But look to the other side, and you'll see a new beast emerging from the digital jungle: modern marketing.

This creature is agile, adaptable, and hyper-focused on its prey. It thrives in the wild lands of social media, feeds on the abundant data of Google search, and moves swiftly on the shifting sands of mobile devices.

This seismic shift from traditional to digital isn't just a trend. It's a revolution, fueled by new technologies and changing consumer behaviors.

The rise of social media has given birth to influencers and viral campaigns. The ubiquity of mobile devices has made marketing an always-on, anywhere, anytime affair. And Google search? Well, that's turned the art of persuasion into a science, with data-driven insights guiding every decision.

So, buckle up, dear reader.

We're about to embark on a journey, exploring the nooks and crannies of this new marketing landscape. We'll delve into the differences between traditional and digital, uncover the reasons behind this shift, and reveal how you can harness the power of modern marketing to propel your business into the future. Hang tight, because it's going to be one heck of a ride!

Imagine stepping into a charming local bakery, where the smell of freshly baked bread wafts through the air and the friendly owner greets you by name. This isn't some corporate chain—it's a small, family-owned business that's been serving the community for generations. It's businesses like these that still swear by the power of traditional marketing methods. But why?

Take postcards, for instance.

They're simple, mostly affordable, and can be effective (albeit at a much higher cost per lead than digital tactics). When created correctly, a well-designed postcard can capture attention, convey a message, and evoke an emotional response. The bakery we mentioned earlier might send out postcards featuring a mouth-watering photo of their signature sourdough loaf and a heartfelt message about their family recipe.

Or consider tri-fold brochures. 

These compact marketing tools are relatively easy to create, easy to distribute, and packed with information. Our friendly bakery owner could use a brochure to showcase her full range of pastries, tell the story of how her grandmother started the business, and include a map showing the bakery's location in the heart of the community.

But perhaps the most powerful aspect of traditional marketing materials is their tangibility.

Something as simple as a printed brochure or postcard can feel special in our digital world.  When a customer holds a shiny postcard or looks at a fresh brochure, they are physically interacting with the brand..

A customer once told me that they felt naked without traditional marketing, primarily because you can't hold and feel digital marketing (but I guarantee your bank account prefers digital marketing).

For this reason, many business owners are most comfortable putting most of their ad spending into old-school marketing. But as I will discuss shortly, investments in traditional marketing are sacrificing sales, and, most importantly, profit versus digital marketing.

The most beautiful of canvases require the most skilled hands to bring them to life. A graphic designer to capture your brand essence in a visual symphony, a copywriter to weave words into a captivating narrative, and a photographer to snap the perfect shot of your product. These creative maestros don't work for pennies—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for graphic designers is $53,380 per year, while copywriters can command an average salary of $61,820.

Then comes the canvas itself. 

Whether it's a postcard, a brochure, or a print ad, each has its own price tag.

Postcards might seem inexpensive at first glance, but once you factor in design, printing, and distribution costs, the total can quickly skyrocket.

The same goes for brochures, which require not just design and copy, but also high-quality paper and printing—a single run can cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

And let's not forget about print ads.

A full-page ad in a national newspaper can cost upwards of $100,000, according to FitSmallBusiness. Add in the cost of hiring a top-notch designer and copywriter, and you're looking at a hefty sum.

Even the biggest brands aren't immune to these costs.

In 2019, Apple spent a staggering $1.8 billion on advertising, according to the New York Times. That's a mind-boggling amount of money, all poured into traditional marketing channels to keep the brand front and center in consumers' minds.

Today's businesses aren't just dipping their toes into this digital ocean—they're diving in headfirst.

They're using these channels - Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube - to shout their brand stories from the virtual rooftops, to make their products shine brighter than a thousand suns, and to reach out and touch their customers, no matter where they are.

But why?

Why have more and more businesses moved away from the familiar terrain of traditional marketing to chart a course through digital waters?

The answer is as simple as it is powerful: because digital marketing works.

It's more cost-efficient, reaching more people for less money. 

No more shouting into the void; this marketing speaks directly to the heart.

Where Companies Are Spending Their Ad Budgets

An eMarketer study found that US digital ad spending surpassed traditional ad spending for the first time in 2019, reaching $129.34 billion. And that gap has only widened since 2019.

And in July of 2023, a survey of CMOs uncovered that digital spending grew by 8% while traditional marketing spending decreased by 8%. 

Moreover, digital marketing allows businesses to target their audiences with laser precision. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, they can zero in on their ideal customer—right down to their age, location, interests, and buying behavior—and tailor their messages accordingly.

Let's take a closer look at this compass, shall we?

Gone are the days of wasteful traditional marketing. 

Instead, behold the raw power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's like a lighthouse in the foggy night, guiding lost customers straight to your shores. 

Ninety-three percent (93%) of all search traffic goes through Google. There are 8.5 billion searches per day on Google. And it's the first place many customers go for information.

But not only does Google own search, but it is also the number one maps app for navigating anywhere by car or foot. It has the number one website analytics app in Google Analytics installed on almost every website. And it has the number one browser - Chrome. What this means is that Google has the ability to send your ideal customer to you in droves through SEO or ads. 

Then, let's talk about Google Ads. 

Google Ads can easily tap into your ideal audience through search ads, YouTube ads, and display ads. And these are potential prospects that are pre-qualified leads. In the case of search ads, we know they are interested in our products or service because they typed in keywords of what they were looking for - no other channel provides a flow of customers quite like this. 

Then there's marketing automation.

With marketing automation, you can send personalized messages, nurture leads, and convert them into customers—all without lifting a finger. Invesp reports that 80% of companies using marketing automation saw an increase in leads, and 77% had an increase in conversion rate (the percentage of leads that convert to paying customers). It's like having the wind always at your back.

And let's not forget social media.

Facebook and Instagram are the 800-pound gorillas. More people use Meta's apps by a large margin over any other social platforms. Facebook's unique ad platform can send volumes of your ideal customers your way. It's ad platform is unmatched in targeting customers based on likes, behaviors, and other bottom-of-the-funnel signals. 

The digital revolution is here, transforming every industry landscape. Those who seize these new tools are catching the trade winds, while those clinging to old ways risk being marooned and sacrificing sales and profit.

Social Media Ads: Facebook & Instagram

Let's start with Facebook and Instagram Ads. These platforms are known for their extensive user base and sophisticated targeting options.

These platforms collectively host billions of users, and the cost per impression is significantly lower than traditional advertising mediums.

Google Search: SEO & Google Ads

Google Search is a powerful tool that leverages user intent.

With SEO services costing anywhere from $500-$20,000+ per month, businesses have the chance to rank high on search results organically.

On the other hand, Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, costs about 10-20% of monthly ad spend. The beauty of Google Ads lies in its ability to reach customers precisely when they're looking for what you offer.

Email Marketing:

Email marketing is another cost-efficient digital marketing strategy. While specific costs can vary based on the size of your email list and the platform used, it's known for its impressive ROI. In fact, every $1 spent on email marketing typically generates about $38 in ROI!!

Marketing Automation:

Finally, there's marketing automation—a highly efficient method of managing marketing processes and campaigns across multiple channels. While the cost of marketing automation tools can vary depending on the features, complexity, and scale of your campaigns, companies using marketing automation see significant increases in leads, sales, and profit.

Here are some statistics about its effectiveness:

1. Using marketing automation software can increase qualified leads by as much as 451% (source)
2. 80% of businesses state that marketing automation increases their lead generation (source)

Price Comparison With Traditional Marketing:

In comparison, traditional advertising methods such as TV commercials, print ads, direct mail, and billboards come with hefty price tags and offer less precise targeting and higher costs.

