Plenty of research shows that it is far less expensive – and often more profitable – to retain a current customer than to acquire a new one. This is partially due to the scattershot nature of attracting new customers using ads or social media. It generally takes multiple exposures to your message to entice a new customer to give you a try and even then, guests often “churn” after one visit because picking one restaurant to visit over another has relatively low switching costs.

If all that a guest is seeking is a quick burger, then they will pick where to go strictly on price or convenience. This is especially true if you use discounts or other incentives to attract new customers. If you are relying heavily on BOGOs (“buy-one, get-one” offers) and online coupons as your marketing strategy, you will be spending far more of your marketing budget per customer than most restaurants can sustain and there is no guarantee that those guests will not abandon your concept for the next cheap offer they find.

The relationship we build with guests keeps our businesses from becoming a commodity. Once a guest becomes a regular, they are valuable to you not just for what they spend but also for the positive word of mouth they share with others. Hearing “I love going there” from a family member or close friend is much more likely to encourage someone to try a restaurant than a bunch of five-star online reviews from strangers. What brings the guest back time and time are the things that are hard to quantify. This includes the warmth of the service, the comfort of your dining room, and the pleasant feeling of being recognized and valued.

Successful operators combine traditional outbound marketing materials with “four-walls” tactics to forge the relationships. Here are some ideas for what you can do within your restaurant’s four walls to reinforce your marketing message and develop lasting connections with your guests.

Collateral Support

Marketing “collateral” refers to any media that supports marketing and sales. You are likely familiar with, if not already using, the most common in-store marketing collateral – printed materials or signage inside the restaurant to highlight items or announce special promotions.

The old-school way of doing this is the specials board, either handwritten or, if it’s appropriate for your concept, via digital signage. If your lease permits it, sandwich boards or other exterior signs can be an effective way to reinforce your brand through the colors, fonts, and language you use. (There is an entire sub-genre of clever restaurant sandwich boards posted on Instagram.)

If you use these materials, be sure to not let them become static. Change them often to reflect different promotions or to connect to your community, such as promoting a short-term drink special to celebrate a local team’s big win.

Placing marketing messages at the table is another popular strategy, but there is some debate about the value of using a range of print materials on the tabletop. True, they offer a great way to boost sales on some items, but having too many of these kinds of materials deployed at once make your tables look cluttered and can get in the way of a good guest experience.

It’s best to keep marketing materials like these well contained and to make sure that they don’t take up more than five-percent of tabletop area. Many brands use a small stand with a series of cards that can be flipped through like forms on a clipboard because these permit a lot of information to be available in a very small footprint. A single table tent can be fine if it has a small footprint, but do not use them in combination with other tabletop printed matter.

Another strategy is to use custom-printed condiment caddies so that these marketing tools also serve a practical purpose on the tabletop. The more upscale your restaurant is, however, the less appropriate it is to use tabletop space for marketing messages.

Check “stuffers” – small, single-use marketing flyers, coupons, or promotional items included with a guest’s restaurant check to drive future sales or engagement – can encourage repeat visits without making your tabletop appear unattractively crowded. These are far better than relying on coupons printed on the receipt as guests will rarely see or remember these.

For takeout or delivery orders, include a stuffer in each order that gives guests some kind of benefit for coming into your restaurant next time rather than ordering online. As a case in point, Otaku, a small chain of Japanese restaurants based in Nashville, has a clever flyer that it attaches to each takeout bag that includes in-store offers, fun facts about ramen, and a new QR code each month that links to a custom-crafted Spotify playlist.

For post-purchase promotions, you are better off offering repeat guests a free item such as “your choice of appetizer free with any entrée purchase” than giving these customers a flat percentage off an entire future order. And you want to make sure that any offer you extend is for in-store purchases only. Orders that come through third-party delivery apps carry a substantial “tax” in the form of fees that, coupled with any promotional discounts you offer, may end up hurting your bottom line. The same logic applies to loyalty programs.

