As a restaurant owner, you know that having more customers leads to higher revenue. But with so many restaurants competing against each other, how can your business stand out from the crowd?

The short answer is simple: restaurant marketing. Whether you’ve just opened a local restaurant or you’re an industry veteran, effective marketing is the key to attracting potential diners. With the right strategies, campaigns, and restaurant marketing ideas, you can build a large, engaged customer base that sustains your business.

What is restaurant marketing?

Restaurant marketing is the series of actions your restaurant takes to engage with its target audience and develop positive customer relationships. It’s how you differentiate your business from competitors and communicate its value proposition to the public. The ultimate objective of marketing is to generate repeat business and long-term customer loyalty — in other words, it’s how you keep your diners hungry for more.

Traditional vs. digital restaurant marketing

Marketing has undergone a dramatic shift in the last few decades. Amid the prevalence of the internet and the rapid rise of smartphones, digital marketing has surpassed traditional marketing as the most important and effective strategy. A 2023 PYMNTS study found that 62% of consumers look for restaurants using Google, 52.3% use Facebook, and 39.2% use Instagram.

This mass movement to online research means it’s critical to market your restaurant using digital channels, including:

• Social media platforms
• Restaurant website
• Online ads
• Email marketing

That doesn’t mean traditional marketing is obsolete. In fact, many restaurants find success with activities such as:

• Direct mail
• Promotional merchandise
• Print, radio, and TV ads
• Community sponsorships
• Billboards and signage
• Coupons

For most restaurant owners, the best strategy involves a mix of traditional and digital marketing strategies.

Why should you market your restaurant?

Restaurant marketing helps build and maintain brand awareness for your business; done well, it increases foot traffic, order volume, and revenue. It’s an effective way to get in front of new people, making it easier to get more customers and ensuring your audience is always growing and diversifying. And for existing customers, marketing maintains brand awareness.

Creating a restaurant marketing plan

Launching a campaign can feel daunting for new restaurant marketers. Before you try, take the time to create a restaurant marketing plan — a document that outlines the details of the different marketing campaigns. It typically includes a timeline and a description of the activities and strategies you want to execute throughout the year.

A marketing plan is an overarching guide to keep you organized and on track. It helps you space out campaigns appropriately, allocate budget, and align marketing activities with important events and holidays.

1. Marketing goals

The first and most important piece of information that should be included in a marketing plan is your objective. What do you want your marketing campaign to accomplish? 

Answering this question will help you set the tone for your entire marketing effort moving forward. A marketing goal should be specific and measurable so you can determine whether your campaign is a success. Therefore, establishing a goal directly determines the indicators you’ll use when analyzing performance. Without a goal, you can’t measure the value of your work.

Identify an objective that makes sense for your restaurant. Here’s a list of goals you may choose to work toward:

• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Customer acquisition
• Website traffic
• Social media engagement
• Revenue

For example, let’s say you want to increase loyalty program sign-ups by 20% by the end of the year. With this goal in mind, you can tailor your marketing and start your campaign in the right direction.

2. Marketing budget

How much are you willing to spend on your marketing campaign? As a rule of thumb, your marketing budget should be somewhere close to between 3% and 6% of your sales.

Where you fall in that range will depend on your marketing mix. Are you using strictly digital marketing or a mix of both digital and traditional? The cost of traditional campaigns may be prohibitive for a small business; digital marketing activities are much friendlier to your budget.

It’s also critical to factor in the size of your target audience. The bigger the market, the bigger the budget you’ll require to cast a wide net and secure new customers.

3. Marketing strategy

The activities and promotions you run during a marketing campaign are collectively known as a restaurant marketing strategy. The point of a marketing strategy is to concentrate your marketing effort in a way that will most effectively achieve your objectives.

It’s important to note that there’s no one-size-fits-all restaurant marketing strategy. More likely, you’ll identify a combination of approaches that can work toward one or multiple goals simultaneously.

4. Campaign schedule and duration

How long will it take to complete the marketing campaign? When will key marketing activities take place, and where does each marketing strategy begin?

These questions are a core part of the marketing plan. Knowing the schedule and duration of your program will help you keep track of events and ensure everything is running smoothly.

5. Target audience

Knowing your customers is one of the most important ingredients for restaurant marketing success. Develop buyer personas for each segment of your target audience to glean insights around how they might feel about your campaign.

A buyer persona is an imaginary model of your average customer. Creating personas is a great tool for tailoring promotions and activities for the best reception. If you have a POS system in place, you may already have access to diner data.

This information can help you isolate clusters of existing customers and attach corresponding characteristics for each persona. Include information about their average spend per order, likes and dislikes, choice of marketing channel, and other details that can help you understand their habits.