Moreover, measuring the effectiveness of these traditional methods can be challenging.

Overall, digital marketing proves to be more cost-effective and offers a higher return on investment, better audience targeting, and detailed analytics. Businesses can save significantly and achieve better results by choosing and combining different digital platforms based on your product type and target audience.

Below is a chart of a year-and-half of cost per lead tracking for 3 channels for a retail services company with 30 locations: 

• SEO/Organic in Google (blue line)
• Google Ads (red line)
• Direct Mail (green line)

Print is exponentially more expensive compared to digital marketing - not even close in comparison. If this doesn't make you shift your marketing focus and budget, I'm unsure what will. 

Also, in a separate study, we found that leads from SEO and Google converted at a 50% higher rate to paying customers than from traditional marketing channels. But this makes sense, right?

As I mentioned above, leads coming from Google are pre-qualified - they are actively searching for what you have. Traditional marketing is interupt marketing - interrupting people in whatever they are doing to pique their interest. And this is why the cost per lead is so much higher using traditional marketing. 

Digital marketing is a multifaceted strategy encompassing various tactics such as:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising, and more. 

The goal is to engage with your audience where they spend most of their time—online.

One of the main advantages of digital marketing over traditional methods is cost efficiency. A report by Gartner’s Digital Marketing Spend Report highlighted that up to 40% of respondents claimed to get considerable savings by using digital marketing methods for their products and services.

Digital marketing also enables businesses to reach a global audience. 

For instance, an SEO-optimized website can reach anyone with internet access, regardless of their geographical location. A perfect example of this is Airbnb, which started as a small startup in San Francisco and used digital marketing to grow its presence. Today, it operates in over 220 countries.

Example of Reach Through SEO

And a more personal experience, in the early 2000s, my wife and started a furniture and home decor store in Poway, CA. It was tiny to start - 1,500 square feet.

But with the website we built and a focus on early SEO strategies, we gained national exposure in the search engines from people looking for what we had to offer. We got requests for orders from around the country. It was then, we went from being a small hyper-local store to having national distribution. 

Moreover, digital marketing offers the advantage of highly personalized communication. A compelling example of this is Warby Parker, a small to medium-sized eyewear business. They have effectively used digital marketing to tailor customer experiences. By leveraging past purchases and browsing behaviors, Warby Parker provides personalized recommendations for glasses frames that align with customers' style preferences and purchase history. 

Finally, let's talk about marketing automation—an advanced digital marketing technique that automates repetitive tasks such as emails, social media posts, SMS messages, and other website actions. It not only saves time and effort but also increases efficiency and ROI. 

Specific tools used for successful marketing automation include Keap, HubSpot, Marketo, and MailChimp. These platforms offer features such as email automation, CRM integration, and analytics. Here's a more in-depth post with examples on how marketing automation combined with lead magnets can help you scale your leads. 

Traditional marketing still has its place in the right situations. And if you're going to use traditional marketing, make sure to integrate it into digital. This harmonious mix can help you reach potential customers more effectively, engaging them at multiple offline and online touchpoints, and improving your ROI.

Let's picture this: 

You've got an attractive sign outside your local store—classic traditional marketing.

Now, imagine adding a QR code to that sign, which, when scanned, leads consumers to a customized landing page or an engaging email newsletter sign-up. 

An additional example would be a table tent placed on dining tables at a restaurant. Perhaps you have a giveaway they can enter to win a free dinner. They scan the QR code on the table tent and go to a customized landing page to enter. 

This is the magic of integrating digital marketing into your traditional marketing - you're bridging the gap and extending the life of your traditional marketing into the digital space.

By placing QR codes on your traditional marketing materials—be it flyers, posters, or billboards—you can effortlessly guide traffic to this digital platform. And after the Covid pandemic, people are much more comfortable using QR codes. 

You can also do this with a vanity URL that is redirected to a landing page as well with UTM parameters in the redirect so you can track in Google Analytics how many people used the vanity URL from your other marketing materials. 

In essence, traditional and digital marketing marriage can create a potent mix that drives customer engagement and boosts your business's outreach. 

Summary

And so, we find ourselves at the crossroads of marketing tradition and digital innovation.

At every step of your customer's journey, digital marketing provides more effective solutions when compared to traditional.

Not only does digital marketing catch your prospects where they are, but it combines it with customer intent (people that are actively searching or ready to buy now) to provide marketing that delivers a consistent flow of leads and sales at the lowest cost.

Are you ready to start your digital marketing journey? 

With 'Digital Dynamo' by your side, there's no limit to what you can achieve. Click here to learn more and begin your adventure today. Remember, the future waits for no one. Seize it now, and let's make marketing history together!

What is Restaurant SEO?

SEO for restaurants is the process of optimizing your restaurant's presence in Google so it shows at the top of Google for relevant search terms. The process - your SEO strategy - focuses on optimizing two core assets: your Google Business Profile, and your restaurant's website. (Related post here on, what is local SEO?) 

Here's an example:

And most of the click traffic in a Google search results page goes to these top 3 listings, so if you're not showing up at the top or in a 3-pack, then your competitors are eating your lunch (sorry, pun intended).

So the first step in improving your restaurant's Google exposure is ensuring you have claimed and set up your restaurant's GBP (click here to login and create a profile if you haven't already). Make sure you fill out your profile as thoroughly as possible, including images and videos of the food and experience, your hours, links to your website and online ordering, and most importantly, choosing the correct category for your restaurant (i.e., pizza restaurant, Italian, Korean, etc.). The category is one of the essential elements so choose wisely.

Without schema markup, it can be difficult for Google to understand what type of restaurant you are, when you're open, where you're located, and more.

When Google visits your website, it only sees text on a page. Of course, Google is sophisticated and can likely figure out some of this information independently. Still, it's not as strong a signal as using schema code. Without schema, you are missing out on better optimization. 

Schema code removes all doubt about your restaurant. When you add schema code to your pages, Google understands everything about your business precisely. Schema code speaks the language Google understands clearly. Here's a link to the restaurant schema options you can use: https://schema.org/Restaurant

A business can put many different types of information in schema markup. Still, the most important is the NAP - name, address, and phone. A word of caution, your restaurant's NAP info has to be consistent, so whatever you use in your Google Business profile, the same info needs to appear here.

You can use free tools to create the schema, so you don't have to write this code by hand. Schema code goes in the <head> section of your pages. Make sure the information in your schema code appears visible on the page to anyone reading it too.

Mobile Responsiveness

Make sure your website is mobile friendly. If it doesn't render well on mobile devices, that will negatively affect your site's chances of showing in search results. Of course, your GBP will still show, but a poor user experience on mobile devices for people who click through to your website will hurt your conversions and new customer business. 

Images and Videos:

Ensure you have professional images and videos of the experience that reflect the brand for website visitors. Showcase your food and kitchen, too. Using images and videos and applying some basic SEO will allow you to show in more places within Google and help you dominate local search.

Below is an example - I highlighted the Video tab where your videos would show, and to the right is the Image tab. Applying good SEO to videos and images will help you show here. People want to get the vibe of your restaurant through images and video so make sure you are utilizing this. Image search has huge volume so don't ignore this (related post on how to optimize images for SEO). 

Think of Google search results like the shelf space at a grocery store - the more spots you occupy, the better it is, and the fewer spots your competitors have.

Use image and video SEO:

Here's a related post on using YouTube videos on your site for better SEO results. 

Page Title tags and Meta Descriptions

Create unique title tags and meta descriptions for each page. This is one of the first things Google reads when it crawls a page to determine the topic. It's not a ranking factor per se but tells Google what the page is about. Title tags should be approximately 55 characters long, and meta descriptions should be approximately 155 - 165 characters long. 

