Restaurant Marketing Ideas for 2019

If you're a restaurant owner or marketer looking for ways to acquire new customers and increase repeat customer visits at your restaurant, you know it can be an ongoing challenge. It's not hard to run out of new restaurant marketing ideas, and it's not always easy to filter through new technology to find the tools that can help make your marketing campaigns more efficient.

There are only so many times you can push the same few promotions before the novelty wears off for your customers and your campaigns become stale. Allowing your marketing efforts to stagnate can have devastating effects on your restaurant marketing ROI. And in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, sending out offers that are not personalized or timely may lead to reduced open rates and poor ROI.

Here are some great restaurant marketing ideas for 2019 to help jump-start your creative thinking.

Restaurant Marketing in 2019

As a brick-and-mortar restaurant marketer, you already understand that a great marketing campaign is based upon a baseline of reliable data, attainable goals and defined metrics to measure campaign progress. The issue with measurement is that often there is no data – other than what is provided through a point-of-sale system – with which to establish whether the marketing initiative is successful.

Customers expect a comfortable dining environment, a great meal, and friendly service from any restaurant. So what can you do to differentiate your location from other choices and influence a decision to come to your location instead of the competition?

Targeting new and innovative restaurant marketing campaigns in 2019 requires a much deeper understanding of your customers, their behaviors, and their spending patterns. This is where WiFi analytics takes center stage.

Offering Guest Wi-Fi With A Twist

There is, in fact, a powerful technology to help you connect with your restaurant customers while offering them something of value in return. For almost everyone, free WiFi is attractive because it allows your guests to stay connected during their dining experience. Offering free guest WiFi has the potential to draw in more customers who come for the WiFi and spend money while they’re there.

While the benefit to your customers is great, the guest WiFi system harbors something special for restaurant marketers that can help ideate many new marketing ideas for your restaurant.

Simply introducing WiFi gives you the opportunity to:

• Announce the WiFi access on your website and through social media.
• Promote free WiFi on your location’s signage and web page.
• Offer a reward to guests who log in within the first few days.

Your WiFi Landing Page

When a customer logs into your guest WiFi, the first place they are directed is your landing page, giving you a unique opportunity to channel real-world business into an online venue. The WiFi landing page is also known as a captive portal. As a marketer, this provides a fantastic opportunity to test your promotions by gathering valuable analytics on customer responses to your content.

Through your landing page, you can gather contact information, offer surveys, and post promotional material like events and coupons that every guest who logs into your WiFi will see. This offers you an unprecedented amount of customer data, giving you an in-depth understanding of your customers that is sure to inspire new profit-driving marketing ideas for your restaurant.

Landing page promotion ideas could include:

• Surveying guests on their favorite of three or four different theme night ideas, then host the winner
• Letting guests submit and vote on a new appetizer or drink for the bar
• Hosting interesting quizzes about your restaurant menu or history, and winners get a prize
• Inviting guests to sign up for a weekly/monthly raffle by joining your mailing list

WiFi Traffic Analytics

With your customers constantly connecting to and disconnecting from the WiFi system, you’ll create a massive amount of real-time market research. The WiFi hub can detect who has connected and for how long, including exact times of day for each connection. It is also aware of people with devices who walk by your restaurant vs. those who come in and stay.

The traffic data alone turns your free guest WiFi into an accurate, comprehensive analytics tool, allowing you to design custom marketing ideas that uniquely suit your business and clientele. And you’ll see the results in real-time.

Promotional ideas based on WiFi analytics could include:

• Hosting live shows on popular nights
• Fun themes or raffle results on slow nights to boost traffic
• Offering free samples at the door on days with high foot traffic
• Special rewards for regulars who log in frequently

Checking Your Results

WiFi marketing and analytics gives you a clear picture of how successful your promotional efforts are with your device-wielding guests. The WiFi landing page can provide you with data on click-throughs and mobile device participation while the traffic analytics can tell you exactly how effective your outdoor marketing works based on the number of people who come in during a given time. Through your WiFi platform, you can gather ratings and feedback, collect promotional quotes from happy customers, and learn about the behavior patterns of your customers – whether they log in or not.

No longer will you have to guess how effective your restaurant marketing campaigns can be. With the WiFi marketing and analytics tools offered by Bloom Intelligence, you can use your existing guest WiFi to automate restaurant marketing to test new ideas and get a feel for what your customers really want.

With Bloom Intelligence, the information you gain from your WiFi landing page and WiFi analytics will be fueling popular new restaurant marketing campaigns in 2019 and for years to come.