9 Strategies for Restaurants to Use Event Marketing Profitably

Event marketing can be used quite profitably by the restaurant industry. It can turn out to be a great result oriented activity to maintain interest of existing clientele. At the same time it can also be used to attract potential new clients to your business.

With your own restaurant you don’t have to worry about the venue. With a restaurant you have the advantage that it can host a variety of events like a live concert, a stand up comedy, a movie screening, holiday parties, tournaments, tastings, fundraisers, bake off contests or any other promotional event. Let us look at some strategies which you can use a restaurant owner for successful event marketing:

Use of posters and fliers

This is a common yet impactful medium for promoting an event. Fliers are cost effective mode of spreading the event news in the local vicinity. They can be put in papers, or distributed in college campuses or even made available at other retail businesses. Posters can be put up on the community centre board, or local bulletin board to announce the event to the target audience.

Partnering

You can increase the promotion impact, resources to reach a wider audience if you partner with another retail outlet or any other business. This co-sponsoring of an event with another local business can increase your chances of gaining a visibility in the local community.

Direct marketing

You can make use of technology to directly market your event to the target audience with the use of SMS or email campaigns. Or you can even use the far reaching impact of the social media. With the use of marketing based hashtag you can link various online platforms with your website and add value to your event marketing efforts. You can set up a digital window for event tickets sales online.

Using the print media

Print media channels can be used for direct email marketing. Adding more to it with the right marketing effort you can also have an article featuring you event in the local newspaper or even a broadcast on the local radio channel. This gives the event a social credibility and adds a branding value to the event. Also there are many free local newspapers with a weekly distribution schedule. Try and get a listing in this community paper and further your reach to potential audiences.

In-house advertising

Do not forget your most valuable and free event promotion space – your restaurant. Making the use of table tents, posters and banners you can announce the upcoming event in your restaurant. This is a direct impact event marketing strategy as you are engaging already interested clients.

Don’t forget the potential clients

Restaurants profit most with increasing client base and the idea of organising an event is get maximum brand and event visibility and attract newer participants. The event would be more profitable if you are able to get newer clients to participate in the event. These potential clients will turn into your loyal clients on experiencing your wow restaurant service.

Recall value

It is important a recall value is built around the promotional marketing of the event. The idea could be to start advertising six weeks ahead of the event. This should be followed by the ‘save the date reminder’ about a month before the actual event. Then for those who leave their booking for the last minute, you should send another reminder through SMS or email to the customers in your database a day or two prior to the event.

Involving everybody

It is important to build enthusiasm around the event and create a buzz. This can happen by having as many people involved in the event activities. This will impact increased audience and spread the word out quickly to current and potential clients.

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