Best practices: 

Examples of citations include Yelp, Facebook, Yellowpages, Dunn and Bradstreet, and hundreds more. What's most important is the consistency of your NAP information. Because inconsistency in this information means it may not be correct. And as a result, Google loses confidence in your business information and demotes your ranking. The last thing Google wants to do is provide a user with incorrect driving directions or the wrong phone number; thus, your business will rank lower.

Many citation sources will also provide a link back to your website. Links aren't necessary, but they certainly help.

So if you belong to the local chamber of commerce, make sure your listing is set up correctly with your NAP and links back to your website.

Are there other alum associations or organizations you belong to that you could also get a listing with a link? If yes, then submit your information.

Make it a priority to respond to all your reviews and actively ask your happy customer for reviews to build up your profile.

Timing - How Soon Will I Rank?

When you start an active local SEO campaign, at a minimum, it can take 90 days to begin to see traction. And in many cases, it can take far longer.

Here's an example below - this restaurant was brand new and located in the South Beach Miami area. You can see 3 months here, but the project started in May, so about 4 months before growth really took off. Once our work kicked in, exposure took off with impressions growing 8x or more in Google Maps and Search. Your mileage will vary in terms of timing based on many factors. But SEO requires a consistent effort applied over time.

But much of your exposure growth in ranking in Google depends on the above points and the local restaurant competition. Suppose you're in suburbia where the population is more spread out. In that case, it can be easier to gain exposure sooner there versus an urban location where the population is more populous, and restaurants are closer to each other. 

FAQs

Summary:

Your online presence is one of the main components to effective restaurant marketing. And ranking in Google and other search engines is essential for your restaurant's success because most potential customers are using it to find restaurants. Google owns search. And to dominate here requires on-page and off-page SEO efforts. Unlike ads, organic non-paid listings are free and on 24/7. (Read my related post on all the different features within a Google SERP you can rank in and how to do it.)

However, the best results of driving new customer business are using integrated marketing tactics across channels. If you run Google Ads at the same time as your SEO efforts, you will own the paid space and the organic, thus further dominating the search results and leaving that many fewer spots in a Google Search Results Page to your competitors. 

And don't forget integrating paid social and using Facebook and Instagram ads. Facebook is the largest social media platform and between Google and Facebook you can market to almost anyone. 

If you’re not utilizing Facebook ads to reach your customers, you are missing out on one of the most effective advertising channels to reach them. And the worst part, if you’re not promoting your restaurant with Facebook ads, your savvier competitors likely are and stealing your customers and growing sales.

Facebook is an incredibly robust and flexible platform for businesses enabling many to easily reach their ideal customer segments. You can even target special niches within the restaurant and food space too. Do you want to target event planners, group dining, private dining? That’s all achievable with Facebook ads too.

In this post, I outline why Facebook ads are so important for creating awareness for your restaurant, and give you six killer ad tactics to consider so you can create more business (including catering).

Below is a summary of what we are covering.

Who Is This Post For?

This post is for any restaurant managers, owners, or staff that want to understand how to effectively use Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business.

Why you need to use Facebook ads to promote your restaurant

It's no surprise that digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach new restaurant customer. And Facebook advertising is arguably one of the best at reaching customers at the right time. As the old saying goes, be where your customers' eyeballs are.

Facebook is hands down the number one social media channel in the world.

Your customers are there in the largest concentration out of any other social channel. And the vast majority of your customers access Facebook or Instagram (Facebook owns Instagram) multiple times per day of which the majority are accessing it via their mobile phone­. Pair these stats with the below statistics and insights (Source: Facebook Quarterly Report):

From the perspective of marketing and advertising, mobile usage with your target customer is a big deal, and you’re probably not leveraging it well. 

Your potential customers are not carrying around the newspaper, or a magazine and checking it multiple times per day – but they are checking Facebook and Instagram via their mobile phones multiple times per day. 

Consider also that many of your restaurant competitors are not very savvy with online marketing and are still over-relying on inefficient and wasteful traditional marketing.

While traditional marketing has its place, there is a real opportunity for you to get in the game ahead of your slower, less digitally sophisticated competitors.

Facebook Is Pay-to-Play

Forget About Facebook Organic Posts – There’s No Exposure Without Ads!

Don't expect your page posts on your restaurant's Facebook page to drive results. Almost nobody sees those posts as Facebook has reduced your exposure from page posts to low single digits of  your page's fan base (i.e. 2% - 4%) of your fan base.

So what this means is that if you had 1,000 fans, you would reach maybe 20 people at best. Without ads, you have no exposure to anyone on Facebook (this is true of almost all social channels – without ads your ability to have an impact in social media is limited).

However, this does not mean you should stop organic page posts - you still need to post up good content to your Facebook page, but realize that real tangible business results such as growing new customers or repeat customers happens with ads. 

Different Skill Set Required For Running Ads

In addition, running ads on Facebook is a very different skill set than posting content on your page. Facebook has one of the  most robust advertising platforms which means there are many levers, options, steps, and decisions that you need to take to set up a winning restaurant ad campaign.

For example, Facebook has more than 10 campaign objectives that align with different business goals. Each campaign objective has an algorithm behind it designed to achieve that goal. So, your choice in campaign objectives is the first essential step to a successful campaign. 

So, depending on the creative you have at hand and what business outcome you are trying to achieve your objective will change. Here are 3 of the most common campaign objectives for restaurant and food companies. 

And if you're running Boost Posts (a campaign objective similar to Engagement), here is a related post about why you should not be running the Facebook Boost Post.

Incredible Demographic Targeting Possibilities With Facebook Ads

A Niche Spanish Tapas Restaurant Facebook Ad Targeting Example­­­

Below we are using Facebook Ads to find people in the Houston area that like tapas or tapas bars, or have a household income that is in the top 50% or higher of US households, AND that have an interest in Spanish Cuisine. From this we can see there are 11,000 people we can target.

All the chosen variables in this example can be modified, refined, added to, to create even more precise targeting. So think about this for a moment – what other advertising platform can you down select for an audience like this? There is none!

Fast Casual Restaurant in Manhattan, NYC, Facebook Ad Targeting Example­­­

Lets assume you have a fast casual restaurant in midtown Manhattan as an example.

We can target people that have an interest in competitor restaurants in midtown Manhattan. For this example, we selected Chipotle Mexican Grill, Qdoba Mexican Grill, El Pollo Loco, and Panera.

As you can see below, we are targeting a relatively small area around part of Central Park. Facebook is telling us that there are 8,000 people here that have an interest in those competitor restaurants. The options inside Facebook for being precise in your targeting based on interests, likes, and behaviors are many. I am showing you just a fraction of what’s possible.

Facebook or Instagram Ads?

A quick note about a question we get often which is, should we run Instagram ads too? 

Facebook owns Instagram and as such it is one of the placements Facebook will automatically use to show your ads.

Facebook decides for each ad impression to someone in your ad targeting that if it can achieve the goal at the lowest cost by showing the ad to the user over on Instagram it will show your ad there. Conversely, if Facebook believes the result can be achieved at a lower cost on Facebook it will show the ad to that user on Facebook.

You can choose to run your ads only on Instagram, however, anytime we have forced the ads to show only on Instagram the results are far more expensive. Unless you have a very good reason to force your restaurant ads to show on Instagram, the best option is to let Facebook's algorithm make choice. 

It helps if you have a calendar planned out in advance for the year for each month by week. If it is summer and you have great salads, showcase your salad options.

Alternatively, if it is Mother’s Day, showcase the food items that will resonate well with families and moms.

