Restaurant Marketing Strategies

Proven Bar / Restaurant Marketing Strategies That Work

In today’s tough economic times, new restaurant marketing strategies are a much needed way to keep patrons entertained and coming back; as well as for bringing in a continuous flow of new clientele.  

Keep in mind as you’re planning your promotion or event that a successful restaurant / bar promotion can’t always be measured by pure profit alone.  And the best promotions don’t need to have super cheap drink specials – as long as the event itself is promoted and well-run.

The best type of promotion that you can get for your event is the free kind – free publicity.  One of the best restaurant marketing strategies that any bar / restaurant could implement right away is to get as much free publicity as possible.  There are a couple ways to do this.

1. A good way to get free publicity for your event is to look to local magazine / newspaper writers.  Make a contact list of all the people who write about events going on in your city and make sure you email them a personalized invite each time you are running a special / throwing an event.
2. Ditto with bloggers.  If you are running a food promo, find someone in your city who blogs about restaurants and food and invite them in for a free meal.  If you are launching a new top shelf vodka or tequila, find bloggers who have blogs about spirits or bar hopping.  If you can’t persuade them to come into your place by offering them something for free, see if they allow advertising on their blogs and sites.
3. Utilize your staff and social media to your advantage.  In addition to making sure that your staff are well-versed in the particulars of whatever event you’re running, ask them to promote the restaurant specials on their Facebook and Twitter pages.  They can make it very social by simply saying something like “I’m at work tonight and we’re running a great X special.  Maybe we’ll see some of you for dinner 🙂 “

We consistently write about new bar promotions and restaurant marketing strategies to help bar / restaurant owners succeed.

If you haven’t already, make sure you check out 12 Bar Events You Can Implement Now, Bar Games, Bar Promotion Tips and 10 Bar Promotions that work.

the Barman

Reese Richards aka "the Barman" is a 20+ year veteran of the bar industry and founder of BarsandBartending.com. His goal is to bring the joy of bartending to as many people around the world as possible by producing high quality content in the form of articles, interviews, infographics, recipes, videos and training courses.