How To Get More People To Know About Your Restaurant Locally

Henry Kaminski Jr.: What is shaking everybody? Welcome to another brand to table podcast episode. I'm your host, Henry Kaminski Jr.

Your go-to for branding and marketing for restaurants. And today guys, I want to talk about something that a lot of restaurant owners are struggling with right now. It's foot traffic and it's awareness. So it's not always your food guys.

It's You can have the best food in the world, but if nobody knows that you exist, what does it matter? A big issue that a lot of my clients struggle with is awareness problem. Just not enough people know that you exist. And I know that sounds pretty simple, but I'm telling you right now, this is one of the biggest issues I see with restaurants, especially local independent and pop spots.

newer concepts, or restaurants that have been around for a little while, but never really built a strong presence. You could have the most beautiful restaurant in the town. You could have a great team. You could have a killer cocktail program.

But if your local market doesn't know you exist, none of that's going to matter, is it? The truth is people ain't going to be able to book a reservation if they don't know you exist. They're not going to be able to online if they don't know you exist. They can't tell their friends that had an amazing meal if they know you exist.

A lot of restaurants are sitting there wondering why traffic is so soft, why the phone isn't ringing, why private events aren't getting booked, why catering orders aren't happening, their social media feed is quiet, why their local market isn't responding. And the truth is, your restaurant might not have a product problem. the big issues that I see is visibility problems, the awareness problems. And that's what I'm going to break down in today's episode because awareness is the first domino in the series of dominoes that are to help you generate more revenue.

So let's think about this guys, before someone becomes a customer, before they become a regular, before they become a loyal guest, before they even leave a review. They first gotta know that you exist and they have to know why they should care. So I wanna walk you through how we think about this at Branded Table, especially with a new client we recently started working with. I can't give away all the private details here, but obviously what I want to give you is a situation because I think a lot of restaurant owners are going to relate to what this particular venue struggling with.

This client has a super strong concept. The space is absolutely impressive. The product is solid. The ownership has a ton of passion and really, really cares.

the story behind the places there. It's really something worth marketing. But the problem is not enough people locally know about it. And when local awareness is low, everything feels harder.

Foot traffic's harder. Booking private parties feel harder. Weeknight business feels harder. Maybe even hiring feels harder.

Everything gets a little heavier when the local community doesn't really know who you are. And I see this the time and I wanna help you guys fix it. ⁓ restaurant owner will say, Henry, we need more people in the building. Bottom line, asses in seats, you know how this goes.

And first question is usually, do enough people know you're even here? because sometimes the answer is And I'm hearing that answer more and more these days. And that's a problem So I want to be very, very clear with something. Being a hidden gem in your town sounds really cute, right?

But hidden gems don't pay the bills, right? Hidden gems don't fill dining rooms. Hidden gems don't sell out private events. You don't want to be hidden.

Who the hell does? Especially if you own a restaurant. You want to be known. You want to be talked about.

You wanna be recognized. You really want people in town saying, ⁓ yeah, I heard about that place. You got to go check it out. This is where awareness starts to work.

So when I say awareness, I don't just mean people saw your logo one time or they passed by your spot ⁓ I know that place I know where that's at. I'm talking about people who truly know who you are, what you offer, what kind of experience to expect when they decide to dine with you. They know when to come in. They know why you're different.

They know what certain occasions you're good for, or maybe what you're not good for. One thing you gotta keep in mind guys is if they hear about you once, that's one thing, but they have to consistently hear and see you for it to stick. So that means being more consistent on Facebook, being more consistent on Instagram, making sure that you're in local Facebook groups, yet you're collaborating with influencers. You have things out there that are driving the message home more consistently.

That creates familiarity. And familiarity is what's going to get you more butts in seats and more revenue through the door. See, people feel trusting when things feel familiar. And so that's what awareness is built through.

It's built through repetition, revelance, trust, repetition is really when people see you more often. Relevance means when it connects their life, not just yours. Trust means when they're hearing about you from real people, not just your own advertising. So with this new client that I'm working with, we're looking at awareness from a multitude of angles, not just, let's post on Instagram.

No, that's not what I'm talking about here. This is where a lot of restaurants get it wrong. They think marketing means just posting more photos, hopping on more videos. No, that's not how it's magically going to happen.

That's not the strategy that I'm talking about. That's legit wishful thinking, and we all know how that goes. I'm talking about a visibility system. So let's walk through a few ways to build that.

And the first one is local Facebook groups. You guys might be thinking I'm crazy, but Facebook is not dead, especially for the demographic. That's a, you know, mid forties and above, you know, Facebook very well alive and Facebook Yeah, it's not the sexiest marketing tactic in the world, but you know what? It gets you out in front of a lot of people and it freaking works, especially for local restaurants.

