10 Ways To Boost Traffic to Your New Restaurant Business

Whether you’ve just started a new restaurant or want to expand an existing one, you’re interested in learning restaurant marketing tactics. However, many conventional strategies for growing a firm are either too time-consuming or too costly to be effective. This article decodes the top 10 tips to increase restaurant website traffic. 

On the surface, ideas like placing an ad in the local paper or paying for a radio broadcast may appear appealing. They do, however, appeal to a wide range of people. Worse yet, they are rather costly. While they may increase traffic, you may not be able to return your advertising costs. Worse, they will only be effective for a limited time.

It’s challenging to attract new business. If you want to attract more clients to your restaurant, you’ll probably want to keep the costs as low as possible. Thankfully, there are several excellent options for increasing your restaurant’s customer base without breaking the wallet.

But before we go ahead with tips to increase restaurant website traffic, try to answer these questions. 

Why should someone choose your restaurant over the one next door to eat? Alternatively, why should someone choose your restaurant over the hundreds of others that offer online ordering platforms?

The importance of good word of mouth cannot be overstated. So, from the fundamentals of restaurant marketing to more intricate promotion methods, we’ve compiled a list of top tips to increase restaurant website traffic in a more significant way and promote your restaurant.

But it’s not enough to merely offer delicious food and provide excellent customer service; you must also promote it. Below 10 tips is been listed to boost traffic of your restaurant and apart from this digital marketing is one of the best way to promote your restaurant. Learn more about digital marketing by joining the digital marketing course in Chennai or digital marketing online course, Digital Scholar will undoubtedly assist you with the best online digital marketing course available.

Here is the list of top digital marketing services to boost traffic to your new restaurant business;

1. Tips to increase restaurant website traffic starts with defining your Restaurant Marketing’s Scope and Target Audience.

When putting together a marketing plan, taking the effort to create a strong brand identity and identify your target market is a must-do first step. 

As a result, you’ll be able to craft a highly customized approach that stands a good chance of succeeding. Start by defining the following points:

• Who are you aiming for?
• What is your financial plan?
• Which strategies and tools will yield the best results?
• How much will they set you back?
• How will you track and assess your progress?

Choose three characteristics that will define your customer’s experience.

Food isn’t the only thing that matters. What distinguishes your customers experience from other restaurants? Is it a matter of speed? Ambience? Convenience? Versatility? If you want to make customers passionate about it, you’ll need to know. 

2. Have a Fantastic Website with a Reservation System for Restaurants.

According to a TripAdvisor survey from 2018, 80% of UK respondents make restaurant bookings online, the highest percentage of the five markets studied.

A smooth, straightforward user experience is vital, whether you employ a website builder with table reservation capabilities or incorporate an order and pay platform into your website. It would help if you also thought about the tools provided by your payment provider. 

For example, an all-in-one POS system and payment system includes a feature that allows businesses to get online for free. Customers would be able to explore your menu, order and pay, and even select delivery or click and collect from your website, which would be pretty basic.

A pleasant user experience should extend to the remainder of your website. You must make essential information (i.e. address, opening hours, menu) as accessible as possible in this highly competitive market.

Study the restaurants your customers prefer over you.

Benchmarking against competitors isn’t revolutionary, but it’s an integral part of growing your business. Customers have many options when it comes to food. Therefore, you can’t afford to fall behind your competition. You’ll want to know if your competitor offers vegetarian and gluten-free options or if they’re expanding into food trucks and markets.

3. Take Advantage of Yelp and other Restaurant Review Sites.

Tips to increase restaurant website traffic would be incomplete without reviews. You have nothing to fear from restaurant review systems as long as you’re offering the most satisfactory possible experience for your consumers.

According to TripAdvisor, 87 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom chose a restaurant based on internet reviews. Including these reviews on your website sends a strong trust signal to both visitors and Google. 

