As a restaurant owner, you’re busy; so it’s no surprise that creating a restaurant marketing plan is not the highest item on your priority list.

While you may not have time to check emails or scroll leisurely through Facebook and Instagram, your diners do. In fact, Americans spend an average of 5.4 hours on their mobile phones daily—that’s plenty of opportunities to get in front of them, don’t miss out! Even small efforts around marketing your restaurant can make a big difference for your business; here are three simple tips to get you started:

Start with the holidays—there’s no easier way to start marketing your restaurant!

If it’s hard to find time to plan marketing content weekly, consider picking the next upcoming holiday to send a message to your guests and followers! The holidays are a great time to start marketing your restaurant; highlight your seasonal offerings and create a sense of urgency around those seasonal specials by showcasing their limited time offering. There’s a holiday for almost everything—find the celebrations that fit the best with your restaurant and start planning!

Pop Tip: Human beings naturally have a fear of missed opportunities. Discounts or dishes with an expiration tend to capture attention and bring guests to your front door!

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Mix it up—announce new dishes!

As the seasons change, so might your menu offerings. Adding a special pie to the dessert menu or a themed beverage to happy hour? Use it as an opportunity to entice past and potential guests! It's nothing personal, but diners have a lot of options and no matter how much they love you, sometimes half the battle is just keeping your restaurant top-of-mind. Send a menu update email or create a social media post highlighting your food—sometimes all you need is a delicious reminder to create cravings for your menu! You can also use pop-ups or banner announcements on your website as another tool for marketing your restaurant.

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Include photos—they’re a key part of marketing your restaurant!

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We know that consumers eat with their eyes first! Use your pre-existing food photography to spice up your emails and social posts—no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to creating content for marketing your restaurant. A bonus? Sharing your food imagery is a sure way to create cravings!

PopTip: Your food and menu tell your restaurant story. Investing in high-quality photos of your food not only reflects well on your brand, it also increases the likelihood of online orders. In fact, dishes on an online menu with photography receive 2x as many online orders.

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Marketing your restaurant made easy with Popmenu

We know it’s not easy to carve out time in your day for marketing your restaurant; but you don’t need a full-blown marketing team either. Popmenu has all the restaurant marketing tools you need in one place. Connect to your restaurant's Facebook, Twitter and Google My Business accounts to plan, publish and track posts and offers. Meet guests where they are with SMS messaging, incentivize purchases with online offers, and schedule annual, monthly, weekly, or one-off email messages with automated messaging.

Our automated marketing technology makes it easy to keep your restaurant top-of-mind and saves you time so you can focus on running your restaurant. Plus, our library of email and Facebook message templates helps create a marketing plan that's easy to stick to!