RESTAURANT ADVERTISING
If Your Restaurant Advertising Isn't Bringing in Customers Then This Is A Must-Read:
Small-Town Kid Destroys Big Advertising Agencies
My name’s Andrew and I’ve been running ads since 2017.
I’m a blue-collar guy from a small town. I’ve spent my life cooking, working construction and later became an electrician – always listening to audiobooks to broaden my horizons while working with my hands.
Along this journey I’ve discovered advertising secrets that elude even the biggest agencies. You can learn more about how I built this company on the about us page, but for now let’s talk about your restaurant advertising.
Take notes & steal these techniques for your restaurant because they have made fortunes for my clients.
What You’ll Learn:
- The BIGGEST LIE everyone believes about advertising.
- Why LONG FORM ADS work better than cute slogans or hashtags.
- How restaurants can earn BUCKETS OF CASH from their social media campaigns.
Why Restaurants?
Easy. The ROI restaurants can get on social media compared to other industries is unreal, granted your food is unreal too.
Unreal doesn’t mean fancy, it just means good tasting grub with high quality ingredients. It’s as simple as juicy burgers made in-house with fresh cut fries.
Side note: there’s a growing health movement happening right now that’s rejecting modified ingredients and cheap seed oils. Those who seize this opportunity and focus on giving their customers with the very best will dominate the industry. It’s more expensive to provide quality ingredients, so that’s why you’ll have to communicate that value in your advertising.
Unfortunately, if you sell frozen flavorless trash, running ads could actually have horrible effects on your business… but for the sake of this article, I’ll assume your food rocks.
The BIGGEST LIE In Advertising:
“People won’t read a long ad.”
THE TRUTH: Think of it – when you’re buying something, say a new POS or security system, don’t you want the nitty-gritty before making a decision?
The same goes for people thinking about dining at your restaurant.
Picture this: You’re scrolling through social media and stumble upon this ad…
Instead of leaving you guessing, all the details are provided right there.
Wondering how much it costs? Where the food is sourced? Are the portions hearty? Does that new dish pack a spicy kick? Curious about parking, or how to snag a reservation?
Your potential customers have a TON of questions and they’re hungry for answers.
Therefore, your advertisement should address all of these questions and more, ensuring the reader feels confident and informed before they even step foot in your door.
Why LONG FORM ADS Work Better Than Cute Slogans Or Hashtags:
People will DEVOUR advertising if it speaks to their interests.
Ever chat with a car guy? They’ll go on forever about limited-slip diff’s, or the SRT sporting a 6.2-liter HEMI V8.
What you need is a sales message that grabs your readers attention, gives them all the juicy details and convinces them to order.
For instance, I’ve had people continuously travel over 130 miles to a small-town diner just to try their food. This shocked the owners and it wouldn’t of happened if the ad copy wasn’t convincing enough.
It’s hard to toot your own horn, but that’s exactly what you NEED to do.
By understanding this, your restaurant advertising will outpace 99% of others (even most businesses).
The Fish & Chips ad you saw above was a lengthy one—four paragraphs—but remarkably, people would read every word. How do I know? Simple: compare the amount of ad views with the number of clicks on the link placed at the end.
MORE IMPORTANTLY people would pick up the phone and order. No guesswork needed.
This campaign ran successfully for 8-months straight. Once you have an ad that rakes in profit – let it ride my friends.
You might be bored of your ad, but I assure you there’s thousands of potential customers who haven’t even seen it yet. Saying that, if your ad isn’t bringing in customers, don’t waste another dime on it and try writing another.
This book by John Carleton is a fantastic place to start if you want to learn how to write convincing ads. I’m not paid to shout him out, but he revolutionized my copywriting game… so sharing his book is the least I could do.
Moving forward – let’s talk about your Facebook & Instagram Ad Manager. Here’s a simple breakdown:
Campaign = What’s your goal?
Ad Sets = Who are you targeting?
Ads = What does your ad say & which image(s) or video are you using?
A Few More Important Metrics To Understand:
Impressions = How many times your ad has been seen in total
Reach = How many individual people have seen your ad
Frequency = How many times has each one of those individuals have seen your ad
Example: if 1 person saw your 3 times, you would have 3 impressions, 1 reach and a frequency of 3.
Let’s say your advertisement is targeting everyone within’ 7 miles of your restaurant – you’d want every person in that radius to see your ad 3-5 times before expanding the target area.
There’s many more tools in your Facebook Business Manager that I could go on for days about, but that’s the bare essentials. I’ll eventually be making a video training series on this topic.
Why Facebook & Instagram?
They easily offer the best value when it comes to cost per view, especially compared to Google Ads.
I’m not saying you should completely ignore Google Ads, but for this example, we are trying to get the most customers out of a smaller advertising budget.
Google Ads favor those who spend big bucks, so if you’re trying to maximize your returns with a smaller budget then Facebook and Instagram will be your best friend.
For literal pennies, photos of your food can dominate someone’s entire screen. Sprinkle in some compelling ad copy, and you’ve struck marketing gold. I can’t stress enough that you need decent quality photos, but EVEN BETTER ad copy.
Compare that with Google ads who will charge you $8-$20 per click for the most competitive keywords, and you can’t even see who is interacting with your ads. Bidding on “restaurants near me” will bring you heavy competition and much more expensive customer acquisitions.
In addition to cheaper ad costs on Facebook & Instagram, they also let you see the profiles of people who are interacting with your ad. Not only that, Facebook & Instagram have older audiences (ages 28 – 65+) and those people typically have much more money to spend at your restaurant. Unlike the youngins on Snapchat and TikTok.