Understand the influence of online reviews. Before entering your restaurant, most customers want to feel safe and secure. One of the most significant things clients look for while conducting internet restaurant research is other people’s reviews. Please make the most of online reviews and customers’ faith in them.

Don’t be afraid to urge your loyal customers to provide a review on your website, Yelp page, Google+ page, or social media profiles. You may also give folks who submit a review a decent discount the next time they visit your business.

Don’t forget to contribute to the conversation! Take the time to respond to both positive and negative evaluations, expressing gratitude to those who take the time to share a positive experience and attempting to appease those who have had a negative experience.

4. Become an Expert in Restaurant Social Media Marketing.

Everyone is on social media, whether Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or another network. So, leveraging this power and making your presence felt on these platforms is ideal for improving restaurant sales. 

Creating social media pages for your restaurant would be beneficial. Social media helps you to communicate with your customers, establish loyalty, and attract new customers, in addition to being a terrific platform for promotion. 

Even better, many online ordering platforms interact with social networking platforms or allow you to link from your social media accounts, making them a valuable source of business.

That is why sincerity is so essential. Instead of attempting to replicate the approach of a company you respect, use your market research to develop a voice and image that will resonate with your target audience.

Consider this scenario: a potential client enters your social media page to look at the menu items and images, but the most recent post is almost four months old. Is it going to make a good first impression? Certainly not! 

As a result, make sure you use these pages to engage with your customers and respond to their remarks. Also, keep in mind that you should never dismiss a negative review. Always accept negative feedback and express regret for the inconvenience. 

5. Email Marketing Campaign for Restaurants

Next on this list of tips to increase restaurant website traffic is another crucial implementation of Email Marketing Campaigns. Email marketing tools and point-of-sale systems simplify collecting client emails and constructing marketing campaigns based on specific consumer spending patterns. 

One advantage of internet reservations is that you may begin to build up a valuable database of prior diners. Who better to convert into regulars than those who have previously given you a chance?

If you’re going to store email addresses and use them for marketing, you must follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To be compliant, you must explain why your customers’ data is being held and provide them with the choice to opt-out.

You don’t have to apply all of the marketing methods mentioned above; otherwise, you risk wasting your money. Choose a few complementing ones to begin with, and invest in them. Keep the following five suggestions in mind to maximize your return on investment (ROI):

• Don’t forget to acquire diners’ email addresses so you can stay in touch and offer out future deals.
• Market to your target audience specifically — advertising isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.
• Instead of replicating the strategy of a brand you respect, develop your own distinct and authentic marketing voice.
• Measure your progress and make adjustments as needed. Outsource your marketing to a marketing firm to save time and money.

6. Loyalty and Promotion Programmes

Running a loyalty programme for your business is now easier than ever. Apps have made them more convenient for both companies and customers; they provide tools for tracking, analyzing, and tailoring campaigns to improve their success. They eliminate the need for people to carry stamp cards with them everywhere.

The best marketing weapon you have is word of mouth. Customers who enjoy your meal are likely to tell others about it, but there are always ways to help and encourage them. Establishing a membership or VIP club lets you engage more intimately with your most passionate consumers and encourage them to keep sharing. Also, make sure they’re aware of your social media presence so they can share it with their friends.

Restaurants may now quickly implement loyalty programmes thanks to the emergence of order and pay applications. You can even send customer reward promotions through the order and pay app when they place an order. 

7. Search Engine Optimization for Local Businesses

There will be stiff competition for the top SERPS positions, depending on how specialized your restaurant is in your location. 

Local SEO may significantly improve your chances of ranking high in searches, and the best part is that you can perform much of it for free.

As you’ll see below, many of the other marketing tactics we’ve mentioned feed into good SEO:

• Maintaining all of your vital information (contact information, address, opening hours, etc.) up to date and making it simply navigable and accessible is a simple method to optimize your website.
• Include your target location and keywords in the meta title (what consumers see in search results).
• In the meta description, provide keywords and exciting information (i.e. under the meta title in the search results, you have the snippets)
• Customers should post evaluations as efficiently as feasible – Google looks at reviews (especially ones you respond to) to see if your restaurant is credible and worth recommending to consumers. 
• Local citations are another important Google trust indication – Make sure you’re listed in local directories, news and blog sites, and social media websites.

