If you’re the owner or manager of a restaurant, you know your benefit is when you have more foot traffic in your establishment. After all, things have changed after the pandemic, and most diners want to eat out rather than order in.
That being said, the industry in the US, as of 2023, was booming. The output of the full-service restaurant industry in the country grew to over $78 billion in the same year. The overall sales of food service reached an incredible $1121.3 billion. Things have been looking up since then.
The huge opportunity spells big competition for restaurants. How can you make sure that your restaurant manages to grab people’s attention over the others?
Simple: You try to increase your online visibility. Here’s how.
Your Website Should Be More Than a Digital Flyer
A lot of restaurant websites are stuck in the early 2000s with clunky designs, outdated content, and contact info buried under five clicks. If you want to be taken seriously online, your website has to look as vibrant and modern as the restaurant itself.
Think sleek visuals, easy navigation, updated events, high-quality photos, and mobile responsiveness. People scroll on their phones before heading out, not their desktop computers.
Don’t just throw up a site and forget about it. Keep updating it with fresh content. Add weekly recaps, sneak peeks of upcoming deals, or even short blog posts about fine-dining trends.
Focus on Local SEO to Fill the Seats
If you’re trying to draw a crowd in your city, local SEO should be your best friend. This isn’t the same thing as regular SEO. According to SEO Needed, local SEO is all about getting your business to show up in localized search results. Local SEO is basically the modern-day equivalent of word-of-mouth, and Google loves businesses that people seem to trust.
Now, take a look at what restaurants in Miami are doing. The city is packed with 8,720 restaurants and cafes across the urban and coastal areas. Hence, each of them has to work extra hard to stand out. Many of them partner with a local SEO agency in Miami that understands the competition and the trends. These agencies know how to target the right keywords and optimize content for them.
Local agencies can further help restaurants get listed in local directories and ensure they pop up on the map when people are searching. This kind of hyper-focused effort makes it way more likely that someone searching for a meal will land on your website or social pages first. And once they’re there? That’s your chance to win them over with killer content.
Don’t Sleep on Social Media
People don’t just look at your website anymore. In fact, they might head to Instagram or TikTok first to get a feel for the vibe. This is understandable, especially for those looking for restaurants. After all, social media is the perfect place to promote such social establishments, right?
Is the crowd stylish? Does the decor look lit? Are the dishes as good as people say they are? If your social media is dry, inconsistent, or just not giving the right energy, you’re going to miss out.
Regular posting, behind-the-scenes content, and user-generated posts from your guests can do wonders. Tag locations, use trending videos, and engage in comments. It shows that your place has a personality, and that really matters amongst today’s visitors.
Make Your Events and Promotions Easy to Discover
Promotions are a huge part of dining culture, be it ladies’ nights, musical evenings, or themed parties. But if people don’t know about them, they won’t show up. It’s not enough to have a cool flyer; you need to distribute it online in all the right places.
Add events to your website and social media. Submit them to event directories like Eventbrite or local calendars. Use countdowns in Instagram Stories or teaser posts to build anticipation. The key is to make every event feel like something they can’t miss.
Also, don’t underestimate the power of email. If you collect emails from your guests (especially VIPs or frequent visitors), send out weekly updates. Keep it short and sweet, just enough to remind them of what’s coming up. These people already like your restaurant, so you just have to stay on their radar.
The energy inside your restaurant doesn’t matter if no one shows up to experience it. Your job is no longer just about curating menus and managing staff. It’s also about making sure your place is visible online and optimized for people looking for a good time in your area.
If people can’t find your restaurant online, it basically doesn’t exist to them. So don’t just open the doors and hope for the best. Make noise on the internet. Let people know exactly where the party is.