The Cost of Restaurant Marketing
Every restaurant marketing budget starts with a dose of reality: ideas are great, dreams are wonderful, and reality is reality. Imagine, then dream. And then see the Super Bowl. In 2001, the average 30-second Super Bowl commercial cost $2.2 million. I’m only guessing, but I’m betting you aren’t made of money. So a couple of spots on the Super Bowl may not be the most realistic marketing idea you will develop. But you will need to market your restaurant, and you will need to spend money.
How much will you need to spend on marketing? This question is important because all marketing plans begin with a marketing budget. The marketing budget is a percentage of your projected yearly sales, usually somewhere between 2 to 7 percent. In the beginning, though, count on needing significantly more.
Waiting to have the sales in hand to pay for the marketing, however, is a backward approach. Marketing leads to sales before sales lead to more marketing. If you don’t market the restaurant, the customer may not even know it exists. In order to come up with a marketing plan and budget for your new restaurant, you are going to have to make some educated guesses.
A realistic restaurant marketing budget also needs to account for where your customers actually spend their time. A neighborhood breakfast spot doesn’t need a national ad campaign — it needs a strong local presence: Google Business Profile management, local SEO, community sponsorships, and word-of-mouth incentives like referral discounts. A higher-end destination restaurant, on the other hand, may benefit more from targeted social media advertising, food blogger partnerships, and press coverage in local dining publications.
The key is matching your marketing budget to your restaurant’s actual growth stage. A brand-new location often needs to spend more heavily in year one just to build awareness, then can shift toward retention-focused marketing — loyalty programs, email campaigns, repeat-customer promotions — once a steady customer base is established.