I was browsing the internet for new restaurant promotions the other day and I thought I would share my findings. I was surprised at some of the ones I found as I had never heard of them before.
You know when you read something and you think to yourself “I wish I had thought of that!”
Many of these are common promotions that every restaurant should be doing and we typically recommend them on other posts here at IRC.
However, you would be surprised how many restaurants don’t do a lot of these promotions that work so well over and over again.
The Most Creative Restaurant Promotion
One Restaurant’s Wicked Creative Promotion Idea to Drive Repeat Business
OK so this one got my attention right away. The restaurant mentioned in this article gives FREE appetizers to customers who bring in parking citations and let the restaurant pay the postage for citation!
Just to reiterate, their customers get a free appetizer and a free stamp!
There must be strict parking rules in that area as they also qualify the promotion by saying they can only bring in one ticker per week.
LEARN HOW TO TAKE YOUR RESTAURANT TO 10% PROFITS
This is just a great example of creativity. This restaurant is turning their customers headache into a great night out.
Just like Corey, mentions in his article, you can use a promotion like this to grow your customer database by interacting with them when they bring in their parking ticket.
Parking tickets might not make sense for your restaurant or area but the concept of this is brilliant and doesn’t have to be strictly for parking tickets. Just get creative and know your customers.
What problems do they have that you could give them a reason to come in your restaurant and relax?
Back To School Restaurant Promotions
We usually stay pretty busy with back to school caterings for the teachers but to be honest I never thought of targeting families.
Maybe because we had so many caterings going on?
Either way I should have, you see all the other clothes and school supply retailers offering huge discounts or promotions for back to school.
The first idea on this post talks about including the whole family.
Let your customers know about your catering packages that would serve all them, no one wants to go do all of that back to school shopping and then go home and cook.
They also talk about piggy backing on the retail back to school promotions. Giving away a free appetizer when you bring in your back to school receipts.
I think this would get a great response.
They also talk about targeting the kids, college students and even the parents! All great ideas.
You can get creative in each of these areas you just need to make sure you effectively advertise so your customers know about your new back to school promotions.
The Loomis Agency put out some great ideas for restaurant promotions in their article that you don’t hear many others talking about.
25 Relatively Cheap Restaurant Promotions
Wordstream put together this list of promotion ideas for the online side of your marketing efforts.
While they do mention a couple paid advertising ideas most of these will just cost you your time and will greatly improve your online presence.
They recommend some similar ideas as I did on this post but they also have many other ideas.
Probably my favorite that they mention is showing off your staff. I love this idea.
We have had great success with doing this on our Facebook page. People like love a story, so when you give a little background info on one of your staff members you are sure to get much more engagement then a daily specials post.
The other thing I really like about their post is setting up your Google + account to make sure they have all of the details correct.
You can also ask your customers to leave you reviews which will help your ranking in Google search.
There are 23 other ideas on their post that I would recommend checking out.
Classic Restaurant Promotions
Here is another post by Squadle with some classic restaurant promotions.
If you have read some of my other posts you know I’m a huge fan of contests and giveaways which they mention on their post.
The reason I love these restaurant promotions is that they not only drive sales but you can collect a ton of contact information from your customers.
That contact information is so valuable in the long-term scheme of things. Once you have it you can continuously mail or email your customers with current specials or promotions.
This enables you to stay top of mind with your customers. I recommend sending out a postcard once a month along with an email to complement what is on the post card.
Then you can post on Facebook and have marketing materials around the store ensuring your customers will see your message a good 5-7 times.
Then you know they got the message!
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