Below is another example of targeting for Mother’s Day – perhaps your restaurant has a Mother’s Day brunch special, and you have fun activities planned for young kids as well.

Below we are able to find families within 10 miles of San Diego that are parents with kids of ALL ages that also have household incomes in the upper 25% of household incomes.

Mother's Day Targeting Example

For example, if you are promoting an Irish pub, and you have an Irish band, target the below people on Facebook.

Below we pulled everyone in Los Angeles within 5 miles of downtown that likes craft beer, beer festivals, etc, AND then they must like Irish cuisine, Irish pubs, Jameson Whiskey, and more Irish targets.

Promoting Restaurant Entertainment Example

There are a couple of ways to target past customers for your restaurant on Facebook.

Restaurant Gift Card Purchases

There is nobody more likely to buy gift cards from you than your past customers. Facebook can be used to sell gift cards directly to all your past visitors. And considering that a large percentage of gift cards are never redeemed, that's cash flow and profit that falls to the bottom-line. 

After you click the button, Create Lookalike Audience, you will see a screen similar to the below. Here is where you can tell Facebook how "similar" you want this Lookalike to be to your current audience. The selection of similarity is from 0% to 10%, the latter of which will be the least similar but broadest audience. So what selection is right, then? So without knowing more about your particular restaurant ad targeting situation, I would create several Lookalikes at different levels of similarity to your customer database and test them to see what delivers the best results. 

However, with Facebook ads, we can make our traditional marketing much more effective. Facebook ads can easily integrate with your other traditional marketing efforts to improve response rates (in marketing we call that "Lift"). 

It’s no surprise that integrating efforts like this improves overall response from your other traditional advertising – multiple channels and multiple impressions helps push the customer closer to a conversion.

A consumer survey found that on average, people need more than 12 sources of influence before making a purchase decision (source: Think With Google). If people hear a radio ad, or see a print ad, and then also see a targeted Facebook ad they are that much closer to becoming your restaurant customer.

So for example, if you are doing any print marketing like mailing out postcards to a USPS carrier route around your restaurant location, why not also run Facebook ads in those same neighborhoods as well? It's particularly effective if you run your Facebook ad right before you drop the postcard and then for some time after you drop the postcard. Don’t rely on just that one impression from the postcard which most end up in the trash.

Alternatively, what if you’re running local radio ads or a TV commercial? Did you know you can target radio listeners of specific radio stations and TV shows on Facebook?

Seattle Sports Bar Example:

In the below example, I’m targeting men in Seattle between the ages of 22 - 55 years that listen to Fox Sports Radio, watch ESPN, like the Mariners and the Seahawks. We can reach 94,000 men.

If you leverage Facebook ads and integrate them into your traditional marketing tactics, you will improve the “lift” or response from the traditional advertising tactics and will see better results.

Example Now Hiring Facebook Job Ad

Restaurant job ads typically get very good mileage - meaning your job budget goes far. For this ad we were able to reach 85,630 unique people and close to 160,000 impressions. This ad ran for about 6 weeks. 

Different Types of Facebook Ads For Your Tactics

Facebook offers different ad formats for showcasing your restaurant’s promotions, brand, or specials.

You can be incredibly creative with Facebook ads, and there are many ways to promote your restaurant with rich media. Your ad type will depend somewhat on what creative assets you have, such as, images, or video.

Facebook Restaurant Ad Examples

Single Image Ads: these are the most common type of ad and run with only one image. These are fine and work well in Facebook for restaurants, but there are more options to utilize rich media and more creativity.

Video ads: do you have nice video content? Maybe you had a promotional video made? For example, you can highlight the kitchen as the dishes are being prepared if you're a higher end restaurant. One of the best experiences I have ever had was at a restaurant in downtown Cleveland sitting at the chef’s table – I had a front row view of how the kitchen was operating, and it was completely fascinating.

Video ads will stream through a user’s newsfeed and are on mute until they choose to hear the audio by tapping on the video.

And if you choose the Video Views campaign objective, you will likely get views on your video for pennies each view! As an advertiser, the Video Views campaign objective provides amazing mileage for your ad spend. 

Carousel ads: Maybe you have a 3-course executive lunch special. Or perhaps you have multiple images of different dishes, or you want to showcase Friday night entertainment. 

Carousel ads are similar to single image ads except you can put multiple images in each ad. With carousel ads, users scroll horizontally through different pictures of the lunch special. In this case, you could show each item with a call-to-action on each image.

Carousel Ads give people a better sense of what you're promoting since multiple images are being shown.

Or another idea, maybe you have several different offers – you can use carousel ads to highlight each type of promotion allowing people to scroll easily through each promotion to find the most appealing.

Facebook Ads Manager

So, if you're ready to dive in to learning how to run Facebook Ads yourself, the first place you need to start with is the Facebook Ad Manager. If you have the time, Facebook provides many resources to dive in and learn from the basics of how to setup your ad account, business manager, to ad strategy. 

But if you don't have the time to setup and learn the Facebook Ads Manager, it can be overwhelming if you don't spend your days running ads, consider having us setup the campaigns for your by clicking the link below. Or we can offer a concierge service of ongoing ads management that we'd be happy to discuss with you - you can book a time here and find a time that works for you. 

Related Post: Common Facebook Ad Campaign Questions

The Restaurant Customer Journey

Within this discussion of Google Ads and how they work, it’s important to remember the customer journey to becoming your restaurant customer.

The path to conversion for a customer is typically not direct – meaning there are multiple steps, not just as simple as:

see Google ad --> click on ad --> become a customer

The above example, of course, does happen, but many customers take many steps over the course of hours or days. For example, perhaps you piqued their interest, but then they left to read your reviews, check out competitors, or maybe they stopped their search altogether temporarily.

Google Ads Wants You to Be Successful and Provides the Channel and Tools

Understandably, most people unaware of how Google works don’t realize that the platform offers many tools to reach the ideal restaurant customer at any point during the customer journey. And that you can be successful with even modest budgets whatever your restaurant goals are.

Here's an example...

Consider that Google provides a campaign objective (one of many) that is designed to maximize conversions however you have defined conversions. Perhaps those conversions are restaurant phone calls, store visits, or conversions through your restaurant app.

The campaign optimizes to achieve that goal and reduces any ad spend that doesn’t help achieve that goal. Google will also adhere to your cost per lead/cost per conversion limits as well, so you ensure you’re maintaining your ROI goals.

Here’s another example - use remarketing to increase repeat sales:

We had a restaurant client in NYC that had thousands on its remarketing list (past website visitors). We ran a remarketing campaign and every day we would advertise banner ads with the latest lunch special to thousands of hungry customers between 11 am – 2 pm that needed to decide where to get lunch. These types of campaigns cost very little money. 

If lunch sales are important, why would you not want to run lunch special ads targeting current or new customers from 11 am – 2 pm? You know people are hungry, and you know they need to eat. 

But equally important, the people that are most likely to buy from you are the ones that have bought from you in the past (all those people on your remarketing list). Unfortunately, most restaurants focus the majority of their marketing dollars on new customers. 

Financially, the cost of a sale to a repeat customer is a tiny fraction of what it costs to get a new customer. So to maximize profit and return on ad spend, you need to be advertising to your past customers. 

Untapped Opportunity for Restaurants

Consider the below chart showing the growth in searches in Google for “restaurant near me.” Are you sure you want to concede that traffic to your competitors?

Here’s another search: “Mexican restaurant near me”

And this one...

How Do Google Ads Work? Campaign Types

Google ads work in two basic ways:

1. Search Ads: text ads that show when searchers type keywords into Google search (or Google search partners) or on Google maps.

