you can picture anything about local marketing, then you will start to see what I’m trying to get to. This coupon will be what we call a lead magnet to get people to come in and redeem that coupon, but also maybe buy something else which adds to your profits. As I said, the coupon needs to be good, but not something where you will lose money but at least break even or make a little profit.
Spreading The Coupon
Here comes the viral effect of using Facebook to promote your restaurantto thousands of customers for free. Just remember that these steps are ineffective if you don’t take action on implementing them. The only way your restaurant will gain that competitive edge over the other local restaurants is from staying consistent.
Using Signs – This is powerful if you can place signs throughout your restaurant. You can place them in front of the windows, counters, restroom, bar area, and tables. Now, no matter where your customers go, they will be introduced to your Facebook page, asking them to come to join for free coupons and promotional items.
Follow us Wednesdays– I love this one because it’s done on one of the slowest days of the week, which is Wednesday. This is when you can get simple shirts made for your employees who will only wear them on Wednesdays.
Those who come on that day and follow your restaurant’s Facebook page will get a special deal for that action. That deal can be anything you want as long as it’s something people can’t help to show up for.
Place an Ad– This is simple to do; it is to place an ad in your local newspaper. Don’t spend too much money on this because of it just something to tell the public about your restaurant’s Facebook page and the great coupon deals.
Most restaurants put ads in the paper about ½ off this or that but fail to capture those people in the form of allowing them to join their Facebook page. Now you’re able to give them a great coupon deal and market to them for free.
Dominate Your Industry With Facebook Check-in
I go into more detail about how the Facebook check-in process works in my local marketing domination guide. Here I’m just going to explain the overall power of allowing your customers to check-in to get the coupon deal of the day.
Once a person checks-in to their Facebook saying that they’re at “Coleman’s Sea Foods,” then that goes out to all 500, 1,000, or 5,000 friends they have. Most importantly, about this is that most of everyone’s Facebook friends equal up to about 80% of staying in a 30 miles radius of them.
Just to let you know, anyone who is within a 30-mile radius of you is considered to be in your local market. Now, just one customer checking in has put “Coleman’s Sea Foods” Facebook page in front of potentially thousands of new customers.
Now when they see that their friend has checked into my place of business, it comes up on their news feed. All they have to do now is click the link that lands on my page, and right there in their face is a coupon that they just can’t pass up.
Hopefully, they download the coupon and come in to redeem it, which gives me another loyal customer. This is so powerful I can’t even explain to you why every restaurant isn’t doing it, but if not, then that just leaves the door open for you to dominate the market.
Did I mention there is an app you can get to automate this whole process? Check out my “FaceBook Domination Guide” to learn how to become the #1 restaurant in your city or town.
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Restaurants are always looking for ways to grow the number of people walking through their doors. So they go out and run tv ads, radio ads and newspaper ads to get eyes and ears on their business.
Studies shows that 90 percent of business your restaurant gets comes from a 30 mile radius. This tells us that people will get into their cars and drive at least 30 minutes to eat at a restaurant of their choice.
Time is everything to a restaurant management team or owner who are trying to market their business on little time. Most restaurants are busy from sun up to sun down just prepping to serving customers.
When looking to promote your restaurant on a low-budget then you must get creative. In my local market of Shreveport, Bossier City and Minden La, I’m working to help our local restaurant owners market their business to the massive without spending too much on advertising.
