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Most restaurants do their marketing to patrons through 2 traditional mediums:

1. Yellow Pages
2. Direct Mailing

There are several problems with these 2 mediums and they will only be exacerbated in the coming years.

People are usually the Internet more and more, instead of the Yellow Pages to find local products and services.  They just use Google to find what they are looking for.

The return on direct mailing continues to decline as postage rates rise on an almost yearly basis and consumers are deluged with a never ending stream of junk mail.  No matter how good the message might be, consumers are numb to all the offers they are getting and just don’t respond and often don’t even see the direct mail that might have been more effective in years past.

How to Create an Effective Restaurant Online Marketing Program

There are just a few things you need to change to lock out your competitors and become the dominant restaurant in your market.  These are the ingredients that a restaurant needs to effective market to customers online:

• Direct Response Restaurant Web Site
• System to Drive Traffice to the Web Site
• Follow Up Program for Existing Customers and Possible New Clients

Direct Response Restaurant Website

Anyone can hire a great designer to create an impressive looking web site.  But if it doesn’t do anything to bring new customers in, it’s nothing more than an electronic brochure.

A direct response restaurant website is an informational website that creates an incentive for visitors to provide their contact information, like an e-mail address.  The incentive might be some sort of coupon, such as 1 meal for free with another paid meal.  The advantage of this system is that it is informative enough for a customer who is just looking for information about the restaurant but it also provides a way to entice visitors who are on the fence or who might forget about the restaurant after they leave the site.

System to Drive Visitors to the Web Site

“If a web site exists on the Internet and no one visits it, does it really exist?” 

This is one of the biggest problems most businesses face when they create their website. They devoted a decent amount of resources in both time and money to stake their territory on the web they just forget about it after it’s created.

It is more important to spend most of your resources on attracting traffic to the website than it is in creating a great website.  It would be like creating an incredible mailer but not mailing it out to anyone or creating a Yellow Page ad that never makes it to the Yellow Pages.

The best way to bring traffic to the web site is through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs.  The best part about these programs is that they amount of money you invest in them (unlike Yellow Page ads) is set by you.  So whether you want to spend $100 per month or $1000, you decide how many people come to your website.

You can also determine where the ads are targeted so if you just want to target a radius of 10 miles from your restaurant, you have that ability.

Follow Up Program for Existing Customers and Possible New Clients

This 3rd component is like a multiplier effect on your first 2 efforts.  Once you get qualified visitors (potential clients) going to your web site where you can collect their contact information, you need to contact them.

It’s also a great way to communicate with your existing client base and attract more value from them.  The best way to communicate with these clients is through an e-mail newsletter service.  There are a bunch of programs that you can implement:

• Birthday Program - Collect birthdays and send them an e-mail on their birthday with a special  along with a nice birthday wish
• Monthly Specials - If you want to keep clients coming back regularly, send out a monthly special that they can use during the month.
• Specials During Down Times - There are always times of the week or periods of the year where you know you aren’t going to get as much traffic in your restaurant as you do during busier times.  Knowing this ahead of time, you can notify your list about specials during those times  to make the traffic a little more regular
• Refer-a-Friend - Send out refer-a-friend special to create more viral traffic to your restaurant.  Reward both parties and you can increase regular traffic to your restaurant.

Why a Restaurant Web Site and Online Marketing System Beat Traditional Marketing
Online marketing has all the advantages of traditional marketing methods like Yellow Pages and Direct Mail.  When people need to search for a phone number or a type of restaurant quickly, they can use the Internet just like they use the Yellow Pages today (more and more people are doing this every year).  The biggest advantage of direct mail is the ability to easily target potential clients.  With a good online marketing system, you are targeting those potential customers who are explicitly looking for you!

Restaurants shouldn’t totally abandon other marketing efforts for online marketing but  they should start diverting more and more funds to those clients moving online.

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