Here's an example:

• Display: image, video, and text ads that show on other websites you visit. Have you ever noticed those ads that follow you around after you have visited a website? Those are often Google Remarketing ads, which is one type of Google Display ad.
• Video ads on YouTube – if you have video creative you can run ads on YouTube in very targeted ways. Remember that YouTube is the second largest search engine. With YouTube, you have many advantageous targeting options – based on keywords people are using to search for videos, placements – specific YouTube channels you know your audience visits, or even retargeting people that have previously visited your website.
• App: you can drive app adoption as well using this ad type – with this campaign goal, you can increase app adoption and in-app usage as well.

But the core campaigns that the majority are focused on are Search and Display (image, video).

For Google Search ads, you as a restaurant advertiser bid on keywords specific to your business and have your ads show to those searchers within a specific geographic area that you choose.

For example, the keyword phrase: “Best hamburgers in San Diego.”

When someone clicks on your ads you are charged the cost-per-click (CPC), and the searcher is taken to your website, or a call is initiated to your restaurant, for example.

Here’s an example of a search ad on a mobile device:

The above ad highlights an important benefit of Google Ads over organic non-paid listings in Search. The best screen real estate at the top of a mobile device is given to ads. 

Remember that the majority of search traffic right now is on mobile devices.

Notice this fact...

with the mobile ad above, the entire visible part of the mobile screen is taken up by an ad! You have to scroll down quite a way just to get to the non-paid organic listings. With mobile Google ads, your restaurant dominates the screen.

Now that doesn't mean the organic listings down below don't matter, they do. And your most effective strategy is one that uses SEO to rank your restaurant in non-paid listings combined with ads at the top of the page. Afterall, the more spots on the first page that you occupy means the more likely that you will win a new customer. 

How Much Do Google Ads Cost?

The CPC (cost-per-click) varies greatly depending on the type of campaign, whether it’s Search or Display, but often it can be as low as $0.20 per click to more than $10 per click for restaurants depending on the search term and the type of campaign.

Here’s some estimated CPCs for restaurant terms for a Search campaign:

Keep in mind that Display campaigns can drive traffic for much lower CPCs. It’s not uncommon for a Display remarketing banner campaign to see CPCs less than $0.50 per click.

For Search campaigns, the cost you pay varies by keyword. Some keywords will be more economically valuable than others.

The two main variables that affect the cost per click with a Search campaign are:

1. Competition for the search terms you’re bidding for (how many other restaurants are bidding for those same or similar keywords)
2. Relevance of your ad and website to the searcher

Relevance is important - if you bid on a keyword for hamburgers but your ad doesn't mention hamburgers, and the landing page for the ad doesn't either, then your ad relevance will score low. The effect of this is that you will pay a higher CPC - sometimes a lot higher. Google rewards ad relevance with lower costs to you the advertiser. (related post here on how to align ads to landing pages)

Later we’ll talk about how to identify which keywords are the most economically viable.

Identify Your Goals For Your Google Ads Campaign

What are you trying to achieve with a Google Ad campaign?

Everyone is going to say sales, of course, and that may be a goal, but there are additional options:

• Increase repeat business through retargeting
• Increase phone calls
• Grow website traffic
• App promotion and more

Likely you will have multiple goals.

Spend some time identifying what you are trying to achieve – this will drive what types of campaign you set up and what types of budgets you need to achieve your goals. Below are example goals that Google Ads provides restaurant advertisers.

Search Campaign Structure

Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Keywords

Organization is at the heart of successful Google Ad campaigns. The hierarchy in a Search campaign is:

• Campaigns > Ad Groups  > Ads > Keywords

Campaigns are where you set top-level settings, such as your geotargeting, budgets, start and end dates, etc.

The Three Amigos

• Ad Groups
• Ads
• Keywords

The above are the Three Amigos – they go hand-in-hand and are organized in themes.

For example, here’s a possible theme group (i.e., ad group, ads, keywords):

Let’s say you offer the best hamburgers around and want to acquire more hamburger customers.

You have one ad group called Best Hamburgers.

Within that ad group are ads that are written about why you have the best hamburgers along with a call-to-action (CTA) and a promotion. 

And the keywords you bid on revolve around:

• best hamburgers near me
• best hamburgers in…, etc.

So as you can see - the theme is well aligned around hamburgers. Any click traffic from these ads would ideally land on a page that talks about your hamburgers with nice images and perhaps video too. 

Here’s a possible second theme - catering:
Perhaps you offer catering as well – a second ad group would have ads focused on your catering services, benefits, pricing options, etc and keywords that are focused around “restaurant catering." 

So in each of the above ad group examples (i.e. hamburgers and catering), you have aligned the Ads with the Keywords (meaning the ads have the keywords in them) – this is a fundamental principle in Search campaigns. Following this structure ensures you have a good campaign that will deliver the best results at the very lowest cost. 

But we don’t stop there…Landing Pages!

Each landing page you send the traffic to is about that theme…don’t send catering traffic to a generic home page. Send your catering traffic to a detailed page about your catering services that has pricing, pictures, testimonials, etc.

Conversely, don’t send your “best hamburgers” ad group traffic to a page that isn’t talking about why you have the best hamburgers.

Both ad groups could be under one campaign, as illustrated below.

This alignment between ads, keywords, and landing pages is essential. 

Not following this structure will cost you more money (since Google rewards for relevance). And, equally important, lead to a poor user experience for searchers. Nobody wants to click on a catering ad and land on a generic Home page of website with little to no information about your catering services and then have to search for catering. 

Campaign Details

Campaigns are at the top where you designate key features. It’s crucial that you designate campaigns for one ad channel only.

For example, a Search campaign should only focus on Search, not Search and Display.

A YouTube campaign should only run YouTube ads, not Display or Search as well.

Even though Google will allow you to mix campaign types, mixing campaign types is a bad idea because each channel, whether it’s Search, Display, or YouTube, behave very differently, and the campaign level metrics are different.

Search campaigns often have CTRs (click-through-rates) of 4% or higher, while Display campaigns are usually less than 0.1% - 1% - mixing these campaign types in one campaign distorts the data, among other issues.

Below we go through the options at the campaign level of setting up your campaign.

Campaign Detail Features:

• Networks: In the case of a Search campaign – just Google search or Search Partners as well. We recommend Google and Search Partners
• Type of campaign – Search, Display, App, or YouTube
• Budgeting is set at this level
• Where you’re advertising geographically - many options here...from narrow to broad
• What languages you’re targeting
  • We typically set this to English, of course, and add in Spanish often. If other languages apply to your type of restaurant, you want to select those here. This feature is essential for those people that have set their browser preferences to a particular language.
• Bidding type
  • We’ll discuss more about bidding below
• Campaign Start and End Dates
  • Setting dates for campaigns is very beneficial especially if you’re running a temporary promotion or holiday campaign, or want to stop the campaign at one point automatically
• Conversions – select which conversions are included
• Ad Rotation – Google gives you several options here…the default is set to “Optimize: Prefer best performing ads.” However, if you want to split test ad creative and copy to uncover which performs better, then set this to “Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely.”
• Campaign URL options – typically you do not need to worry about this – we set campaign URLs at the Ad level
• Dynamic Search Ads Setting – more of an advanced feature. I do not recommend using this right out of the gate if at all.
• IP Exclusions – not something you will need to worry about, but it allows you to block specific IPs and thus geo areas

Search Ad Groups

Ad groups are just a name placeholder. You can set ad group bids which will apply to all your keywords in the ad group (unless you specify keyword-level bidding on keywords), but the ad group is just the place that will hold your ads and keywords for a particular theme.

Search Ads

Write at least two ads per ad group to split test ad copy, offers, and CTAs (calls-to-action).

