1. Under­stand you cus­tomer and mon­i­tor your reviews before choos­ing mar­ket­ing options. Look at your reviews to learn your strengths and weak­ness­es. Lis­ten to what the din­ers say. You live or die on your rep­u­ta­tion, so pay close atten­tion to what peo­ple are say­ing about your restau­rant online. Thank vis­i­tors for pos­i­tive reviews and respond to and respect­ful­ly resolve neg­a­tive reviews.
2. Stay cur­rent. Keep your­self up to date on cur­rent sta­tis­tics, trends, facts and fig­ures that can help you ana­lyze your restau­rant mar­ket­ing plan. Should you make any tweaks to how you mar­ket your restau­rant? Should you posi­tion your restau­rant dif­fer­ent­ly? Look at the food trends cus­tomers are fol­low­ing on tv, cook­ery shows, super­mar­ket mag­a­zines, Insta­gram, twit­ter etc.
3. Exter­nal Sites. Own your busi­ness page and cor­rect infor­ma­tion on exter­nal sites. Keep your infor­ma­tion on sites like Google+, Yelp, Tri­pAd­vi­sor and face­book page up to date, includ­ing, open­ing times, what you offer, food pic­tures and videos. This helps the online cus­tomer find you and choose you.
4. Cus­tomer ser­vice and con­sis­ten­cy in food qual­i­ty is every­thing. If your cus­tomers are hap­py, they will write strong reviews online. Review sites have become an inte­gral part of a business’s rep­u­ta­tion, and neg­a­tive reviews have the poten­tial to harm your busi­ness. Ask­ing hap­py cus­tomers to write you a review, as well as respond­ing per­son­al­ly to any neg­a­tive feed­back, is the best way to main­tain a pos­i­tive online reputation.
5. Next, Brand­ing. Your brand is your image, your logo, the font on your menu, the style of ser­vice and food you have. What peo­ple remem­ber about you. Keep it sim­ple, don’t change your menu, logo colours and fonts all the time. Like McDon­alds and Nan­dos, din­ers should recog­nise you instant­ly. If you already have a great design that works well, great!. If you have out­dat­ed or con­fus­ing menus and leaflets, cus­tomers may think your food is not great as well. Sim­pli­fy and add food that is healthy and trendy and appeals to your cus­tomers, like high pro­tein veg­e­tar­i­an options for younger guests.
6. Have a func­tion­al SEO opti­mised web­site. Can cus­tomers find your restau­rant online? You should be 100% sure that your web­site will show up for key­word search­es rel­e­vant to your restau­rant. Make sure they can with an easy to use web­site that includes your menu, pic­ture gallery and online ordering/booking sys­tem. Keep it sim­ple, no fan­cy music and flash­ing images.
7. Use an online reser­va­tion tool. Opentable is expen­sive, use cheap­er online sys­tems on your web­site such as Order­ingDi­rect where your staff can receive a print out of the order/booking. Some­times peo­ple just don’t want to pick up the phone – they’d rather make their reser­va­tion in just a few clicks.
8. Get a social media pres­ence. Strength­en your word of mouth mar­ket­ing with an inter­est­ing, inter­ac­tive social media pres­ence. This gives you the abil­i­ty to talk to your cus­tomers 365 days as year, rep­re­sent your brand per­son­al­i­ty and encour­age cus­tomers to share their great expe­ri­ences at your restau­rant. That’s priceless.
9. Tai­lor your mar­ket­ing, you don’t have to do every­thing, choose your mar­ket­ing chan­nels wise­ly to save mon­ey. Direct mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing are still use­ful dur­ing cer­tain pro­mo­tions, but in gen­er­al, 45–80 year olds read news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, age 35 and below, fol­low social media, but every­one looks online at your web­site and reviews. SMS/Text mes­sag­ing can be annoy­ing to customers.
10. Just ask! Ask your reg­u­lars and loy­al fans offline to ‘Like’ you on Face­book, fol­low you on Twit­ter Insta­gram (choose one name for all), and help spread the word. Talk to guests at their table while they’re enjoy­ing what they love about your restau­rant. If you con­stant­ly put up your restau­rant spe­cials on Face­book, your fans will lose inter­est. Mix it up, don’t be afraid to have fun, and be a part of the local com­mu­ni­ty, talk about things relat­ed to the top­ics your cus­tomers are inter­est­ed in, and of course indi­an food! Pic­tures and videos work well.
11. Run con­tests now and then. This is a great way to reward social media fans, grow your fan base, bring in more cus­tomers, and pro­mote loyalty.
12. Cre­ate and imple­ment a cus­tomer loy­al­ty pro­gram. You will need to decide what will work best for you, some restau­rants can just use their social media pages. Pro­mote your e‑newsletters through social media, on your web­site, and inside your restau­rant. Mailchimp is a sim­ple and free email mar­ket­ing ser­vice. Send out e‑newsletters to those who sign up to be in the pro­gram, high­light­ing exclu­sive deals. Pro­mote your loy­al­ty pro­gram offline and online.
13. Learn to be dig­i­tal! Your local col­lege will have cheap evening class­es for begin­ners to learn the basics of IT and social media for free or less than £40, bet­ter still, encour­age your chil­dren to teach you!

By Sha­reena Ali
Char­tered Marketeer