How to get more customers in your restaurant without spending tons of money on marketing

We’ve all heard that you have to spend money to make money, right? Well, that’s true but it’s not always as straight forward and paying for something then more money shows up. I want to be clear, this post is going to show you one very specific thing you can do to get more customers in your restaurant without spending tons of money on marketing. Consistency.

When we started with this business, we thought do a lot was what we were supposed to do to get traction. While it’s sort of true, the way we and many of you likely went about it, or are still going about it, was a bit willy nilly. We were all over the place. We struggled to get new customers and got burned out super fast on the whole idea of this business.

Then, while looking at some branding materials for one of our customers it hit me. We’re all over the place with our messaging.

We were putting conflicting messaging out into the world and all that did was confuse our potential customers.

We weren’t being consistent with who we were targeting or what we were saying.

How to use consistency in marketing to get more customers into your restaurant

So, today I wanna talk to you guys about consistency. We all know that being consistent in your restaurant, providing the same experience at the highest level possible to every guest every time, that is the goal.

But, did you know, that you should also be doing that online… To every experience that you provide to the visitors of your website, or people who are searching for you on Google, on Yelp, or even Facebook?

You wanna maintain that consistency in a couple different fashions.

Now, one is the frequency of posting or sharing content. That is certainly first and foremost.

Set a cadence for how you’re gonna do that, and just stick to it. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming or overtaxing, to you or whomever on your team is doing it. Just make sure that it’s consistently done on the same day, around the same time every …

Maybe it’s daily, maybe it’s weekly, maybe it’s monthly, that’s fine. I wouldn’t go longer than a month until making an update, especially on social media. But for our local listing platforms like Google My Business, or Yelp, or even Facebook if you’re focused on events or things that are happening, maybe you’ve got updates to the menu that you do monthly, or maybe you bring in some special drinks monthly, whatever it is. Things like that can be brought on a monthly basis on Facebook, and that’s fine.

So, let’s start with that.

Let’s go ahead and set the cadence, set the order of importance there, and just put that on a calendar. Get that on a schedule, and you gotta sick to it. Whatever you set out to do, you gotta make sure that you stick to it.

So, let’s say you might be going to … going on vacation for a couple weeks, and in those couple weeks is when you’re posting schedule falls. Well, you gotta make sure that your posts still go out. So on a lot of these platforms you can schedule things out, or you can maybe put somebody else in charge of doing it. Tell them to set an alarm on their phone, whatever they have to do to remember, “Hey, it’s time to put the post up.”

So, the consistency of interaction and sharing, the frequency there. You’ve gotta nail that down for sure.

Be consistent with the experience you provide your guests in the restaurant and online

But the other thing, and this goes back to what we started with, the consistency in the experience that you provide in your restaurant needs to translate to what you’re doing online. You gotta be presenting the same message to your perspective customers and your existing customers that they would experience inside the restaurant.

So if you have a fun and happy go lucky crew that just loves to joke around, and they all have a good time, and your customers know that and feel that, and that’s the vibe that you’re trying to give off, great. Share that type of stuff in you updates on your local platforms, on social media.

You wanna make sure that everything that you’re putting out into the world is literally an extension of how you treat people within your world, because you’re essentially inviting them out in the world, whether that is on Facebook, or maybe it’s a Google My Business post, or an update on Yelp, you’re inviting them to join the experience.

And it doesn’t matter what platform they’re on, or how they’re interacting with you. If they’re not psychically in your location that doesn’t mean that they get treated differently. That means that they get treated exactly the same.

So however you’re treating people within your restaurant, make sure you treat them that same way outside of your restaurant. Be consistent.

And that’s just a business tip in general. You wanna sure that you’re not putting on errors, you’re not putting a façade on what they should expect when they come to visit you in person. You wanna make sure that it is consistent, you’re providing that consistent experience over and over and over again. We touched on this a bit in a previous article, Creative Marketing Ideas for Restaurants – #002

In Conclusion

So, those are the two main areas that we wanna focus on as we move forward with helping you grow your business online, and that’s truly what we’re here for. Be consistent with the experience you provide in your restaurant and online. Be authentic to YOU and your restaurant. This is a huge key for success with restaurant marketing.

If you got any questions or having any comments, just let me know. You can either post it down below, or you can hit me up on my email, personal email and that is matt@onlinerestaurantmanager.com.

Thanks so much for sticking with me today. I appreciate it, and I’ll talk to you soon.