The restaurant business is getting more competitive every day, and successfully marketing your restaurant without breaking the bank can be quite the challenge. What is the best way for a great local restaurant like yours to attract new customers and gain loyal diners if your restaurant advertising budget is fairly small?

Traditional small business advertising avenues such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station, are just too far out of the marketing budget that many restaurants have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new diner as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are your wait staff will forget to ask, and the diner is likely to be more interested in sampling your specials (hopefully) than telling you where they first heard about your eatery. However, as people are being more careful these days when it comes to eating out, in order to survive and prosper, marketing your restaurant well is vital.

There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your restaurant that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy restaurateur should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “restaurant” “eating out” and “cafe”. Online advertising for your restaurant can be especially effective at targeting your specific demographic. When most people are searching for a place to eat, they have a particular cuisine in mind. Using specific “keywords” in your online ad will increase your visibility to hungry potential diners. As an example, if you specialize in Italian food, those looking for great pasta will be sure to find you when they search up “Italian food”.

But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great restaurant advertising? For it to be most effective you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you, or to visit your restaurant immediately. Creating a special discount coupon, or offering an email based frequent diners club that will “earn” customers a free meal is just one restaurant marketing technique you can consider for your landing page. The contact details your visitors entered will be emailed to you immediately, allowing you to follow up while your restaurant is still fresh in the potential diner’s mind.

The true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of restaurant advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your eatery. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your restaurant marketing dollar.