What Is Your Restaurant Marketing Strategy?

When you open a restaurant, you will need as many new customers as you can get to make your establishment a raving success. Your restaurant marketing strategy will be the biggest part of bringing in new business. Here are a few restaurant marketing strategies for you to try.

1. Market your Restaurant in Hotel and Motel Rooms? People on vacation and people who do a great deal of traveling, will want to know where to find an excellent meal in your town. An excellent restaurant marketing strategy is to call or visit hotel and motels within a 5 mile radius of your restaurant, and ask them if you can place menus and coupons in their rooms and lobby areas. Some hotels and motels provide a list of area attractions for their guests, ask them if you can add your restaurant to their list. When the guests get hungry they will see your menu or your name on the list and will think of your restaurant.

2. Form an Alliance With Local Event Sponsors. This is another great restaurant marketing strategy! After any local concert or sporting event, people may be ready to have a meal before they go home. Many people come from quite a long distance to these events, and they will be looking for a place to eat before they head home. You can advertise on existing monitors, or have someone stationed at the door and give out menus when the patrons go inside. Remember women are more apt to keep flyers than men. In exchange for the advertising you can advertise the event in your restaurant.

3. Enter and Sponsor Contests? One of the biggest ways to use a restaurant marketing strategy, is to enter and win a contest. You can enter your cook or chef in a cooking contest, or enter contests in restaurant magazines and browse the internet to find contests to enter. You can create contests in your restaurant that will bring in customers.

4. Sell Gift Certificates? As another restaurant marketing strategy, offer gift certificates that your customers can buy for their friends so that they can try your cuisine. Each gift certificate is a referral to your restaurant. Make sure the gift certificates come in several different amounts, so the buyers can decide how much to spend.

5. Give Out Samples in Busy Locations? Have some of your staff go to busy locations such as shopping centers, parks, malls etc., and give out samples of your most popular fare. When someone stops to sample your fare, you can hand them a menu, a specials flyer, a business card, and a coupon for savings at your establishment. This should give you more traffic and so many satisfied customers.

6. Offer Specials? You can offer special prices on great food on special days. You can also offer a buffet of finger foods at special prices from 11 to 2 for the lunch hour. A great restaurant marketing strategy is offering frequent diner cards so that they can get a free meal after buying so many at the restaurant.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on restaurant marketing strategy checkout his recommended websites.