4 New Guest Acquisition Strategies That Actually Work!

I get it, it’s rocky waters in the restaurant business. Competition is super high, the guest dollar doesn’t go as far as it did even a year ago and costs of operation are rising. The need to drive top line revenue by new guest acquisition is vital.

Easier said than done, right?

Let's be straight with each other, great food and great experience are table steaks, but won’t they won't send a flood of people rushing your front door.

OK, now how do you do it?

The key is to turn on and optimize as many guest acquisition channels that you can that can run in the background. When you do this, you set the foundation for new revenue and free up your time to focus on efforts that require more creativity and attention.

I’ve worked with hundreds of restaurants to help them build marketing ecosystems that automate, as much as possible, the acquisition and retention of both new and returning guests. To say I’ve learned a lot is an understatement.

The below is marketing plan and strategy that will work regardless of how many locations you have. If you’re an independent operator, this will work. If you have 500 units, this will also work. Again, it works for all restaurants.

Here are four easy to set up new guest acquisition tactics you can automate starting today:

1. GOOGLE SEARCH ADS

Would you pay $1 to get somebody to click to your website right at the exact moment when they’re searching on Google for "best lunch near me," "best sandwich near me," or whatever it is you serve?

The answer is yes, and you can do that with a very simple Google search ad. There’s no creative required, just some geo targeting, some keywords and a little bit of elbow grease. Most of my clients are paying under $.50 and some are even below $.25 a click.

Don’t know how to do it or don’t have the time do it?

Get help. Me and my clients, we use Targetable . Their team gets the lowest cost per click of any thing I’ve seen in the restaurant business.

2. MANAGE LISTINGS

How would you like to pay ZERO dollars to get somebody to click to your website right at the exact moment when they’re searching on Google for "best lunch near me," "best sandwich near me," or whatever it is you serve?

Two-thirds of the traffic to your website ,and ultimately to your store ,should be coming from Google.

Chances are to the other top five sources of traffic to your website or yelp and Facebook ... maybe Tripadvisor depending on your location. Local search optimization, that is making sure you come up in the top three businesses on Google maps, it’s super important.

How that works is another blog post entirely but the short end of the story is the fastest, easiest and best way to come up at the top of organic church results is to manage your listings … that is all the public information about your business like name, address, phone number, hours of operation and your menu everywhere it appears online listings, apps, and maps like Google some Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, yahoo, Siri, Apple Maps, being, Alexa etc

Sound like a pain in the tailbone, especially if you have multiple locations? That’s because it is.

And that’s also why me and my clients and all successful restaurants use Marqii . It’s a tool that allows you to enter that information once into a dashboard and it then pushes it out all over the internet, anywhere your business is listed. Changing your hours or changing menu item? Just update Marqii and it does all the work for you.

3. META AWARENESS AD

How often have you been scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and saw content about a restaurant and that’s how you found out about it? It happens every day. It happens all day.

The chances of your organic social media content catching the algorithm are pretty slight. Managing content creators and doing influence marketing is a difficult and manual process.

But you know what’s easy, inexpensive and works? Placing awareness ads on Meta.

With a budget of only five bucks a day, you can have your business seen by thousands of people who live or work near your restaurants every single day. You can spend more, and you will get more, but it’s a really easy and affordable way to get local awareness.

Shoot to get under five dollar CPM. My restaurant, and most of my client's restaurants, are seeing under a two dollar CPM, thanks in part to the fine work of the people at Targetable .

4. GIVE A NIFT

Would you like an automated way to get a few new guests every day that doesn’t take manual work and is inexpensive? (Again, the answer here is “YES!!”)

Give them a NIFT .

This is an easy to use guest acquisition platform. They have millions of users in their app. Those users can choose to receive offers from categories of businesses like golf shops, spas and restaurants.

Users are shown a selection of places they can choose from within those chosen categories. They can then load one offer at a time, per vendor type. They then have a defined amount of time to redeem the offer. They do not receive another offer from a similar kind of business until that offer is used or expired

Good news for you, you acquire their name and email address regardless of if they use the offer! It’s a no lose situation.

On a very small budget, we’ve added 600+ people to our database in the last year using this at Handcraft Burgers and Brew . We're even using it to grow awareness for Baboo , our commission free online ordering market place for independent restaurants in the greater North Jersey area.

Which one of these will you try next?

What new guest acquisition tactics are you using? Please share!

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Do you need help with any of this? Send me an email rev@brandedstrategic.net

- Rev Ciancio

WHAT DOES REV DO?

*I help restaurants to build guest marketing programs.

*I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing.