Are you a restaurant owner who is looking for more ways to get more hungry customers into your restaurant. Below we have provided a list of marketing ideas that you can use to improve your new and recurring customer bookings for your restaurant.

1. Promote your restaurant to the local community papers and magazines.

Contact the journalists and editors from your local community publications to get more exposure and promotion for your business and website.

2. Get your restaurant listed into food guides.

Get a list of the local food guides that people in your area read and review. Get your restaurant listed into these publications to boost your restaurants profile and to gain more customer bookings.

3. Get your restaurant listed on food blogs.

You can contact food blogs to let them know about what you offer at your restaurant.

4. Get your restaurant listed on food websites such as Urban Spoon and Tripadvisor.

When people are looking for restaurants and places to eat based on good reviews, they will usually go to these sites to see what previous customers have said. The reputation of your restaurant on these sites could make you or break you. It is important to manage the reputation of your restaurant on these sites.

5. Setup a Google + business page where happy customers can leave their review.

Similar to a listing on Tripadvisor, by having a good Google + business page you can aid with the visibility on the internet. By having your listing, it can integrate into maps and navigation devices to make it easier for people to find you, as well as allowing customers to leave their positive feedback and to share their experiences from your restaurant.

6. Make it easy for people to find your restaurant.

List your address on your contact page. This can help with your business showing up for local searches in Google and in other search engines. It can also help with your Google Places SEO.

7. Optimise your website for mobile and smart devices so that people can call to book.

With more people using smart devices these days, the easier you make it for them to navigate your site and to book at your restaurant, the more customers your should receive.

8. Tell people to talk about your restaurant on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

Encourage people to take photos, tag their friends and to mention the restaurant on social media.

9. Promote some of your eye watering dishes on Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr

Take photos to pin on Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr and build your following. This can be a great way of getting traffic to your restaurant website and people recommending your restaurant to others. You can also use Flickr to display high resolution pictures. You can allow creative commons where people can use the pictures and then give you an attribute back to your site, which will assist with online promotion initiatives such as SEO.

10. Maintain your customer relationship via email marketing

You can collect a database of your customers emails and send them offers and promotions to incentivise them to make repeat bookings. It is an effective way to keep your restaurant in the mind of your customers and to boost your restaurants brand via direct marketing.

11. Improve your restaurant’s website’s SEO

By getting your website in front of the hungry customers who are seeking what you offer on search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing), you will be able to generate more enquiries and restaurant bookings.

12. Use affiliate promotions

You can leverage the affiliate networks who will actively promote your website and your offerings on a pay per performance model. This is a good way to control costs whilst fuelling the growth of restaurant bookings.

13. Cashback coupons

You can use cash back coupons to incentivise the ‘Cashback crowd’ to book at your restaurant. There are quite a few communities that you can tap into.

14. Leverage coupon and voucher websites and coupon codes to get more customers and awareness.

You can use voucher codes and coupon websites to generate customer bookings. (For example, Groupon and Living Social)

15. Start a paid search marketing campaign.

You can use a paid search local campaign to generate leads to your restaurant. This would mean bidding on local keywords to generate new customer bookings to your restaurant.

16. Boost your restaurant’s brand awareness with display marketing campaigns.

Display advertising can be used and target to the local areas to generate customer bookings. This can be achieved by tapping into the display networks and ad exchanges.

17. Promoting your restaurant via online PR

This involves editorial publications in the form of online print, video and audio broadcasting.

18. Develop a restaurant membership clubs or subscription

Create a membership club for loyal customers where they can receive offers and discounts.

19. Keep your customers coming back with loyalty cards

Offer loyalty cards such as 1 free meal for every 10 meals. This can incentivise your customers to come back more.

20. Improve your restaurants authorship profile with an ebook

Publish an eBook of recipes or food guide from your restaurant and publish it on Amazon. You can sell these as a product and also create opportunities to be featured on radio, television and print publications.

21. Sales letters & Direct mail

You can send direct postal mail in your restaurants local area to generate more new and repeat customers. You can get access to the data and target your local market to generate more customer bookings.

22. Online Video

You can use online videos to promote your restaurant. You can create infomercials (mini commercials) which inform the watcher about what you have on offer. You can give them a greater understanding of your restaurant that should entice them to make a booking. You can do food guides in the form of recipes and cooking classes for people to attend. You can also have food reviews from customers that you could also use as Testimonials. This can generate good word of mouth.

By adding these to your current restaurants marketing promotional mix, you should be able to improve the profile of your business, create more promotional opportunities across various media and to further generate more customers.

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