26 restaurant marketing strategies and ideas

As you design a marketing plan and map out your restaurant marketing campaigns for the year, it’s helpful to have examples for inspiration. Here are a few to get you started:

1. Increase exposure through online ordering. Get your brand in front of a larger audience by setting up an online ordering system for takeout and delivery. Grubhub, which has a user base of more than 33 million diners, makes it easy to build and promote your online ordering website. 
2. Build a restaurant website that’s representative of your brand. Make sure your website is a professional, attractive, and informative reflection of your restaurant’s style and personality. After all, about 77% of customers visit a restaurant’s website before stopping in or ordering online. 
3. Engage customers with social media marketing. There’s a good chance your customers are spending time on social media — 68% of American adults use Facebook, while 47% use Instagram. Meet them where they’re at by creating profiles for your restaurant and posting regularly. Tap into Grubhub’s free social media templates to advertise your delivery and pickup options.
4. Practice outreach through email marketing. Keep your restaurant at the top of customers’ minds by sending out emails with daily specials, national food holiday promotions, subscribers-only coupons, or early access to special events.
5. Showcase your food with professional photography. Exceptional food photography can increase your food sales by up to 30%; beautiful photos can also enhance your website and build a following on social media.
6. Encourage repeat visits with a loyalty program. Reward repeat customers by offering free items, discounts, and other perks — it’s an easy way to keep them coming back. You can do the same for takeout and delivery diners with Grubhub’s convenient promotions and loyalty tools.
7. Drive online traffic with local SEO and Google Business. Reach people in your area by completing your Google Business profile and using local restaurant SEO strategies. That way, your restaurant is more likely to show up in search results.
8. Reputation marketing. Build a positive reputation online by showcasing your customers on social media, responding to negative feedback in a professional manner, and using positive reviews on your website and marketing materials.
9. Influencer marketing. Hire local travel and food influencers to promote your restaurant and get your food in front of a larger audience.
10. Mobile app for easy interactions. Customers love convenience. Invest in an app for online ordering — or work with a third-party delivery service such as Grubhub — to create fast, efficient transactions.
11. Themed nights. Give customers a reason to come to your restaurant with themed nights. Design special menus, change up the decorations, and include live entertainment to sweeten the deal.
12. Seasonal menus. Showcase tasty local ingredients by introducing a new menu for each season. In the process, you’ll support local growers and give customers another incentive to stop by for a meal.
13. Community involvement. Boost brand awareness by sponsoring local events, volunteering for local nonprofits, and hosting booths at local festivals and fairs.
14. User-generated content. Harness positive word-of-mouth marketing by encouraging customers to make content about their experience at your restaurant. Host contests, create a special hashtag, or amp up your drink and dish presentation to encourage customers to share.
15. Special discounts or weekly specials. Attract budget-minded customers by offering a new discount or special every week. It’s a great way to boost revenue and sell through overstocked ingredients at the same time.
16. Interactive menus and QR codes. More restaurants are using QR codes for both online and in-person ordering; they allow customers to interact with the online menu and customize dishes to their taste. If you’re managing a labor shortage, this type of ordering can also ease the workload for your staff.
17. Virtual tours. Help customers understand the vibe and style of your restaurant by posting virtual tours on your website and social media. This is a particularly effective marketing strategy if you’re trying to become the go-to spot for dates and special occasions.
18. Customer reviews. Positive reviews can give new customers the confidence to try your restaurant; they also impact your visibility on Google. To encourage people to leave reviews, try asking customers in person, on social media, and in marketing emails.
19. Gift cards. Restaurant gift cards are popular (and versatile) presents. To turn them into a marketing tool as well as a revenue source, order cards in an array of beautiful, branded designs.
20. Cooking classes. Build stronger relationships with loyal and new customers by hosting chef-led cooking classes. Teach participants how to make one of the restaurant’s signature recipes, work on special techniques, or prepare a themed meal.
21. Collaborations with other local businesses. Join forces with other entrepreneurs to expose both brands to new audiences. You might host yoga and brunch with a local yoga studio, for example, or partner with a local doctor on a heart-health cooking class. 
22. Promote sustainability. Customers care about the sustainability of their favorite businesses, and they’re increasingly voting with their dollars. In fact, millennial and Gen Z consumers are 27% more likely to buy from brands that care about how their operations affect the planet and its population.
23. Branded merchandise. Hire a graphic designer to create branded merchandise for your restaurant, focusing on designs that are modern and aesthetically pleasing. Each time a customer uses or wears an item, they’re advertising your business.
24. Referral programs. Put your regular customers to work recruiting other diners — and reward them for it. For each person they refer, you can offer a discount code, a dollar-off coupon, or another special perk.
25. Geo-targeted ads. Restaurants depend on local business. To reach people within driving distance, take out ads that are targeted to people in a specific radius of your location.
26. Pop-up events. Diners love to see new things from their favorite restaurants. To keep them interested and engaged, host pop-ups throughout the year — feature guest chefs, new cuisines, or exciting new restaurant concepts.

Simplify restaurant marketing with Grubhub

Navigating the many strategies and responsibilities associated with restaurant marketing isn’t easy, especially on your own. That’s why it’s so helpful to partner with Grubhub — in addition to online ordering, professional delivery, and 33+ million potential customers, you gain access to marketing resources that help you reach a bigger audience and grow your business. Grubhub Marketplace restaurants can leverage free tools, including:

• Ratings and reviews
• Promotion and loyalty tools
• Marketing toolkit

To find out how your restaurant stands to benefit, get started with Grubhub today.