Most towns have Facebook groups like what's happening where people are part of the group and they're asking questions every day inside of this freaking thing. And I know because I'm in them. You know, where should we go to dinner? Who can recommend electrician?

You know how it goes. Who has live music on the weekend? Where can I take my kids? You know, these groups are very, very active.

very important that we stay as the restaurant inside the group. These conversations are happening every single day of the week. if your restaurant isn't showing up in those conversations, you're missing free local attention. I'm telling you, like I said, not the sexiest, but very impactful and it works.

Now the key here is you can't treat Facebook groups like a dumping ground for flyers. You don't want that because then the admins get pissed and they kind of boot you out. Nobody wants that either. It's just spam.

You can't just pop in once a week either, drop a graphic and then disappear for three weeks. That's not community marketing. It's not. You have to show up like a neighbor.

Think of it that way. Be helpful. Be human. what's happening.

Tell stories. post behind the scenes moments. People love that stuff. Introduce some of your team.

Talk about an upcoming event. Share a new menu item. We do this all the time with a client down in East Hanover and it gets a ton of traction. The more human you are with this, the more attention you're gonna get and the more connectivity you're gonna get from the local community.

It gives people a reason to care and that's the bottom line. The goal's not to scream, come eat here. the goal is to become a familiar local name because when somebody says, where should we go this weekend? You want people in that group saying your name.

That's true awareness. That's what actually moves the needle. The second strategy I want to talk about is local billboards. I'm actually getting a really great response from putting local billboards in very close proximity to the restaurant itself.

Now, people ask me all the time, billboards, do they really work? And I tell you, yes, they do. As long as you dialed in the creative and the messaging. I see a lot of lazy billboard designs out there, that's why the restaurants pissing money away, because they didn't spend enough time in the messaging and the creative.

⁓ gotta get witty, you gotta get fun, you gotta evoke emotion. Otherwise, it's just gonna fall on deaf ears. People are gonna zip by it, and it's not gonna be memorable. It's not gonna do anything for the restaurant.

and it's just a total waste of time and money. So I do wanna tell you, yes, billboards are a great awareness tool, but you have to focus in on the creative the messaging before you make that kind of investment. You know, a billboard is not there to explain your entire restaurant. It's not.

It's not there to list every freaking menu item. It's not there to cram 10 messages into one. A billboard has one simple job, and it's to make people remember you. That's it.

Bottom line. So you got to keep the message very simple and very short. One big idea, one big image, done deal. Strong visual.

easy to read, something people can process and maybe two, three seconds For we put a billboard out the one day that just said dinner plans. We got you covered. Or we another one that said date night lives here. See how simple and punchy that is.

That's the type of stuff that sticks. And if you want to add some humor, some wittiness to it, you're ahead of the game. And when they start to see that billboard over and over and over again, now you don't become a random place anymore. You become the F word familiar.

And when Friday night rolls around and they're sitting around going, Hey, where should we go tonight for dinner? You're the restaurant that has a better shot of being in the conversation. The third strategy I want to talk about in this episode is influencer collaborations. I can't speak more highly about this particular campaign.

These work like a dream. Influencer marketing can absolutely work for restaurants, but it's only it's done strategically. You don't want to chase follower account. I talked about this in the past.

don't care if somebody has a hundred thousand followers. If none of those people live within driving distance of your restaurant. It's not helpful. Bottom line.

You want influence. You want engaged accounts that people are running. You want people who have the attention of your actual market. That be local foodies.

It could be mom creators. It could be date night pages. It could be town pages. A lot of lifestyle creators are out there that you could collab with.

Local tourism pages. I mean, The list is endless, but people who are already trusted by the people you want walking through your doors, that's the key. And when you collaborate with these folks, don't just say, come in and something. You gotta think bigger.

You gotta have more of a plan, otherwise it's gonna fall flat. So you get to invite them in for a full experience. Let them document the visit. If there's something specific you want them to talk about, then you got to let them know that.

And they appreciate that. Believe me when I tell you. Maybe it's your cocktail program. Maybe it's your brunch.

Maybe it's the chef. Maybe it's the event space. That's what I'm talking about. So get specific, get prepared, and you're going to get a much better outcome.

when it comes to working with influencers. The goal of influencer marketing is to borrow trust from somebody in your local market. that people already pay attention to. That's the power of a good influencer collab.

The fourth strategy I wanna talk about is local business partnerships. They say it takes a village, right? Well, this is what I'm talking about. And this is a huge one.