Whether they are digital or use a physical card, benefits from being part of a loyalty program should apply to in-store purchases only. Have servers verbally invite guests to join the loyalty program in addition to providing digital or printed promotions about the program and its benefits.

Finally, use your restaurant’s menu as part of your marketing strategy. While academic research has debunked any significant effects of highlighting menu items with boxes or colored fonts, your menu’s design should strongly reinforce your brand’s message. All restaurants should have at least one signature menu item and these deserve to be placed front and center. If your restaurant offers catering or a private dining space for parties, call attention to these on your menu rather than just relying on a separate flyer or poster.

Marketing By Design

Your restaurant’s exterior and interior artwork and design are powerful marketing tools. They send messages about what your restaurant is about, what kind of experience guests can expect, and what you offer beyond what’s on the menu.

The most influential thing you can do to make your restaurant’s exterior promote your business is to upgrade your signage and your lighting. Standard backlit signs are affordable (or might be all that you are allowed to put up, depending on the terms of your lease) but they send the message that the experience you offer is down-market; i.e. less prestigious.

For concepts that fill the house based on their popularity as unpretentious and low-key local dives, it likely serves its purpose. In contrast, signage that is warmly lit from above or below is perceived as more modern and upscale, both of which attract higher spending guests. Good lighting in the areas around your restaurant also attract attention and suggest to your guests that you pay attention to detail.

Inside the restaurant, choosing the right layout will pay you back many times over. An easy place to begin is to consider what guests see when they first enter the restaurant. Good marketers let guests see either signature products or high-value add-ons while they wait to be greeted and seated.

Diners have been doing this forever with their refrigerated dessert cases, a tactic used to great effect by The Cheesecake Factory and other family dining brands. More upscale restaurants might place a wine display at the entrance or offer a clear view of the bar from the host stand.

Having guests pass the bar or vibrant food displays on their way to their seats makes these offerings top of mind and costs you nothing. If you are planning on the more expensive approach of an open kitchen, make it work for you by giving guests a great view of the more exciting elements of cooking rather than having just a sea of bobbing ball caps or toques obscured by counters and the backs of servers picking up for their tables.

Grills, rotisseries, and pizza ovens serve as interesting visual elements that enhance the dining experience. Or you may want to make the sauté station more visible if your production team is skilled with flambé, creating an exciting and memorable brief burst of blue-tinged flames.

We know from research that guests who are physically comfortable will spend more and are more likely to return. Keep guests comfy by ensuring that your seats are designed for the length of stay that you want for your concept. While having a plain wooden seat might be fine for a quick meal, hard chairs or benches don’t make a lot of sense for operations like brewpubs where you may want a longer stay and where guests often come in groups.

Avoid metal chairs entirely, particularly those rounded back galvanized chairs that were all the rage a few years back. Using these could suggest that you care more about aesthetics or buildout budget than guest comfort. No matter what they are made from, all seats should have backs, especially at the bar. Ambient temperature matters too. Keep your front-of-house areas at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and shield any seats near doorways from cold drafts. On patios during the cooler seasons, provide heaters and have clean, branded fleece throws available for anyone who would like to bundle up.

Your trade dress – the unique and non-functional aspects of your design such as logo, colors, and signage – should clearly communicate who you are and be distinct from other concepts in your category. That said, avoid overuse of logos or text in your interior design. Look for more subtle ways to express your branding such as patterns on vinyl or fabric upholstery, paint colors, and light fixtures. The goal is to make your décor as recognizable as possible without being too garish or cluttered. Hiring a design professional with skill in both graphic and interior design will be enormously helpful.

At Your Service

If marketing is about communicating who you are and what you stand for, then the way your team interacts with guests is the ultimate marketing tool. Hiring team members for their emotional skills is more important than hiring for technical skill or experience. Union Square Hospitality founder Danny Meyer is famous for saying that he aims to hire staff who have key emotional attributes like genuine warmth, empathy, and integrity, as these cannot be taught. If your hires naturally enjoy working with people and being of service to others, that spirit will come through in what they do on the floor or in the kitchen.

