Restaurant marketing for the table picked in thirty seconds.
Four people on one phone deciding where to eat, and the whole decision happens on the map before anybody reaches a website: the photographs, the hours, the reviews, the menu. Restaurant marketing, for us, starts on that listing: the listing, the site, restaurant SEO and the photographs, run for restaurants around Rockford and across northern Illinois.
Ask us where to start Get a free SEO auditProof, from the search box.
What people in Rockford typed into Google each month for the last year, from Google's own numbers. Tens of thousands a month type the first one and pick from a map; the second one is somebody planning a night out, and reads. Pick either one up.
Two tables
Friday at 6:40 and a birthday dinner planned on a Sunday.
Two people, two searches, two different pages. Flip between them and read what each one sees with your name on it, and what decides where they eat.
Which one of these is you?
Six lines we hear from restaurant owners on first calls, and one of them is usually yours. Pick it and we will tell you what is actually going on underneath.
A PDF menu does not open properly on a phone, cannot be read without pinching, and is invisible to search. A menu as an ordinary page is one of the few changes in this trade that shows up in covers rather than in a dashboard.
How we build sitesPeople choose a restaurant with their eyes and the pictures on your listing are doing more work than anything you have written. Recent, real, taken in your light rather than a stock kitchen, added regularly rather than once.
How we run the listingA full Friday and an empty Tuesday is not a marketing problem in general, it is a specific gap that wants a specific answer: a reason to come midweek, said to people who already know you, rather than a broader push at strangers.
How we run the adsEvery order through an app is a customer you rent. Being findable for your own name and your own dishes, with your own ordering on the page, is how the same order arrives at a margin you can live with.
The work that stays yoursOne difficult review does far less damage than an unanswered one. What repairs it is a reply that sounds like the owner rather than a template, and a steady arrival of newer reviews underneath it.
How reviews move the mapWrong holiday hours, an old closing time or a missing kitchen-closes note turns people away at the door and you never hear about it. It takes an hour to fix and somebody has to own it every week.
How we run the listingAll of it, for a restaurant.
The listing and the photographs are where most restaurants start with us, and search is one of six things we run. Here is the whole shop, in your situation.
The first ninety days, for a restaurant.
In the order the table feels it. The listing first, because that is where Friday gets decided.
Hours right for every day and every holiday, the menu on the listing, the photographs of the food and the room shot on a good night, every review answered in your voice, and call tracking on from day one.
How we run the listingFast on a phone, the menu as text with prices, a reservation or an order that takes a minute, and a page for the occasions and the dishes people search for. If the site is sound we fix it; if it is not, we say so and build it.
What we buildA review ask built into the check, ads on the nights and the rooms with space in them, and the first monthly report: calls, directions, reservations, and where each one came from.
Reviews, answered in your voiceTell us where the restaurant is.
Three lines and we come back to you, usually within a working day, with what we would look at first. No pitch deck, no quote until there is a plan.
Or the free look first: a free SEO audit of your site and your listing, sent over with nothing to sit through. Or call (815) 880-8676.
Questions restaurant owners ask before they call us.
The ones that come up on nearly every first call, answered here so you do not have to spend a call getting to them.
In order: a Google listing that is right and fed with recent photographs, a menu that reads properly on a phone, and replies under every review. Those three do more than anything else, and most restaurants have not finished the first one.
Yes, for one reason above all others: the menu. People search for your menu, your hours and whether you take bookings, and a social profile answers none of those in a way search can read. The site does not have to be big, it has to be fast and current.
You mostly do not get off them, you stop being dependent on them. Being findable for your own name and your own dishes, with ordering on your own page, moves a share of the same orders onto a margin you can live with.
Not with a broader push at strangers. A specific reason to come on a specific night, said to people who already know you, works better and costs less than trying to win a Tuesday from people who have never eaten with you.
Answer it, in your own voice, once, and then get on with collecting newer ones. An unanswered bad review does far more damage than the review itself, and the reply is read by everyone who comes after.
For search and ads it depends on whether you compete. Two restaurants doing different things on the same street are not fighting for the same table, and we will say plainly on the first call whether we think there is a conflict.
What we won't promise you.
Restaurants get sold more marketing per square foot than any other business on this list. Here is the honest version.
If the food or the service is inconsistent, more people finding you makes that spread faster rather than slower. This work is an amplifier and it amplifies whatever is already true.
We can publish them, keep them current and make them count. We cannot plate the food or stand in your room at the right hour. A restaurant that sends pictures every week beats one that does not, and it is not close.
Not from a service, not from staff, not from anybody who did not eat there. It is against the rules, it is obvious to anybody reading, and it is the fastest way to lose a listing that took a year to build.
Nobody buys a plan they haven't seen.
The free audit is a look at what you already have and what it is costing you, sent over with nothing to sit through. The plan is a conversation about where the business is and where you want it to get to, and it ends with a path written down rather than a quote. Or you call, and somebody who works on accounts picks up.