Here’s an example ad from within the Google Ad Manager:

And then the interface to create the ad:

Text Ad Character Limits

• 3 Headlines – 30 characters each
  • The third headline will not show all the time
• Description 1 and 2 – 90 characters each

You don’t have much space, so make sure you highlight your unique features and benefits that customers love the most. Add in any offers and of course a CTA (call-to-action).

• USP – unique selling proposition – what makes you different? Think in terms of what your customers want – what are their needs and translate that into compelling ad copy.
  • CTAs – add appropriate calls-to-action.For example, call now, download our app today, order now, etc
  • Features and benefits – what is unique about your restaurant, and what’s the benefit to your customer?
  • Prices and promotions – for sure, include these…can improve CTRs

If you’re a multi-unit restaurant, don’t forget that the Final URL, which is the first field in this example should land you on the location page for that restaurant, not necessarily the Home page unless that’s the most relevant page. Unless you have many locations in a metro area, your campaign can cover all those locations and, in that case, land the visitor on a page that lists all the locations.

And remember, there’s only one URL per ad group, so you cannot have one ad with the Final URL going to the location page, and another ad in the same ad group go to the Home page.

Ad Extensions: Use all the Google Ad features

• Callouts – these have 25-character limits and will appear below the ad. Callouts make the ad larger and will show per Google’s discretion. Use these. Examples include: Open until 2 am, Vegan Food, 20 Beers On Draft, etc
  • Sitelinks – these also appear below the ad and are links to other areas of your site. You can use them to link to your Contact Us page, About Us, or other areas of your website that are relevant
  • Location Extensions – if your ad represents one location, absolutely add in a location extension…this too makes your ad more significant and will include your address and phone number in the ad. If your ad represents many locations in one geo area, likely you should not use Location Extensions as Google will show location extension that performs the best, not necessarily the one that is closest to the searcher.
  • Click to call extension – a great way to increase phone calls
  • Message extensions – can you handle messages coming to you from ads? If yes, consider adding this.

Keyword Tools: What Keywords Should I use?

Below are several tools to help you identify the best keywords for your restaurant Search campaigns. A best practice is to identify 10 – 15 keywords per Search ad group.

Cluster your keywords in ad groups around tight themes – for example, searches related to “best hamburgers in town,” or “best hamburgers near me.”

Google Keyword Planner

To access the Google Keyword Planner, just set up a free Google Ads account.  The Keyword Planner is located under Tools & Reporting and then Planning.

Let’s say you’re creating an ad group for “Best Hamburgers” – I typed in two seed keywords below.

Make sure you set your geolocation to where you are targeting your ads otherwise you won’t have realistic numbers – in the below example, we need to change this from the United States to the specific area we’re targeting (e.g., within specific zip codes, a town or city, etc).

When I update the geo-targeting to San Diego, as an example, I get accurate monthly search data. Google also gives you data on the “keywords you provided” and then many additional recommendations.

In the below example under “Keyword ideas” there’s one additional keyword with “best” – if I were targeting terms related to “best burgers,” I would use the two I suggested, and the one Google suggested in the ad group, but not the others. For the other terms, I might create another ad group for “best burgers” where all the keywords have “best burgers” in them.

Keep in mind Google Ads will not show you all the keywords people use to search…it is primarily showing you the keywords it believes have value since it doesn’t want you blaming them that your campaign didn’t work if you choose other keywords.

So to cover your bases, use different tools to uncover potential keywords. Big G is not always right.

Keep in mind Google Ads will not show you all the keywords people use to search…it is primarily showing you the keywords it believes have economic value since it doesn’t want you blaming them that your campaign didn’t work if you choose other keywords. So to cover your bases, use different tools to uncover potential keywords. Big G is not always right.

Brand and Competitor Terms
Don’t forget to consider bidding on brand and competitor restaurant terms as well – set up ad groups for your brand terms and consider going after competitor brand terms. If it’s a well-known restaurant brand, you might be blocked from using the keyword if they filed with Google to protect the term, but it’s worth a try. Competitor terms will be more expensive since you don’t own that word on your site anywhere.

Why Go After Paid Brand Searches?
Some may question why you would set up brand queries in a Google Ad campaign when you know you will win that organically. A couple of reasons this can make sense:

• There’s a chance your competitors may bid on your brand terms so by you bidding on them too you will raise their cost
• The cost for you to bid on your brand terms is typically inexpensive. You can also highlight different features/benefits in ads that you cannot display easily in the organic results that Google serves up – for example, maybe you’re having a special promotion that is only today, for example.
• You can deep link your ads into specific parts of your site

Keywords: Google My Business Insights

Within your Google My Business page, there is an area called Insights, which will show you all the terms your Google My Business page has shown for in Google Search and Google Maps (go to business.google.com).

Google Related Searches

Anytime you do a Google search, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page Google serves up searches related to your initial query – these are additional restaurant and food searches that people are using.

Below is an example for related Google searches to “catering services.”

Any additional terms you find from Google My Business Insights and Google related searches, throw these terms into the Google Keyword Planner to check for metrics, such as competition, seasonality, and CPC (cost-per-click).

Choosing The Correct Keywords

When you’re finalizing restaurant keywords for your ad groups within your Google search campaign here are things to consider:

• Monthly search volume – is there volume enough to make it worthwhile?
  • It’s ok to use search terms with low volume or no reported volume from Google but know you are not likely to drive much traffic
• Competition – is there too much competition to make it profitable? Remember, the Google Keyword Planner will show the competition level along with the CPC.
• What is the CPC per keyword?
• Relevance to your food and services

And you can always add keywords to your actual plan and test and later remove them if they are not meeting your goals.

Search Match types

For Search campaigns, Keyword Match Types are Google’s way of allowing you to narrow your searches to precisely that query or broadening it to expand to all the possible query variations your ad can show for.

Here’s a table from Google that summarizes the different match types your keywords can have. This table can be found at Google as well here.

Broad Match Keywords:
Be careful using “broad match” – this can match to some wild variants you would not expect and that likely won’t be a good fit for your business so you run the risk of wasting ad spend on non-valuable keywords. We rarely use this match type.

• Pros: can expose you to many different queries that perhaps you would not have thought of that could be valuable
• Cons: you can waste ad spend on keywords that are not relevant

Phrase Match Keywords:
If you want to be slightly more conservative, use phrase match, “best hamburgers”- this will ensure that your ad only shows for queries where those terms are used in precisely that order, but words can appear before and after…so same example as above, the ad could show for, “best hamburgers in San Diego.”

• Pros: Narrow your focus on core set terms and eliminate wasteful keywords
• Cons: Still allows your ad to show for some search terms that might not be a good fit, but more restrictive than Modified Broad

Exact Match Keywords:
Exact match is the most conservative – “best hamburgers” will only match those two words, so this match type is very restrictive, and you would miss out on “best hamburgers near me,” for example.

• Pros: the most precise, least wasteful keyword setup
• Cons: The drawback is that you will lose out on keywords that were valuable. Another drawback is that search volume for exact match is low compared to the other match types so you will not drive as much traffic. There are times when using Exact Match makes sense – for example, if one particular keyword generates a sufficient volume of clicks and conversions, sometimes pulling just that keyword out of its existing ad group and creating its own ad group with just that keyword can help drive even more clicks for that word – this can focus your ad spend on one of your most
  successful keywords.

Using Negative Keywords

What are negative keywords? Keywords that you don’t want your ads to show for. Adding negative keywords to your campaign is one of the easiest and most important things you can do to make your campaign more efficient and waste less money.

Within your Google Ads account, you can run a Search Terms report for any Search campaign to uncover the actual terms that your ads showed for. Below is where to find that report.