Your next 500 guests might already be sitting in someone else's audience. So think about the businesses around you gyms. Salons, real estate offices. You might be close to hotels, apartment complexes, country clubs, schools even.

Youth sport teams is another big one. These businesses already have relationships with people in your area. That's So instead of waiting for people to find you, go build with people who already have access to your audience. They're sharing it.

You could host a networking night. You could create something like a preferred neighbor offer. You could do food drops. We do that a lot it works really well.

Like how quickly can you get the food at the people's mouths? Just like this, right? This is what I'm talking about guys. Relationships, collabs.

This is what moves the needle ⁓ They're not just going to come looking for you. You got to go looking for them. For example, you could sponsor a school team a local sports team. That's going to help increase the awareness.

For sure. It's not sitting behind your Instagram account waiting for people to care about you. It's not working that way. And I can promise you, I've seen it.

You gotta start shaking hands, kissing babies, relationships, creating reasons for other businesses to wanna talk about you. That's ⁓ awareness. Now the fifth strategy I want to talk about is community events and pop-up visibility. Sometimes your restaurant has to leave the four walls and you got to get out there, right?

So if you want the community to know. about your restaurant, you got to show up in it, right? Town festivals, farmers markets, street fairs, charity events, school fundraisers, local races. You know, my town does a concert night in the summer, ⁓ sponsor it, like that.

These are all awareness opportunities. But here's where restaurants mess this all up. They show up, they hand out some food, and then they're gone. There's no system.

There's no follow-up. You're not collecting email addresses or phone numbers. There's no bounce back offer being presented. There's no way to measure if that worked.

And that's the missed opportunity. I don't want you to waste your time that way. So if you're going to show up at these community events, show up with a system. Show up with a plan of attack.

Give people a sample. Start conversations. Hand them a business card or a bounce back card. Get them a reason to visit you within the next seven days.

That's how you start to capture emails, phone numbers, promoting your private events, things like that. And that's going to help drive more foot traffic in that short time frame of you participating at that event. So don't just hand out food and hope people are going to remember you. You got to have a strategy behind it Otherwise, it's just wasted time.

The sixth strategy I want to talk about is guest generated content. You probably know about this, but I'm going to take it a little step further. And this one sitting right in front of you. Your guests already have audiences.

They have their friends, their coworkers that are all local. Their families are local. Their neighbors are local. So when they post from your restaurant that.

creates awareness. This happens all the time because a lot of my neighbors know that I'm in the restaurant business They really look to me for restaurant recommendations. So I get texts all the time when I'm out posting, I'll get a Facebook message like, ⁓ my God, I haven't tried that place yet. Looks fantastic.

Boom. You just made an awareness connection and that person and their entire family now know about your restaurant. here's the problem. Most restaurants don't give guests ⁓ worth sharing.

I see it all the time. When we're managing Facebook accounts and Instagram accounts, I see any shares because the restaurant isn't giving any of that opportunity away. There's no moment. There's no signature cocktail.

There's no table side experience. This is what makes people go crazy these days. You know, there's no photo worthy dessert. You gotta think about these things, guys.

I always tell my clients you gotta give them a reason. Otherwise they have plenty other places to choose from. So you gotta get them thinking, ⁓ my God, I need to post this and I need to post it now. If you want guests to create content for you, you gotta give them moments worth capturing.

So I'm talking beautiful cocktails. I'm talking about those signature desserts, those birthday moments, branded walls before they walk out your door, those table side presentations, those fun check presenters, you know, those things make a difference. That's it. Make it easy, make it fun, make it obvious.

Those are the three things and your guests are gonna become your local media team. And what is freaking better than that, right? Doesn't cost you a dime. This is giving them something to talk about.

The next strategy I wanna talk about is local PR and neighborhood storytelling, all right? Most restaurants come. sleep on this and I want to go into this a little bit to give you a little bit more insight. Local media still matters and it matters a lot.

So I'm talking about town magazines. I want to talk about community newsletters. Sometimes town halls have these huge digital screens. You might.

And if they look good enough, because some of them look a little cheesy, but I've seen some towns have these beautiful digital screens. It's worth looking into for sure. These outlets are constantly looking for stories and if you give them one, bam, now you're in front of a bunch of people, right? So don't just say we're a restaurant and we want people to come in, duh, right?

That's not a story. A story new A one year anniversary, one of our clients is doing that this weekend, of fact, they're throwing a big shindig at their spot. ⁓ Maybe you're welcoming a new chef, a new menu launch, a cocktail class or wine tastings, things like that. A community give back day.