Of course, good service requires more than an upbeat personality. Attention to detail during training and the continuing development of service or production skills will help ensure your team is demonstrating your brand’s values through their actions. Cultivate a culture of “make it better” where the inevitable mistakes your team will make can be rectified with quick and thoughtful recovery tactics. “I’m really sorry that happened so we are taking that right off your bill” sends the message that you care and that the relationship with the guest is more important than winning an argument. This does not mean that you should just accept any attempt to weasel free food – there are a lot of clever scammers out there who use complaints about often imaginary orders to get freebies – but when in doubt, comp.

Select and train staff who can show empathy and genuine concern. Let them know to give a guest a chance to vent and let them know you are sorry about the situation and the way they feel. It's extremely important to not take anything they say personally. Customers will often tolerate even the most blatant screw-ups as long as they feel that someone actually cares about them. Once we sense that someone, anyone, in an organization gives a darn about us, we tend to naturally lighten up.

A Surprise Attack

Providing skilled and friendly service should be your baseline, but going beyond this to create a truly memorable experience can be a substantial component of your marketing strategy. Guests who are pleasantly surprised by something you do are much more likely to return and to recommend your restaurant to others.

Eleven Madison Park (EMP), a world-famous fine-dining restaurant in the heart of New York City, owned and operated by Chef Daniel Humm, is legendary for employing what they call “dream weavers”, employees whose job is to research guests on the reservation list and come up with tailored service touches just for them. These experiences can become very elaborate, like the chauffeured car that the restaurant hired to take a family of Spanish guests to Central Park so the children could experience sledding for the first time. Gestures like this are still being talked about, word of mouth that is worth far, far more than any advertising or social media spend the restaurant could make.

Delighting the guest doesn’t have to be as elaborate as what EMP does. Most operators are familiar with practices like bringing out desserts alight with birthday candles or handwriting a friendly thank you message on the check. For restaurants that are frequented by families, having crayons and something to color on hand or even a small toy to present to young guests will earn a smile from grateful parents.

Sometimes bringing out a plain roll or other snack right away to keep hungry youngsters occupied might be welcome but always check with a parent first. And don’t assume that grownups would not enjoy kid treatment. A bar near my home has a specialty cocktail garnished with one of a series of small plastic animals (sanitized first, of course). Guests come back frequently to buy the drink again so they can collect the whole set.

Incorporating some kind of game into your service can also delight guests, especially if those games have the potential to reduce the check on the current or a future visit. Until it closed during the pandemic, John Thomas Steakhouse in Ithaca, NY had servers bring a deck of restaurant-branded playing cards to the table at the end of the meal, inviting each guest to pull a card from the deck for a game of “check poker”.

Pulling a pair would wipe a dessert off the bill while drawing a royal flush would comp the entire meal for a party of five or more. Guests could keep the cards and bring them back to add to their hands on the next visit.

As another creative example, Indian concept Dishoom in London uses a chance-based dice game to encourage guests to come in again during slower periods. All guests are given a token to bring back with them on a future visit.

If they present their token while paying their bill before 6 p.m. on certain days of the week, the server pulls out a six-sided die. One guest in the party gets to roll. If the die comes up six, the entire check is comped. This may seem overly generous on the part of the restaurant but it’s really the same as offering an across-the-board 16.66% discount, and guests see a one-in-six chance of a free meal is a far more compelling proposition than getting a percentage off the bill. Regulars love the game and Dishoom wins in both marketing buzz and increased revenue during their slow periods.

Look Inward

These examples show that your marketing strategy doesn’t have to rely solely on outward-facing messages or expensive public relations services. Given that today’s guests often make their dining plans based on what they hear from others, generating buzz through who you are and what you do rather than what you say on social media is a highly effective way of building a strong and loyal customer base.

Source: Stephani Robson, RestaurantOwner.com