Marketing & Advertising Your New Restaurant

To Your Target Audience

A NEW restaurant needs advertising to get customers in the door.
The first thing you must do when starting a restaurant is choose a cuisine your passionate about and the second thing is find those customers who are passionate about eating that cuisine. Then and only then can you market and advertise your restaurant.
What is the point of opening a restaurant if you haven’t found  an audience who wants the cuisine you’re serving?
“The often cited statistic of three out of every four restaurants fail in the first year is an indication that while many restaurants open, few have what it takes for long term success,” says Lorri Mealey in an article  in The Balance on November 25, 2016.
Not knowing your target audience is one of the primary reasons for such a statistic and why many restaurants FAIL in their first year!

YOUR CUSTOMER is the most important part of your restaurant, if you don’t know who they are,  any business you own isn’t going to be successful.
You must find them first!
Before you begin placing ads and building a fan page on Facebook etc., you must find who your target audience.

Who are you wanting to target and  attract to your restaurant?

Families, Business People, or the Late Night- Crowd

 

The key to marketing and advertising a new restaurant is to know who to market to and how much to spend on making them aware of your business.
 You can’t possibly know what to spend and where to spend it if you don’t know WHO you’re marketing and advertising to.

How Do You Find Your Target Audience

1. Who they are?
Find out your customers’ gender, age, marital status and occupation.
2. What they do?
Find out their occupations and interests.
3. Why they buy?
Knowing why customers buy a product or service, makes it’s easier to match their needs.
4. When they buy?
Finding out when customers go out to eat and what meals they eat when they’re eating out.
5. How they buy?
For example, some people prefer to get take out, drive thru or sit down.
6. How much money they have?
You’ll be more successful if you can match what you’re offering to what you know your customer can afford.
7. What they think about your competitors?
If you know how your potential target customers views your possible competition, you stand a much better chance of staying ahead of your rivals.
To get answers to these questions got to the U.S. Census Bureau. They have incredible amounts of information by state, city, age, business, geographic and much more. They’ve also got data from the latest Economic Census, which is the U.S. Government’s official five-year measure of American business and the economy.

Once you’ve decided who you want to attract, decide how much money you have to spend on your initial start-up advertising campaign.
As you may have noticed traditional advertising can be expensive, but there are some inexpensive and even free avenues to take to get the word out about your restaurant.
Using a few different social media platforms can reach a wide audience and help promote your restaurant in a viral word-of-mouth fashion.
Once you have thought about the media you’ll use it’s time to decide how much money you have to spend on your initial start-up advertising campaign.
Setting your budget is probably the most important thing to do before you dig into marketing. Across the board, industry professionals say to estimate 20% of your restaurant’s first year marketing budget towards the grand opening.

 

Why only 20%?
You don’t want to spend so much on your grand opening that it significantly reduces your ability to advertise during the rest of the year. There is also a very real chance that your advertisements might not be effective. Before you know what messaging and advertising mediums work, it is very risky to spend a big chunk of one’s annual advertising budget.
This is where having an accountant experienced in the restaurant industry can be of tremendous help.

Your dollars should go farther when marketing a grand opening vs. a typical promotion because of the content of the ads. A new restaurant most likely will have special offers related to the grand opening that increases the responsiveness of potential customers.
 

Grand opening budgets may differ depending on the business.

Here is a great article to help with your marketing. It’s written for already existing restaurants but the elements can defiantly be applied to NEW restaurants. A list of what you should include in your marketing & promo pieces.

13 Key Elements of a Marketing Piece Makeover

 If you need more advice and information on Marketing and Advertising Your New Restaurant click here.