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Out of Home marketing strategies & tips to advertise your restaurant locally
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As any restaurant owner will tell you, marketing for restaurants and keeping a steady flow of customers through the doors is a competitive business. In an industry expected to reach a market size of £19.5bn by 2026, finding customers, sating their appetites, and retaining their loyalty is a challenging task. While digital marketing is a powerful tool and one that all restaurants should be making the most of, Out of Home (OOH) advertising is a game changer for local restaurant marketing. This blog will explore a few of the many effective OOH marketing strategies and tips that can help your restaurant thrive.
Understanding Restaurant Marketing
Does restaurant advertising differ from other businesses? Yes, and no. The basic principles of all marketing still apply - you want to advertise your business in a way that makes you stand out from competitors, and encourages people to choose your business as the solution to their problems. But the problem you are looking to solve is a universal one - hunger. Because of this, trying to demonstrate your uniqueness is all the more important.
What is Restaurant Marketing?
Restaurant marketing involves using various strategies and tactics to promote your restaurant and attract customers. It encompasses digital marketing, social media campaigns, and traditional advertising methods such as OOH advertising. The goal is to increase visibility, draw in new patrons, and build a loyal customer base through effective communication of your restaurant's personality and unique value proposition. Your restaurant marketing strategies need to be designed to reflect your business in the best possible light.
Importance of Local Advertising for Restaurants
Local advertising is crucial for restaurants as it helps target potential customers within your vicinity - AKA, those who are most likely to visit your restaurant for a bite to eat. Independent restaurants rely heavily on foot traffic and local clientele; even those with multiple locations need their patrons to know there’s a place to eat nearby. Therefore, ensuring your marketing efforts resonate with the local community is key to your restaurant's success. Local advertising, particularly OOH advertising, helps to foster a sense of community with the surrounding area and build a loyal customer base to regularly frequent your restaurant.
The Benefits of OOH Advertising for Restaurants
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits OOH ads can bring to restaurant advertising.
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High Visibility and Reach
OOH advertising refers to any kind of advertisement encountered outside of the home. This means billboards, posters, ads on public transport, and digital installations. These forms of advertising offer high visibility and reach that’s relatively cost effective. Strategically placed ads in high-traffic areas ensure that your message is seen by a large number of people on a daily basis - likely a combination of both potential and existing customers. This constant exposure can significantly boost brand recognition and keep your restaurant at the front of the mind for potential diners.
Targeting Local Demographics
One of the significant advantages of OOH advertising is its ability to target specific demographics. By placing ads in areas frequented by your target audience, you can effectively reach potential customers who are more likely to visit your restaurant. If your restaurant caters to young professionals, placing ads near office buildings or public transit hubs can be particularly effective - similarly, if your restaurant wants to attract young families, placing ads near schools or public parks can help to increase visibility.
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Building Brand Awareness and Reputation
OOH advertising helps build brand awareness and reputation by consistently presenting your brand to the public. This helps people to become familiar with your unique personality and offerings, helping to establish a positive brand image.
Driving Traffic and Foot Sales
Effective OOH campaigns can drive significant traffic and sales for your restaurant. Advertising special offers or promotions can entice potential customers to visit your restaurant, as can allowing them to interact with your restaurant before even setting foot through the door, through methods such as QR codes. The physical presence of OOH advertisements serve as a constant reminder of your restaurant's location and offerings, encouraging impulse visits and boosting foot sales - for example, our Ashdel Live network is within walking distance of more than 5,300 bars and restaurants. When fulfilling a need that is as hard to ignore as hunger, you’ll be surprised how much proximity and awareness can influence decisions.
You can also capitalise on local and national events to enhance the impact of your OOH adverts. In our collaboration with PizzaLuxe, we made specific creative content advertising a special offer around the Euros, designed to appear an hour before a match is set to start. This drives traffic to PizzaLuxe not just to take advantage of the deal, but also to stay in and watch the game being screened in-store.
Effective OOH Marketing Strategies for Restaurants
Here are our top tips for crafting effective restaurant marketing strategies.
Choosing the Right Locations
Of course, ‘right’ is a subjective term. What is right for your competitor’s restaurant may not be right for yours, so it’s important to choose carefully. Consider high-traffic areas such as busy intersections, shopping centres, and transit routes - if your restaurant has no designated parking nearby, consider mentioning the nearest available place where your patrons can park their cars.
Think about places where your target audience spends time, like near offices, schools, or entertainment venues, and whether their coming and going from these places intersects with mealtimes. The more relevant the location to your target demographic, and the daily ebbs and flows of their appetite, the more effective your advertising will be.
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Crafting Compelling Ad Content
Your OOH content should be eye-catching and convey your message quickly and clearly - you can’t assume that people will stop to read every bit of fine print on your billboard.
Get psychological. For instance, did you know that exposure to the colour red can make people hungry?
Use striking images and concise text to grab attention - but don’t forget to let your brand’s personality shine through. Simple, right? You should also:
Highlight unique or time-sensitive aspects of your restaurant, such as special menu items, dining experience, or promotions. This can help to create a sense of urgency and encourage a visit from a new customer.
Ensure your branding is consistent and recognisable, making it easy for people to remember and find you even at a glance.
All of these factors combined can lead to restaurant marketing ideas guaranteed to stand out in a crowd. Simple, right? Not really, but with the right support OOH can become easier.
Using Different OOH Formats
OOH advertising comes in various formats, each with its advantages. Billboards are large and high-impact, while ads on buses and trains travel large distances every day, taking your message to people and not just waiting for people to pass it by. Posters and banners can be placed in strategic locations like shopping malls or street corners. Digital OOH ads, such as screens and displays, can offer dynamic content that changes throughout the day. Using a mix of these formats can maximise your reach and effectiveness, so take your time when considering which is right for your restaurant.
Tips for Maximising the Impact of OOH Advertising
We’ve established the fact that marketing for restaurants isn’t a piece of cake - or any other dish, for that matter - but we do have trips for how to maximise its impact.
Leveraging Seasonal Promotions
We’ve already touched on how seasonal promotions can enhance the impact of your OOH advertising. Tailoring your ads to highlight seasonal menu items, holiday specials, or limited-time offers can create urgency and attract more customers. Make an impression in your community by aligning your advertising with local events or festivals.
Integrating OOH with Other Marketing Channels
For a comprehensive marketing strategy, you have to integrate your OOH advertising with your other marketing channels. Use your social media, website, and email newsletters to reinforce your OOH messages - for example, encourage social media engagement by featuring a hashtag on your OOH advertising and encouraging customers to share their dining experiences online.
Measuring Success and ROI
Use tools like customer surveys, digital traffic tracking, and sales data analysis to assess the impact of your OOH campaigns - if the results are what you expected (or even better) you know you’re on the right track. If not, you can build a clear picture of what needs to change.
Bon appétite - dig in to OOH
Effective OOH advertising could be a lifeline in keeping your restaurant cooking - more than 500 restaurants had to close in the last quarter of 2023, a marked increase from the year before, and an unfortunate result of ‘high inflation and cash-strapped customers.’
By choosing the right locations, crafting compelling content, and using a variety of formats, you can create effective OOH campaigns that resonate with your local audience and make them hungry for more of what you can bring to their (dinner) table.
Ready to boost your restaurant's local presence with OOH advertising? We can help you get started.