Therefore, we have added Search Engine Optimization in our tips to increase restaurant website traffic.

8. Collaborate with Public Relations Firms

Hiring a public relations agency can be pretty effective, but it can also be costly. Your resources and goals will determine whether or not it is appropriate for your company.

A skilled restaurant publicist can implement a multi-channel approach that would be tough to execute on your own. Restaurant public relations are best suited to firms that operate in large, competitive markets. They’re also good at planning attention-getting launch promotions for new restaurants.

Moving ahead on this list of tips to increase restaurant website traffic

the following are some of the advantages of restaurant PR: 

• Can enhance and broaden the reach of your current marketing activities
• For mutual benefit, suitable for creating and managing long-term partnerships with the media, other restaurant and food & beverage enterprises, and influencers 
• Allows you to tap into the expertise of professionals to produce compelling and engaging stories about your company.
• Peace of mind when it comes to reputation management and crisis management

9. Use User-Generated Content to its Full Potential (UGC)

Whether or not you communicate with your consumers, they’re still producing a lot of UGC, so why not take advantage of it?

To demonstrate your value and promote interaction, repost photographs that your customers share on Twitter or comment on their Instagram photos – “Glad you loved your lunch, come back soon!” –

However, some businesses have turned user-generated content into a competition. You may, for example, ask your users to share their most good photos of a meal they had at your restaurant or to replicate their favourite dish. A free meal, or a discount, could be given to the winner. 

10. Use a Delivery Platform or Invest in Order-and-Pay Software.

These distribution platforms may take a large number of your profits, but they also allow you to reach a consumer base that would not have found you otherwise. Zoomato, Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Just Eat takes the most significant bites, but with 45,000 people using them every day, you could be losing out on important business.

You can incorporate order and payment technology into your website and social media profiles. It’s become critical during the Covid-19 pandemic because it allows clients to purchase takeout directly from you for a significantly lower percentage of the sale.

Below are quick tips to increase restaurant website traffic 

• Create a fantastic website. 
• Improve your online presence.
• Use a variety of restaurant promotion channels.
• Use online platforms and integrate with online delivery platforms.
• Photographs are eye-catching.
• Provide Happy Hours
• Offer Mini Meals or Combo Meals
• Host Events
• Price it Right
• SMS Marketing
• Upsell to enhance the Turn-Over-Rate
• Ask for feedback and work on it.

It’s all about a customized, focused approach to marketing your restaurant. Taking the effort to determine your target market and evaluate the competition’s strengths and shortcomings will lay the groundwork for a successful marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Learning how to sell a new restaurant is a never-ending effort. As you become more comfortable interacting with customers, you’ll come across unique strategies that are better suited to your restaurant. The most important thing to remember is that marketing is a lot of work, but many resources assist you. Don’t worry if you’re a bit behind on your schedule. 

Examine each of the tactics given above one at a time to see what works best for your company. You can also put your technique to the test to see what works best for you.

It’s critical to focus on the expectations and demands of your target audience, regardless of the size or kind of your business. It will assist you in developing a successful restaurant marketing strategy to meet your objectives.

After reading this post on tips to increase restaurant website traffic, we hope that you better understand how to plan to boost restaurant sales. Because your success is dependent on your clients, each suggestion is provided from their perspective. This advice should ideally assist you in thinking about your restaurant in a more customer-centric manner, allowing you to take it from good to exceptional.

Author Bio – Karthikeyan Maruthai      

Karthik is a Digital Marketing Head at EchoVme Digital. He heads the development team, SEO team at echoVME, and a trainer at Digital Scholar. He has been working in the development field for over a decade and is the go-to person for any SEO and tech-related queries.