In this example, I checked the phrase match term, “restaurant near me” which is a term that was added to the campaign then clicked on Search Terms. Below are the keyword variations that matched to “restaurant near me” with a 2-week period. With the Search Terms report, you can see terms that your ad showed for based on that particular keyword you added to your campaign, for example:

• Breakfast restaurants near me
• 24-hour restaurant near me
• Indian restaurant near me

For most restaurants, Remarketing ads (i.e. serving ads to people who have previously visited your website) are some of the most common types of Display ads and often cost very little compared to Search ads.

An example of a remarketing ad is:
Someone visited your website and then left your website and went to read the news on NBC, for example, and a banner ad for your restaurant showed on that website.

You should be running Remarketing campaigns if you do nothing else. The benefit of remarketing ads is that it keeps your brand front and center with your customer and helps you maintain mindshare, which ultimately results in increases in new customers and repeat customers. Except for Facebook, no other marketing tactics allow you to do this.

The other targeting methods outside of remarketing for Display campaigns drive more branding and upper-funnel awareness – while branding is essential, for most small to medium-sized restaurants it’s hard to justify the expense versus actual conversions to the store.

Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Targeting

The hierarchy of the campaign structure is similar to a Search campaign. The most significant difference from a Search campaign is:

• The targeting to reach your customer
• Where the ads show
• And that you’re using banner ads, not text (although you can run text ads, too)

Here are some of the Display targeting options which are very different from Search campaigns:

Audiences

• How they have interacted with your business (i.e. Remarketing and Similar Audiences) –
  • Remarketing: targeting past website visitors. This is by far the most common and effective Display campaign targeting for most restaurants. Can cost very little and the benefit is huge
    and encourages repeat business or closing longer sales cycle customers that didn’t convert on a first website visit. Website visitors can stay on your Remarketing lists for longer than 1 year!
    • Requires the Google Pixel to be placed on the
      website
  • Similar To – with Similar To audiences you can take your Remarketing audience of website visitors and tell Google to create an audience with similar demographics and behaviors – another effective way to leverage your remarketing audience and the Google pixel

What are their interests and habits:

• Affinity Audiences – people grouped by their habits and preferences. There are some excellent options here if you're a restaurant.
• Custom Affinity Audience – here you enter interests, URLs, types of places, or apps to generate a custom audience

What are they actively researching or planning? 

• In-market and Custom Intent – these people are actively searching for recipes, food, and more.

Here are some excellent In-Market Audiences for restaurants. Keep in mind this list is only a sample of what's available. 

Demographics – you can target based on age, gender, household income, parental status and combinations thereof

Topics – you can have your ads show on websites and pages that are about a topic. For example, if you’re a barbeque restaurant, you can choose to show ads on topics related to BBQ & Grilling.

Keywords – keywords used in Display \campaigns are different than in Search campaigns. Keywords are used to target contextually relevant pages which just means pages talking about those keywords. Typically, 5 keywords help Google understand the topic well enough to identify website pages to show your ads on.

Placements – specific websites or pages on websites that you choose to have your ads show.

Creative

Make your ads visually appealing. Showcase your food and people having fun. Include calls-to-action (CTAs) and some benefits but not too much text as you have limited space. Tell a story with your images.

If you’re promoting an event, showcase the best image for that event.

If you’re showcasing a promotion, highlight that in the ad creative.

Consider using social media to help you split test which creative works best. Run Facebook ads with different creative and see which performs better then roll that creative out to your Google Display ads for your restaurant.

Consider dayparting

Dayparting is just running your campaigns during specific times of the day. For example, we run breakfast ads – in both Search and Display campaigns - for a client only during the morning from 6 am to 10 am, and then lunch ads from 10 am to 2 pm so we’re always promoting the most
current options.

Geo-targeting

Set your ads to show within the radius that the majority of your customers will travel from to visit you. The only exception to consider with this is for your retargeting campaign. Anyone that has landed on your site or a specific page on your site is likely local traffic – likely got there from
an organic search or social efforts locally. So, if you want to reach those people even if they’re traveling with remarketing ads, then consider not limiting your geotargeting for remarketing. Here's a related post on Google Ads local targeting options.

Bidding Strategy

Google Ads offers many different bidding strategies, depending on what your goals are.  Below are the bidding options Google Ads provides.

Often Maximize Conversions are the appropriate choice for Search and Display campaigns – in this scenario, Google will try to maximize the number of conversions it gets for the budget you have allocated. The conversion you choose could be phone calls, directions to your restaurant, app downloads, or online orders, among others.

Conversions – make sure to set this up.

For each campaign, there are many types of conversions you can setup. Make sure to set up all that are appropriate for what you are trying to achieve. Not setting this up means you not only won’t be tracking important conversion events for your campaigns, but if you cannot run a Maximize Conversion bidding strategy.

Quality Score

Google Ads are an efficient advertising platform that rewards advertisers with lower costs that run quality campaigns.

In a search campaign, your keywords will have a quality score of a low of 1 to a high of 10. Google will charge you more per click for lower quality score keywords. And the differences in CPCs can be significant – more than double or triple the cost from a high of 10 to a low of 1. Also, Google will restrict your exposure and limit how many searchers see your ads with lower quality scores – meaning your ad won’t always show.

Here’s an example:
If you are advertising catering services, make sure the keywords you use in your ad group are all about catering, make sure your ads are about catering, and finally make sure the landing page you’re sending the traffic to is about catering.

To get even more specific, perhaps you specialize in barbeque catering. Don’t just use basic catering terms – use barbeque catering keywords and send the traffic to a page about barbeque catering.

If your specialty is vegetarian burgers, use vegetarian burger keywords, ads that reflect the keywords and landing pages that are about vegetarian burgers.

Google will assign an initial quality score once you start, but that will adjust as the campaign runs.

What is too low of a quality score?

If you have keywords with quality scores at a 5 or 4, you need to consider pausing those keywords.

What can you do to improve your quality score?

Consider not using the keywords if they are not a perfect fit for what people are expecting, or most importantly, what the searcher was expecting. Or consider creating a new ad group with those lower score keywords, write new ads with those keywords, and use a different landing page that is specific to those keywords.

Landing pages

What makes for a good landing page?

Any good strategy starts with the customer, and landing pages are no different. What is this person trying to achieve?

Likely they want to get a good sense of what you’re about, the food ambiance, pricing, are you kid-friendly? They probably also want to quickly find out where you are located and how to contact you. The internet is goal-oriented and so give them what they are looking for.

Also, your job is to reduce friction in the customer journey – don’t make it hard for them to find your phone number or where you’re located, or pricing information.

So, a useful landing page will have quality images showcasing your food and the restaurant. Write descriptions of your food and services that highlight your strengths.

Include trust marks to build confidence (testimonials, awards, etc).

Embedded video if you have – people like videos, and it’s a positive engagement factor for SEO and your ads.

Value of a customer

It’s essential to understand the lifetime value of a customer and not just your average order to run successful Google Ad campaigns. The majority of customers are repeat visitors – what is the value of a customer to you?

As an example, I probably go to a Jersey Mike’s 20 times per year and my average order is around $8 – just simple math puts my annual value at $160. In this scenario, a restaurant can afford to pay a fair amount to acquire a new customer. What is that value for your restaurant? This value
affects how you run your campaign.

Focus your campaigns on your most profitable foods and services before promoting lower value foods and services.

How Much Should You Spend On Ads?

I wrote an easy-to-follow process to help you identify how much to spend monthly.

Technical Website Issues

• Ensure your site is mobile friendly – most of your traffic will be coming from mobile devices. Google runs a mobile-first index now so if your site is not mobile-friendly you will not only suffer organically in ranking in the search results, but your ad campaigns will suffer from lower quality scores too.
• Hosting is important – don’t skimp – if you receive enough traffic, consider a dedicated server for your site. Slow site speeds negatively impact rankings. 

