12 Stats to Help You Craft a Successful Restaurant Marketing Strategy (Infographic)

Let’s for a moment imagine that we are still in the 90’s. Television commercials, print media, yellow pages, and billboards still dominate the marketing and advertising landscape and are very much in vogue. Newspaper revenues are high, television advertising claims a sizeable chunk of the advertising market, and the internet is still at its nascent stage.

Now let’s snap back to 2017. What do we find? Things have changed dramatically — so much so that print advertising is struggling to survive. Television advertising is falling and online revenue is constantly on the rise. In fact, it has surpassed TV ad revenue and now stands at $184 billion. (source)

Marketing as we knew it has undergone (and continues to undergo) a sea transformation. Although the fundamentals haven’t varied by an appreciable margin and the achievables have more or less remained the same, the approach certainly has evolved.

In this rapidly changing marketing environment, it is the empowered customer who is calling the shots — from getting access to a wide selection of products and services to getting products and services delivered the way they want. This evolution in marketing has businesses, both big and small, in its grip.

Things are no different for the restaurant industry. To stay relevant and continue getting customers, it has now become incumbent upon the restaurant managements to have a solid restaurant marketing strategy at place.

The restaurant marketing strategy must help identify and engage with potential customers and convert them into paying patrons. Furthermore, it should help nurture, reward, and retain your customers, and possibly turn them into brand evangelists — customers who bring in other customers.

But the larger question here is, how do you ensure the success of your restaurant marketing strategy? You can’t just come up with random marketing ideas and exercises. Your marketing endeavors must be based on some logic and reason, right? Every decision and initiative you take should resonate with your target consumers and help your brand connect with their needs and desires.

For that to happen, you must understand what your prospective customers hope for and expect; how they search, discover and decide places to eat; what brings them back again and again; and what extra (besides food, service, and ambiance) do they want. Once you have identified with and gained an understanding of your customers’ needs, devising a successful restaurant marketing strategy gets much simpler.

To help you get started with your restaurant marketing strategy, we at Mondovo have compiled an infographic. The infographic below gives you vital insight into channels your customers use to find restaurants, how they leverage technology, the ‘extra something’ they want, and most importantly, what makes them visit your restaurant again.