How to Advertise Restaurants Online

Using an internet advertising agency to advertise your restaurant online can enhance your local and national presence. Everybody uses the internet these days as a research tool. They use it to buy products, look for holidays and even do their weekly food shopping.

It doesn't matter if you are a single restaurant serving your local area or a national chain you can benefit from using the internet to grow your business online.

10 top tips on how to advertise your restaurant online

1.       Submit your restaurant to the Google Local Business Centre. Anybody searching in the local area should see your business appear under related terms. You can also add business information related to your location and opening times etc. This provides additional information for anyone searching for your brand name.

2.       Submit your site to some free local or national directories. People still use sites such as Touch Local and Freeindex to find services; although the volume is small they can be of some use.

3.       Buy advertising placements on sites such as View London and Toptable etc. Lots and lots of people use these sites to read and research restaurants online. Providing attractive offers, reviews and messaging is a good way of getting your restaurant's name out there.

4.       Local newspaper sites. Again lots of people use these sites to see what's going on in their local area. They often have entertainment or lifestyle channels, so why not advertise your restaurant there. Again if you have an enticing offer you can hopefully attract some new patrons.

5.       Why not invite some local journalists over to your restaurant so they can taste your food. Local newspapers are always looking for things to write about and everybody loves a free meal. A glowing review can do wonders for drumming up business.

6.       If you only serve a local area why not run a local PPC campaign. You can pick a specific geographic location and only run ads in that area. Alternatively, you can run a national campaign with specific geo targeted ad groups, if you have multiple locations.

7.       Local SEO is extremely effective. Usually you are optimising for longer tail terms. The competition is lower and that can mean it's sometimes easier to rank higher in less time.  Picking terms related to your location and specific type of food can benefit a local SEO campaign.

8.       Ever heard of affiliate marketing? Well you basically use a number of other sites to run ads related to your business via a network. They act as a paid on results sales team. The benefit is you get to advertise your business on lot's of sites and pay a commission to the affiliates and network on a lead basis. This strategy is long term and only would be suitable for large restaurant chains.

9.       Email marketing has been around for sometime, but is still an effective form of advertising providing the email list you rent is clean and highly targeted. If you have a strong promotion and a great email creative you can use email marketing to great effect.

10.   You can seek out partnerships with other sites. If these sites have strong synergies with what you do then you can benefit from advertising your restaurant and offers you may have.