To wrap up this post, if you haven't considered Google Ads, I would encourage you to reconsider.

Remember on mobile devices, Google Ads take up the entire screen before the organic non-paid listings - that is invaluable screen real estate, especially when you consider that people spend up to 3 hours per day on their phones and check them as often as 150 times per day.

Google Ads is complex and it's not possible to cover all the strategies, tactics, and campaign optimizations for a restaurant, but feel free to ask questions below in the comments.

And if you are looking for an agency to help, reach out to us. We have worked with restaurants nationwide and can help you grow new customers. 

Your Next Steps:

Instagram-worthy tableware and table linens will help your photos and your customers’ photos look even better. Photos of food should be taken up-close and from a side angle. Be sure to have good lighting and enhance color brightness with a photo editing software if needed.

2. OFFER FREE WIFI - Wifi is very important and in some cases a necessity for a lot of restaurant customers.

Many people decide on where they are going to eat based on whether a restaurant has Wifi. Your customers want to socialize online or even get caught up on work while at your establishment so it’s important to give them that incentive to come in. Offering Wifi does not only provide a great benefit to customers, but it also provides restaurant owners an opportunity to acquire email addresses and even recognize Facebook profiles of their customers which can be used at a later point to re-market. Want to learn more about Wifi as a digital marketing strategy?

KEEP A SMARTPHONE IN THE KITCHEN Having a good smartphone in your kitchen always is worthy of your investment. Have your chefs and staff upload pictures in real-time to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms easily and quickly. Customers want to see what’s happening right now, and they want to see pictures. Pictures are an easy source of content to post online to find new customers and get them engaged with your restaurant. A smartphone dedicated to the restaurant will allow your employees to post online easily using the restaurant’s profile and not their own personal profile.

4. BE ACTIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools for restaurant owners as it’s where your customers are spending much of their time.

Your restaurant needs to be on your customer’s minds when they are thinking about where to eat. Social media allows you to engage with your customers to keep you on their minds and bring them into your restaurant.

However, social media channels like Facebook and Instagram are pay-to-play media. No matter what you think, posting organically on Facebook will not do the trick to get your name out there. You’ll have to buy ads on Facebook and Instagram. And boosting posts is not a good idea either.

So, remember that channels like Facebook are real advertising channels and are complex to operate on as marketing tools. Learn how to do it yourself or hire someone that has the expertise to advertise on this media (and no, your young niece does not count as an expert just because she uses Facebook, Instagram). Here's a related post about Facebook Ads For Restaurants.

5. OFFER LIVE MUSIC Everyone loves a little dinner entertainment. Scheduling live music consistently at your restaurant brings people in the door as it gives you events to promote and makes your restaurant look like the place to be. Live music events also provide you an opportunity to post online, even“live” in your news feed. If you’re having a great ambiance, and are posting a live feed on Facebook or Instagram, for example, your content will be seen more frequently than if you’re just posting a picture or a promotion online.

 6. OFFER BIRTHDAY CERTIFICATES - With regards to email marketing, capture your customer’s birthdays when they opt-in to your newsletter and let them know that they will be receiving a special gift on their birthday. When it comes time, email your customers on their birthday with a special coupon for a free appetizer or dessert. Most people celebrate their birthday with a big group at dinner. Giving them an incentive to choose your restaurant on their special day can both increase your sales and introduce new people to your restaurant. Birthday offers can also be promoted on Facebook because on Facebook you can target people who are within 30 days of their birthdays (and their friends!) so you can have birthday related offers shown to people that are about to have a birthday AND who live within a few miles of your restaurant!

7. HOST WINE TASTINGS Chances are you serve wine, or at least you should be. Hosting a wine tasting event brings people together inside your restaurant for a new experience. They’ll be able to taste different wines that you serve, learn how to properly drink wine, and develop a new appreciation for it. By hosting this in your restaurant you’ll also be giving people who otherwise wouldn’t be there a glimpse of what you have to offer. Wine tastings are also a way to capture an audience online. On Facebook, for example, you’re able to target wine enthusiasts with ads so you can advertise your event to a very specific audience around your geographic area. In addition, when you bring in a group of enthusiasts, they’ll be more likely to post about your event and share it with friends. Bring props to your event to encourage even more content produced and shared.

8. START COOKING CLASSES

Let’s face it, people don’t eat out every night. But when they’re cooking your recipes that you taught them at home they will be reminded of how great your food truly is. Keeping your restaurant in your customer’s mind is key to creating a loyal customer that comes back time and time again. Cooking classes are also extremely fruitful content to publish on social media. Foodies are constantly posting and sharing their experiences online. A class is also an opportunity to post a live event on Facebook. These live events can be stored as recordings for people to view at a later time.

9. SPONSOR LOCAL EVENTS - Team up with realtors, new business opening, events at the chamber of commerce, or any other social networking event in where food can be displayed as part of the event. This is a great idea, because not only will you get free exposure, but the opportunity to have other businesses and potential customers, trying your food, starting a conversation about it, and sharing with their friends. Make sure that you set up, and perhaps offer an incentive on their future visit.

10. SHOW SPORTING EVENTS 

A lot of people want to go out somewhere to watch the big local game. Why not be the place to be to watch it?

Use big sporting events as another event to host at your restaurant. It doesn’t take, much to promote and you’ll bring in large groups of people looking for a place to stay, eat and drink for several hours. Props at these events are great to encourage people to post online about their experience. To make it even more fun for your guests, buy some props and people will be more than happy to post pictures of themselves and their friends having a great time at your restaurant! Here are some ideas from www.fathead.com.

11. HOST HOLIDAY PARTIES

Holidays are an essential time for restaurants that you must take advantage of. Almost everyone is looking for a place to have a holiday dinner with family or friends, host an office party, or just a get-together. Make sure people know that you accept reservations for holiday bookings by posting them on your website, social media sites, and in your email newsletter.The power of social media and digital marketing, in general, is that your content will stay alive on the internet for months or even longer. So, take advantage of it and extend the life of every marketing effort you put forth. Companies like www.windycitynovelties.com provide products that will make your party guests want to share online.

12. USE EMAIL MARKETING & MARKETING AUTOMATION

You need to start email marketing if you’re serious about getting customers in the door. Use email to promote new menu items, upcoming events, and specials. An email once a week to once a month will benefit your restaurant and your customers. Email has one of the highest rates of return out of any marketing tactics. 

13. OPTIMIZE YOUR BUSINES LISTING FOR LOCAL SEARCHES

Everyone now uses the internet to search for where to eat out or order online from, and there are a lot of options to choose from. You need to update/create your restaurant’s listing for local directories, otherwise, your restaurant’s website will be buried in the never-ending list of competitors. Learn how in the article here: SEO For Restaurants

14. GET ONLINE REVIEWS

Online reviews are crucial for your restaurant, not only look good to potential customers but to be found at all on Google, Bing, Yelp, etc. This is important because people trust reviews, and choosing a restaurant you’ve never been to before for a special occasion is taking a big chance. The more reviews you have, the more likely people will trust that they’re making a good decision by dining at your establishment, assuming you have mostly good reviews that is. How To Respond To Negative Reviews Online

Being a strong player through online marketing strategies will pay off for your restaurant. More importantly, ensuring all your promotional efforts are also taking advantage of digital media will allow those efforts to prevail longer than the night of the event, or the mailer you sent out. When you post and promote online, you create evergreen content for your restaurant and creates an online footprint that will be difficult for others to follow.

RELATED RESTAURANT POSTS