Local Restaurant Marketing Ideas – Online Marketing Magic
Today is all about information. Who’s online? What’s popular? Who’s trending? Where’s the best place to go? Because there are literally hundreds of millions of people out there looking for answers online, the Internet is the perfect place to use marketing strategies to get your business name out there. Whatever your business might be – let’s use a restaurant for example. Local restaurant marketing ideas number in the hundreds.
Let’s begin with the most used social media network in the world, Facebook. If your restaurant hasn’t got its own Facebook page, here’s a good place to start. With 900 million Facebook users and an estimated 500 million logins daily, you are missing the boat if you don’t have a presence on Facebook. In addition to your restaurant website, build a fan page on Facebook, where your customers can become a fan and see what is happening at their favorite greasy spoon. One of many local restaurant marketing ideas is to place Facebook coupon codes on your fan page to encourage weekly or daily visits to the site, then discounted food at the restaurant.
You have a website for the restaurant. But are you using your website to its full capability? One of the most popular local restaurant marketing ideas around today is use an SEO company to maximize your exposure online. SEO stands for search engine optimization and does just that. By using the algorithms designed by search engines, you can be one of the first restaurants listed in the search results. Don’t worry too much about how technical SEO sounds, that’s why the SEO companies exist, they’ll handle it for you.
Other electronic and technological local restaurant marketing ideas are, for instance, SMS text messaging strategies. When was the last time you were in a store that didn’t ask for your phone number as you checked out. Phone numbers are used to track customer frequency and purchasing. As a restaurant owner, use the power of the cell phone and text messaging to bring customers back in for a free piece of pie or cup of coffee. SMS text messaging software is affordable and easy to manage.
When I go out of town, it’s like a crap shoot to find a restaurant worth trying. Thank goodness for sites like Urbanspoon who list, review and compare restaurants across the country; another of many excellent local restaurant marketing ideas that costs the owner nothing out of his pocket but the time to keep his listing up to date and accurate. There are other business listing services that can benefit the local restaurant, although they are not specifically designed for restaurants, such as Yelp and Foursquare.
Local restaurant marketing ideas that make use of the Internet are in abundance. The key to having success with an online marketing strategy is to maintain your site(s). Keep them up to date and topical. It’s sometimes hard to find the time, but for the success of your restaurant or business, it’s essential to have a presence online in this day and age of instant information.