That's another big one. might be doing live entertainment. This is what people are interested in. They want to know the story behind the brand.

So give it to them. These types of publications are trying to entertain their audience. So don't just promote the restaurant. Pitch the story behind the restaurant, right?

Give them a little insight. Give them a little, you know, cliffhanger, if you will, to get people excited to want to check yous out. Now, here's the one thing that I don't want you to do where I see a lot of restaurants do this, know, and it just drives me nuts. You know, they try it once and they say it doesn't work.

You know, they post in the Facebook group one time. They run one ad. They invite one influencer. They print 50 flyers.

They maybe attend one event or send two emails in the month, and then they stop. And then they say, nope, didn't work. Of course it didn't work. Awareness isn't built on one move.

Awareness is built from repeated local signals and triggers over time. You don't need one marketing idea. You don't. You need a local awareness system.

that means ⁓ every you're doing the small things that keep your restaurant visible. Like I mentioned in this episode, posting in local groups, sharing social content, engaging with local accounts, promoting specific reasons to visit, sharing other guests content, talking about events. So this isn't a one and done routine. This is every month.

You gotta. continue to build these relationships and partner with these local businesses. They are always looking for it. Look at you when people come in and try to partner with you and it sounds good.

What's your reaction? It's usually like, hell yeah, let's do this, right? So that's what I'm talking about guys. That's what's going to move the needle for you.

Last but not least, guys, you want to make sure your content is always updated. there's if collateral inside your restaurant, you got to make sure that it's up to date. And I would revisit these every quarter. you don't want people coming in going, you doing that?

And then next thing you know, they're like, yeah, no. ⁓ we forgot to take that down. You don't want that. Right.

So just make sure that ⁓ The content that you're putting out into the community is the same collateral and the same messaging that you have inside your four walls to make sure that that information is congruent. Right? You don't want confusion. Confusion kills.

And yes, guys, at the end of the day, you should have some sort of tracking mechanism to make sure you're tracking results. Otherwise, things could feel real fluffy if you don't measure them. So track website traffic, track Google business profile views, track direction requests through Google searches, right? Things like that.

Track Instagram profile visits, track local follower group. You got to track it, guys. Otherwise. You don't know if it works or not, right?

And there's tons of tools inside, open table, toast, third party, SMS, You can all of this stuff. So make sure you're paying attention to those numbers because things can get out of hand real quick. And you keep adding and adding and adding. Next thing you know, you're spending a few grand a month on marketing stuff that doesn't work.

So seriously, train your team to track what it is that you're doing. You know, your servers, hey, how'd you hear about us? Right. And have them make a note of that.

So next pre shift, you guys could talk about it. Right. Because if you don't know where the attention is coming from, you're never going to know what's creating the demand. Great restaurants don't become known by accident.

They become known because they keep showing up in the right places with the right messages in front of the right local people. So if your restaurant is struggling with this stuff, especially awareness, don't just post more. Build a local visibility system. Get into the groups and Facebook, get on the roads, on billboards, get into the community and start collaborating with people who already have attention.

I'm telling you, this stuff works. You just got to put the effort into it or get somebody to you do it because this is going to give guests something worth sharing. Period. And that the game.

Because great food isn't enough these days, especially if nobody knows that you even exist. Right? When you do these things consistently, it will compound and you will start to see results. It's not going to happen overnight.

I told my one client that I, we just came on board this month. said, listen, this is going to take 20, this is going to take 30 to 60 days to get cranking. Right? Don't expect you're going to have people bashing down your door in the first 30 days.

I mean, you guys are starting at pretty much zero here. Yeah. You got some Instagram posts out there and Facebook. posts out there, but like there's no strategy behind it.

It's just posting the post and that's Not getting you anywhere, is it? Right? So I told him, once we get the process and plan in place, the rest is history. You're going to see it start to work over time, but you got to stay consistent with it.

And that's exactly what we help restaurant owners do. We create the plan. We create the systems. We help execute the system, roll the system out.

Because, you know, it's funny, the client that I'm working with now was like, you know, we don't really have a marketing strategy and we never really did. So I don't really know what worked and what didn't work exactly. So that's what Branded Table does. We set up the systems.

We make sure that everything is tracked and we know what to pull and what to pour on to make sure that fire is just humming, especially when the campaign is working. So that's all I got for you guys. This one's a little bit long, but a lot of meat in here that you can take and start implementing today. This isn't hard stuff.

It's not. You got to the time, you got to have the effort, you got to have the direction, and you got to have the people to actually do it. So if you need help with this, Let's jump on a call and let's get you that help. I'll catch you on the next episode guys.

Have an amazing day.