Restaurant Advertising Agency Digital Marketing

An average restaurant business should spend between $36,450 and $72,900 a year on marketing and advertising expenses, or roughly 7.5% – 15% of annual gross revenue. The total amount may be higher if you are in a highly competitive industry, want accelerated growth, or your business generates high income during the holiday shopping season. 

Restaurant Business owners are often heavily involved with the day-to-day operations of their business. Some of the most common challenges for a restaurant business include: 

1. Operational Costs and Profitability: Managing operational costs is a significant obstacle for many in the restaurant and food services industry. Ingredients, labor, rent, utilities, licenses, and insurance can quickly pile up, squeezing profit margins. With the rising cost of goods and, in many places, labor, ensuring profitability requires vigilant management and constant adaptation.
2. Staff Recruitment and Retention: The restaurant sector often faces high turnover rates. Hiring and training new staff regularly is time-consuming and can lead to inconsistencies in service quality. Establishing a good working environment, offering competitive wages, and providing opportunities for growth are all vital, yet achieving these in a typically low-margin business is challenging.
3. Regulations and Compliance: From health and safety standards to liquor licensing, the food services industry is heavily regulated. Keeping up with these regulations and ensuring compliance is crucial to avoid fines or shutdowns. This can be especially daunting for small restaurant owners who may not have a dedicated team to handle these aspects.
4. Supply Chain Disruptions: Dependable supply chains are essential for the consistent functioning of restaurants. Any disruption can affect the menu and service, whether it’s sourcing fresh produce, meat, or specialty items. Global events, natural disasters, or even local incidents can lead to shortages, forcing restaurants to adapt quickly or risk disappointing their customers.
5. Changing Consumer Preferences: The modern diner is not just looking for a meal but an experience. Additionally, there’s a rising demand for health-conscious, sustainable, and diverse food options. Staying attuned to these shifts and being agile enough to modify the menu or service model accordingly is crucial for sustained success in the restaurant industry.

Because restaurant businesses are so focused on these challenges, it often becomes very efficient to bring in outside experts to help manage and ensure specific tasks are done correctly. Marketing and advertising are two of the most commonly outsourced areas businesses use because they are critical to their success. 

Restaurant Lead Generation 

Many restaurant companies are focused on generating leads. This can include building an internal email list for marketing purposes or generating high-value leads that can be quickly contacted to grow revenue. Lead generation typically involves creating a specific incentive, offer, or informational guide and then driving prospects to a landing page to collect their information. You can also manage the prospects’ information on a lead form hosted by the ad platform. Both options can be connected with your CRM or email marketing system so automatic calls, emails, and SMS messages are sent directly to your new prospect. If you want to help set up a lead generation for your restaurant office, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Increasing Restaurant Sales 

The most popular of all advertising objectives for restaurant companies is sales. Increasing revenue is essential for every Restaurant company to succeed. Many ad platforms have new tools that allow you to pass through values for each customer, which means they associate more weight towards the customers spending the most. This will enable them to find more customers like your top spenders. If you want to help grow your restaurant, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Restaurant App Installs

Perfect for any restaurant business that has a mobile app. The mobile app objective allows you to run ads for new app installs or for app events, which are specific events set up inside your app, such as account creation, payment method added, or transaction completion. It can also monitor usage inside the app or if users reach a particular area. This allows you to display highly targeted ads relevant to each user who sees your ads. The most common types of apps are games, utilities, or informational mobile apps. If you want to help grow sales or usage from your restaurant mobile app, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options.  

Restaurant] Local Traffic 

Many restaurant companies have locations they are looking to drive local foot traffic to. This can be for a special event, promotion, grand opening, or daily usage. Local ads can be targeted down to a single zip code or a 1-mile radius around a spot on a map. This ensures you can reach the individuals close to your restaurant location and get your ads in front of them. If you want to increase foot traffic for your restaurant location,  please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Restaurant Brand Awareness 

As your restaurant company grows, it will become essential that you stay ahead of your competition. This is generally done by Brand Awareness campaigns, which focus on reaching a vast number of targeted users consistently over a long period. This ensures that your restaurant company stays at the top of mind for your consumers, who continue to purchase your products and services. If you want to increase your Brand Awareness, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Content marketing has become an influential tool for businesses in the digital era, including the restaurant and food services industry. Utilizing the strength of content can improve advertising efforts, establish a stronger bond with customers, and distinguish a brand in a highly competitive market.