You should also know that most businesses are STILL ignoring this goldmine of new customers. Why? I honestly have no clue. Maybe they have been burned by another ad agency who made massive claims without delivering results.
All I know for sure is that you should not be ignoring this opportunity.
ADDICTION
People can’t put their phones down… even while driving. You’ve seen it, or maybe you are that person.
Red light turns green but the drivers head is looking down.
HONK HONK
It’s a harsh truth, but we can either stew in frustration or capitalize on it.
In Roger Fields book “Restaurant Success By The Numbers” he explains how social media is one of the most important tools for advertising… but in my experience, not everyone knows how to swing that hammer.
He also gives a breakdown of the lifetime value of every new guest that comes through your door:
CONCLUSION...
Do you feel armed with enough info to do this on your own? I say go get em’.
If you’re craving to get more customers from your social media but don’t have the time to do it yourself then read on.
Before working with me, many of my clients fully entrusted their social media to misguided hands – servers, staff, or even family members. Sure, they can use social media just fine, but the ability to get more customers is a mystery.
Posting is fantastic, but it’s only effective when people actually see it and order your food.
I want to help you escape the land of wasted time and ad dollars.
Here’s what a few of my clients in the food/bev industry experienced:
Will It Work For My Restaurant?
Here’s my simple 3-step approval process for this program:
- Does your restaurant have a 4-star rating or higher?
- Do you have good pictures of your food?
*if not this can be easily fixed - Is your Google business listing up-to-date & accurate?
If you answered yes to all three then we’re off to a great start.
LET'S GET YOU BUCKETS OF CASH
First, we’ll hop on the phone for your free 30-min consultation so I can pick your brain to fully understand your restaurant, menu & history.
This is usually an eye opening experience because most quality restaurants offer FAR MORE than they recognize. As the saying goes, it’s hard to see the picture standing in the frame.
Once I’m confident you’ll see solid returns from your restaurant advertising and I am not currently running ads in your area for eateries serving similar dishes, we’ll start right away.
THE PRICE
The cost of my restaurant advertising services is $1,750/month. I know you’re thinking “Man that’s expensive” so let’s break it down. I’m a business man at heart with a simple approach:
“How much will I spend and how much will I make?”
Quick story – back when I was 18 years old, I learned how to count cards in blackjack (nope.. it’s not illegal). When you count cards, it’s a simple question of how much do you need to spend in order to earn a certain return.
I’ve always applied that same formula to my entrepreneurial ventures. In this case, how many more customers do you need in order to justify the investment? Whether it’s your business, Cyrus Media, or my newest company “Kitchen Pirates” I’ve applied the same approach.
If you want to learn more about my wild story on card counting then check out this post.
Back to advertising…
Considering the average marketing salary (on the low end) is 92k/year, my price is nothing in comparison.
I’ve met some of these boujee “marketing execs” and most of them wouldn’t know a good ad if it bit them on the rear end.
Most social media agencies charge $1,500/month. Right now, I charge $250/month more than the average agency and produce FAR GREATER than average results.
In fact, I may be doubling that rate in the coming months.
If I help restaurants earn 500K – 1M+/year in additional revenue then of course any smart business owner would be happy to invest $3,500/month.
Will I increase my rates after you sign up? Nope.
There’s even some clients who got my services back when it was only $1000/month and I keep those people at a “grandfathered” rate. They trusted me back then and are now reaping the rewards.
I don’t want you to be that person who ends up paying double what I’m asking for now – but even when my rates inevitably increase, it will still be worth every penny.
THE PROCESS
Number one, you won’t be locked into any contracts. If you don’t see the amount of new customers required to justify the expense then you can cancel anytime – no questions asked.
How does it work?
I take all the information from our initial consultation and write you a killer ad. You will be paying to license that ad for every month that it runs, and also for me to manage the distribution/targeting. Once the ad has reached its full potential then I will write another one – rinse and repeat.
All of that is included in the $1,750/month package. Bringing you more customers is my sole mission.
Oh, I also don’t need to completely take over your page to do this. However in order to be successful, you do need to follow my guidelines on what you should be posting. Bad food pics or sharing political opinions doesn’t cut the mustard.
You are advertising a restaurant, so let’s focus on selling good tasting food, savey?
If you want to take your marketing to another level, I do have bigger packages available where one of my team members will continuously make posts on your page, plus manage the page engagement.
Saying that, the smallest package has everything you need to get a flood of new customers.
THE AD SPEND
The minimum monthly ad budget we recommend to any restaurant is at least $500/month.
This amount is billed directly from Facebook (aka META) and will ensure your ads are seen by approximately 40,000 to 120,000 people in your area within the first month. You will be responsible for paying the ad budget and I will make sure every dollar is invested properly.
Your ad budget will be spread across the entire month (approximately $16/day) and is in addition to my rate of $1,750/month.
So what’s the risk? Not much. Chances are you’re already spending money on ads – except now you’ll have an experienced vet helping you to make sure none of that money goes to waste.
If you’ve never invested into Facebook or Instagram advertising then this could be a revolutionary turning point for your restaurant.
CONCLUSION
Long form copywriting has revolutionized my clients return on their restaurant advertising. If you are more of a DIY kind of person and want to get training on how to write effective long-form ads, target the right demographic to decrease ad spend and also monitor your account results shoot me a message to inquire about my consulting services. You can also check out my post “I HATE Social Media Advertising” where I reveal even more secrets on how to get better results from your online ads.
Phone: 613.915.8744
Email: info@cyrusmarketing.net
A big thanks goes to John Carleton, one of the most renown direct response marketers whose expertise paved the way for results-driven agencies like this one. Your assistance has been an invaluable asset to both myself and my clients. Thank you