Are you looking to up the ante with your restaurant marketing game? Keep reading as we share some powerful restaurant marketing tips for 2022.

Competition between restaurants feels fiercer as we head towards the last few months of 2022! We are almost in the last quarter of the year and it’s time to tighten things up, especially in the marketing department. This is the time to finish 2022 with a strong wave of momentum that can propel you through the typically slow first quarter in 2023.

So, what should you do to tighten up your restaurant marketing? We suggest you not only implement new online marketing tactics but also strengthen the foundations to keep more customers coming in. In this post, we share five powerful restaurant marketing tips you should act on in 2022!

Your potential customers are looking for you online, especially on Google. Sure, they want to know your contact information. But more than that they need to know where your restaurant is and how far it is from their location. Therefore, we recommend you create a Google Business profile for your restaurant. The information you’ll enter in the profile (website, address, hours, direction, contact number) will show up against your restaurant, whenever someone searches for it. It’s easily one of the best ways to show up on Google Maps!

If you already have a Google Business profile, spruce it up!

• Add professional photos of your dishes
• Put your menu on your profile with your new professional photos
• Post regularly like any other social media account
• Respond to all reviews, both positive & negative

Google Business profiles can receive thousands of views a month, so make sure yours makes it as easy as possible for your potential customer to find what they are looking for.

2. Expand to new Social Media platforms

Most restaurants have accounts on Facebook & Instagram. But posting on these basic social media platforms may mean that you are leaving money on the table by not leveraging newer platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Get familiar with these social media platforms, keep creating fresh content, and your audience engaged. Go for sponsored promotions and encourage food bloggers and micro-influencers to visit your restaurant. Most importantly, learn how to cross-promote between the platforms.

Restaurants keep changing their menus, especially prices and names. It is important that you update the web-based menu too! Leaving the customers guessing about the restaurant menu can cause major confusion and even make customers not visit your place. So, remove that outdated menu and replace it with a new one.

Many customers search for restaurants online based on their dietary restrictions. There are thousands of searches every month for “vegan restaurant” or “gluten-free restaurant” depending on your location. In order to become more visible to these customers, we suggest you create purpose-specific menus to help them see more of what you have to offer.

Offer a wide variety of vegan items? Make a vegan menu. Offer a wide variety of gluten-free items? Make a gluten-free menu. While this may be cumbersome for physical menus, it is extremely easy to do for your online menus. You can also differentiate menus by meal type, location, occasion, delivery-only items, and more.

According to Mailchimp, emails from restaurants have an open rate of 19.77%! This is a fantastic rate and far cheaper than paid advertising. Also, Social Media companies have developed a reputation for banning accounts and making it almost impossible to recover them. This is why you should always be building your email list. With an email list, you can:

• control the ability to contact your customers
• send email blasts about your specials
• let customers know about new drinks or menu items

There you have it. We have shared some of the most critical restaurant marketing tips you’ll need heading into the next year. It’s time you put on your marketer hat and implement the tips mentioned above. Most importantly, keep track of the changes you make to your digital real estate. This helps determine the restaurant’s digital marketing performance, design more impactful campaigns, and reach as many customers as possible. Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to check out other informative posts on the blog & signup for our newsletter!