1. Telling a Story: Every restaurant has a unique story. Maybe it’s the journey of a chef who traveled the world and brought back exotic flavors, or perhaps it’s a family recipe passed down through generations. Content marketing offers an avenue to share these stories. Through blog posts, video documentaries, or podcast interviews, restaurants can craft a narrative that resonates with diners, making them more than just another place to eat.
2. Engaging Visuals: In the food services industry, visuals are paramount. Appetizing photos or videos of dishes can make potential customers’ mouths water. By utilizing platforms like Instagram or Pinterest, restaurants can showcase their culinary masterpieces, creating a visual feast that draws in viewers and, by extension, diners.
3. Educative Content: The modern consumer is curious. They want to know where their food comes from, how it’s made, and the story behind each ingredient. By producing content that delves into recipes, sourcing practices, or the nutritional benefits of dishes, restaurants cater to this informed audience. It’s an opportunity to position the brand as not just a service, but as a valuable resource in the food services industry.
4. Building Community: Content marketing is not just about broadcasting; it’s about fostering engagement. By encouraging user-generated content, like having customers share their own dining experiences or hosting monthly recipe challenges, restaurants can build a community. This not only fosters loyalty but also provides authentic content that can be used in future marketing endeavors.
5. SEO Benefits: From a tactical perspective, regularly updated blogs and content can improve a restaurant’s search engine ranking. This means when someone searches for “best pasta restaurant” or “organic food services near me,” a content-rich restaurant website stands a better chance of appearing at the top.

The world has changed for restaurants, looking to increase their marketing and advertising efforts using AI. Various new tools enable automation and AI to be used in areas like sales, graphic design, video production, content creation, voiceovers, spokesperson, video creation, blog writing, and more. 

The current average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads for the term “Restaurant industry” is $1.20 and is expected to increase over time. SEO generates these same clicks from targeted keywords for free. SEO has tremendous value as you can generate a high traffic volume for your critical business segments. However, SEO is a long-term investment. We recommend that restaurant companies should be willing to plan for 6-12 months of SEO services before expecting an increase in results from these efforts. Please know that with SEO, the work is foundational, which means each task builds on top of each other. Each action adds more credibility to your website in the eyes of Google and other search engines. AdvertiseMint only believes in high-quality SEO, or long-game efforts, when building SEO. Most SEO tricks or gimmicks often work for a bit but later hurt your restaurant company when updates are made to the search engines. The only way to move forward regarding SEO is by doing a lot of the right things and doing them faster than your competitors. Restaurant SEO involves three main areas. The first is onsite optimization, which means the pages of your website contain content and are optimized for the search engines. The second step is to build more topical authority around your business to help Google understand that you are an expert in the restaurant area. This is done by writing consistent blogs between 500-2000 words on core topics relating to your business. The final area is off-site linking, meaning other websites link back to your site and use specific anchor text. This can be achieved by public relations, outreach, and building relationships with other websites. When these three are done together, the result is that your restaurant SEO will improve, and your organic ranking will start to increase, thus sending more traffic to your website. If you are looking to improve your SEO, please contact AdvertiseMint. 

Yes. Every restaurant should have email marketing and SMS marketing for their company. Email marketing has continually been proven to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for restaurant companies. Email marketing allows you to reach your prospects and customers with specific messaging based on their location in your customer journey. These “flows” can be set up so that every person experiences the same informational process regardless of when they join. This ensures your company communicates 24/7 with the people most interested in your restaurant services and products. SMS messaging is also becoming highly profitable for breaking through all the noise and reaching your most valuable prospects via text. There are many rules regarding SMS marketing and how to add and remove people from your restaurant SMS marketing. If you want to learn more about optimizing your Email and SMS marketing for your restaurant company, AdvertiseMint is here and ready to help. 

