Confused with which media to choose when advertising your restaurant? Here are a few key tips to choosing the right media to best (and cost-effectively) promote your restaurant or café, to ensure you get quality customers not the dreaded price shoppers.

First – if you could choose your ideal customers, who would you want dining in your restaurant?

I know that I’d want affluent customers with decent incomes, who enjoy great food and aren’t afraid of paying for quality. They’d also have large social circles, with plenty of friends and family that they enjoy dining out with regularly.

Sounds like a good customer, right?

This is a crucial, money saving tip. A lot of restaurant owners don’t realise that when it comes to advertising, this is the ideal time to select the kind of customers you want. You see, certain kinds of patrons will respond to different images, offers, descriptions, and even colours.

Once you know who you want, you can laser-target your advertising to make sure you reach your ideal customer, and ensure they choose you instead of your competition.

For example, if you want high-end customers, you might consider doing a joint promotion with the local BMW dealership, or your local golf course.

If you want families, try advertising in the local newspaper, as well as letter box drops to local residences in school-heavy areas. This restaurant advertising media will get you an excellent response of the customers you want.

Like more office workers and business people in your restaurant?

No problem, you just need to figure out which advertising media is best to reach them. You might like to try business magazines, post office box flyer delivery (this is a very cheap media) and even the humble but still powerful letter sent to the secretary or the business owner. You’d be surprised at the results a personal, passionate letter can generate in this era of bulk-mailed hype-filled emails.

The big mistake made by most business owners, including restaurant owners, is that when it comes to advertising and marketing, they choose the media first. You know how it goes, your local media rep gives you a call with a ‘super special massively discounted offer’ if you buy 10 weeks of advertising.

The trouble with this scenario is that often this media isn’t right to get you the kind of customers you want. That’s when you get a disappointing result to your marketing.

If you take away one money-making tip from this article, it’s that you need to choose your ideal customer first. Who are they? Where do they live? What are their hobbies? How can you reach them? Once you know this, then you can choose the best advertising to easily, cost effectively attract more customers to your restaurant and be seen as the ‘must-go’ establishment in your area.