Marketing Your Restaurant in San Francisco

Marketing Your Restaurant in the city of San Francisco, California 

San Francisco has some of the most renowned restaurants, the world’s top-notch chefs, and a population full of foodies. How do you make your restaurant stand out from the best of the best? Keep reading to find out 6 San Francisco restaurant marketing tips to help your restaurant drive in more traffic and attract the eyes of foodies across the city of San Francisco. 

  • Create a brand identity
  • Set up social media accounts
  • Collaborate with influencers 
  • Sign up for restaurant apps 
  • Set up an email marketing campaign 
  • Hire an agency that specializes in restaurants with full-service digital marketing 

1. Create a brand identity for your San Francisco Restaurant 

A brand identity is important because it shows the personality of your company and the feelings you want to evoke in your customers. As a restaurant owner, you need to figure out your specific niche and the type of customer you are trying to market to. 

Once you establish your ideal customer by figuring out their food preferences, interests, and lifestyles, you can market your restaurant to appeal to your target market. You can do this by developing a consistent branded theme that you will incorporate into all of the content that you produce. 

2. Set up social media accounts and create an online presence for your San Francisco Restaurant

Social media is one of the most effective ways to promote your restaurant. Facebook and Instagram are the most popular social media sites for restaurants, and you can use different platforms to attract potential customers and make your restaurant known. 

Social media marketing will help your restaurant develop a brand and establish an online presence. You will be able to use social media to help your restaurant develop a loyal customer base. San Francisco restaurant marketing will also allow you to engage with potential customers and peak interest in your brand. 

Many platforms are useful for social media advertising such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter. Facebook is one of the most useful of these platforms for marketing your San Francisco restaurant. Treat your page as a listing because Facebook is like a business directory. Keep the information fresh and make sure to keep engaging with your audience. 

Effectively using social media can help grow your audience and drive more traffic to your restaurant. Specifically, using Facebook will help make your restaurant seem more professional and allow you to engage with your customers. Instagram is also very useful for San Francisco restaurant marketing, specifically, collaborating with influencers to increase your restaurant brand awareness. And make sure to have a social media presence and strategy inside your business.

3. Collaborate with food influencers in San Francisco

Influencer marketing is a very successful way to get a restaurant’s name out there and tap into the right niche. Influencer marketing will not only create relevant content for the restaurant to use to market itself, but it will also spread the word about the restaurant to a specific target audience. 

For example, suppose you are trying to increase restaurant traffic to your restaurant in San Francisco. In that case, you might find a foodie influencer in the area whose audience would appreciate a restaurant like yours. By working with them, you will not only get relevant content but your brand will also be exposed to a whole audience of people who are looking for exactly what you provide. 

There are three different tiers of influencers: Nano, Micro, Macro, and Celebrity. For restaurants, the best type of influencer to work with is Micro-influencers. Micro-influencers have a lower budget and have a small enough audience (10k – 100k followers) that they are more trusted than Macro or Celebrity influencers.  

The content that micro-influencers produce is authentic and relevant to their audience. Since their audience isn’t as big as a macro or celebrity, their audience is loyal and you will be able to get a higher ROI. 

4. Sign up for restaurant apps in San Francisco

Dining and restaurant apps are some of the most effective free restaurant marketing strategies. Apps such as Yelp, DoorDash, and UberEats will help your restaurant be found by customers who are looking for a specific type of food. 

Yelp is one of the most popular and well-known restaurant services. With over 244 million reviews for businesses worldwide, adding a profile will increase exposure for your restaurant. Specifically, in San Francisco, many people use Yelp to look at restaurant reviews before going. If you add your restaurant and get good reviews, this will greatly increase traffic to your restaurant. 

DoorDash, UberEats, and other food delivery services are another great option for free restaurant marketing, especially in San Francisco. Sometimes we all get too lazy to eat. In San Francisco, many people will opt to order food instead of driving. Adding your restaurant to food delivery apps will help market your restaurant to even more people. 

5. Set up an Email Marketing Campaign for your San Francisco Locals

Email marketing is effective for restaurant marketing because it provides consistent results and will improve customer loyalty with existing customers. There are different email marketing strategies such as an automated newsletter, customer journey emails, and special messages like birthday messages and limited-time offers. Email marketing is not only budget-friendly, but it will also greatly increase customer loyalty. Marketing to customers that are already loyal and love your restaurant will help them be more engaged with your brand. 

6. Hire an agency that specializes in full-service digital marketing 

The best way to market your restaurant in San Francisco would be to hire a full-service digital marketing agency. A full-service marketing agency can handle all of your marketing needs from start to finish, so you won’t have to worry about any of them. A full-service marketing agency can help with SEO, social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, and any other marketing tasks. A full-service marketing agency will cover all of these services under one roof! An agency that provides clear-cut strategies and execution will help your restaurant achieve tangible results. 

Conclusion

Online advertising is extremely beneficial for restaurants in a busy city such as San Francisco. With these tips and tricks, you can implement an effective restaurant online marketing strategy to help boost your business in San Francisco. Online advertising will help broaden your exposure, increase traffic, and generate leads and new customers. Get help with your online advertising needs with a full-service marketing agency. An all-in-one marketing team will ensure that all of your marketing needs will be met with talent that specializes in each area of marketing. 

​​Working with an all-in-one marketing team that has a collaborative environment can help your brand deliver award-winning integrated marketing campaigns. Vivid Candi is a full-service marketing agency located in Malibu, CA that specializes in restaurants, working from local restaurants to large chained restaurants. We help in a variety of services that bring more customers to your restaurant using online digital marketing tactics.

We offer a wide variety of services such as PPC, SEO, digital advertising, social media marketing, web design, and more.  We are a cohesive team that divides the work between different specialists to ensure that we produce the highest quality work with noticeable results. 

Schedule a free consultation with our experts today!

Call (310) 456-1784