While the restaurant and food services industry benefits from a wide range of advertising avenues to showcase their culinary delights and unique experiences, they are not exempt from certain advertising regulations and restrictions. Understanding these is crucial to maintaining a restaurant’s reputation and avoiding legal hitches.

1. Truth in Advertising: Regardless of the industry, all advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive. For restaurants, this means accurately representing dishes in photos and descriptions. Over-exaggeration or misleading visuals can lead to consumer dissatisfaction and potential legal repercussions.
2. Health and Nutritional Claims: If a restaurant claims its dishes have specific health benefits, these statements must be substantiated. For example, labeling a dish as “gluten-free” when it isn’t can lead to serious health repercussions for consumers and legal consequences for the business.
3. Alcohol Advertising: Many restaurants serve alcohol, and advertising it comes with its set of regulations. These regulations vary by country and even by region within countries. Common restrictions include not targeting minors, not promoting excessive drinking, and not associating alcohol with enhanced physical performance or driving.
4. Endorsements and Testimonials: If a restaurant uses endorsements or testimonials in their advertising, these must reflect the genuine opinions of the endorsers. Any compensation given to endorsers, like free meals in exchange for a review, must be disclosed.
5. Cultural and Sensitivity Concerns: Restaurants often offer cuisines from various cultures. When advertising such dishes, it’s important to be respectful and avoid cultural appropriation or misrepresentation. Missteps can result in public backlash and potential legal actions in certain jurisdictions.
6. Local and Regional Regulations: Given its direct impact on public health, the food services industry is often subject to local health department regulations. This can extend to advertising, especially when it comes to promoting certain types of foods or making claims related to health and safety.
7. Environmental Claims: If a restaurant claims to be “eco-friendly” or asserts that their products are “sustainable,” these claims should be accurate and verifiable. Misleading environmental claims can lead to accusations of “greenwashing” and potential legal action.

You can find examples of restaurant competitor ads online in several places. Here are the instructions for how to view competitor ads running on Facebook, Google, and TikTok ad platforms. 

View Restaurant Competitor Facebook Ads 

1. Go to Facebook Ad Library 
2. Select the country where the ad appeared. 
3. Select ad category (All, Politics, Housing, Employment, Credit).
4. Search by keyword or advertiser.
5. Review Facebook ads.

View Restaurant Competitor Google Ads 

1. Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Sign into Google Ads.
3. Click ‘Tools and settings’ in the top nav.
4. Click ‘Keyword Planner’ under the ‘Planning’ heading.
5. Click ‘Discover new keywords’
6. Type a relevant keyword into the box.
7. Click ‘Get Results’
8. Review Top of page bid and Google ads. 

View Restaurant Competitor TikTok Ads 

1. Go go TikTok Ad Library 
2. Select ad target country 
3. Select ad type.
4. Select ad published date.
5. Enter in the desired keyword or advertiser.
6. Hit search. 
7. Review TikTok ads. 

For most companies, revenue is the KPI (key performance indicator) we monitor when determining whether marketing and advertising efforts are successful. The revenue can be used to determine the ROI or ROAS for your campaigns over a set time. ROI (Return on Investment) is calculated by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from the final value, then dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and finally, multiplying it by 100. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is determined by dividing the total revenue by the actual ad spend for a specific time. 

In addition to revenue, other companies may use metrics such as CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), or CPI (Cost per Installs) for mobile apps. Monitoring these costs over time can help understand factors increasing or decreasing these numbers. They can be affected by various factors, such as landing page optimization, time of the year, and competitors. 

Many digital ad platforms offer a tool called the brand lift study for companies interested in branding and spending over $100,000 on advertising. This study is used to measure the impact on the perception of your brand when running ads. A brand lift study splits a specific audience into two groups. The first group is shown your ads over a particular time; the second group sees none of your ads. At the end of the study, users in both groups were shown a survey by the ad platform. The difference between the first and second groups is called the brand lift, or the increased consumer awareness of your brand due to running advertising.