Digital Marketing for Restaurants: 17 Ways to Boost Profits

I talk to dozens of restaurant owners each week, and there’s no doubt in my mind: digital marketing is almost always one of the top three things keeping them up at night. 

Does that sound like you, too? It’s not your fault—you didn’t get into the restaurant business thinking you’d have to be a digital marketing expert.

The problem is, there’s so much noise out there. Every day, some new “must-try” tactic shows up on social media. It’s exhausting. But here’s the thing: thanks to my platform, Owner, I can actually see the data behind what works for restaurant owners—the strategies that really drive sales.

From helping thousands of restaurants improve their online sales, I’ve learned that digital marketing can help you achieve three main goals. It’s about choosing the right strategies to fit the goals that matter most to you:

1. Increase the number of new customers
2. Increase the number of reorders
3. Increase the average order size

In this guide, I’ll share 14 straightforward tips to help you use digital marketing effectively, so your restaurant can thrive.

Why restaurants need digital marketing 

A digital marketing plan for restaurants is super important for growth and getting more customers. It’s all about using strategies that work online. 

Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing can be more cost-friendly without sacrificing impact. Digital marketing tools are often automated, making it much more convenient for busy restaurant owners.

Here are some of the top ways that I see restaurants benefit from digital marketing: 

• Drive more direct orders: Digital marketing is the best way to drive more direct online orders. Basically, your website combined with digital marketing efforts will mean more sales and fewer commissions.
• Reach your regulars: Digital channels are the best way to reach guests who've already ordered from you, whether it’s through your mobile apps, email, text, or discounts.
• Meet customers where they are: Digital marketing aligns with guests' habits—72% of diners visit a restaurant’s website before dining in. A strong online presence helps you capture their interest early on and boosts your chance of converting that visit into a sale, whether online or in person.

Next, I’ll share my favorite digital marketing tricks with these three goals in mind: getting found by new customers, getting more from your orders and building loyal customers who reorder. 

GOAL #1 – Get found by new customers 

The first step in building your restaurant marketing strategy is making sure new customers can easily find you. Turns out that 66% of guests prefer to find restaurants via Google search, based on our latest restaurant website design survey. 

I recommend strengthening your restaurant search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, and I’ll show you how to do this by first focusing on your website.

1. Use a proven website layout optimize it for mobile  

According to Owner data, 91% of customers check a restaurant’s website before deciding whether to order takeout or delivery, and 72% check your website before dining in. 

So what does this mean? Having a great website is a must—and knowing how to create a restaurant website can really help you boost your sales. 

I regularly see conversion rates for restaurant websites go from 2%–3% to over 9% after they update their design to (a) focus on online ordering and (b) give guests the key information they’re looking for. 

In my experience, the best restaurant websites do the following:

• Put a clear headline upfront so guests get the right first impression. An example of a good headline would be, “Our family's handmade recipes brought from Sicily, Italy to Lakeside, California.” 
• Show the food right away with high-quality pictures to grab attention. These photos should show the vibrancy and texture of your dishes. Don’t use anything that’s blurry or in PDF. 
• Make sure you have a clear and modern layout. This layout should also work and look good on mobile devices.
• A browsable menu and easy-to-use online ordering so guests can easily order from you and have a good user experience.
• Display social proof in the form of customer testimonials and reviews. 74% of guests will look for this social proof on your website, so it’s important to have.   

Using a good restaurant website builder is a quick way to make sure you have all of these elements. 

For example, my friends Mo and Omar at Talkin’ Tacos used Owner.com’s website builder to update their site with a streamlined design that works well on both desktop and mobile. 

Plus, the website builder came with a branded mobile app to make online ordering a smooth experience. As a result, more than 10,000 customers downloaded their app within the first 90 days of its launch.    

2. Make your Google Business Profile perfect

Next, I would suggest setting up or making sure your Google Business Profile is up-to-date. 

Your Google Business Profile is what appears in the “Local Pack” on both Google search results and Google Maps. It can set you apart from competitors and increase your chances of appearing as the top result in customer searches, driving more traffic and boosting sales. 

Which would you rather visit?

This is an SEO tactic that helps customers find you by displaying your: 

• Contact info + location 
• Menu link 
• Local keywords within your restaurant description
• Photos 
• Reviews 

To build out your profile, upload high-quality photos of your menu items and include a detailed, enticing description of your restaurant. Believe it or not, 61% of customers say that menu photos are the most important part of a restaurant’s website. 

Also, don’t forget to link your website so customers can easily place their orders. 

I can show you in detail how to set up your GBP in my video below: 

3. Make your menu photos show up on Google 

I’d suggest investing plenty of time and money getting great photos for your online menu. But did you know that you can help those photos get found by Google by adding a simple bit of text? This text is called alt-text.  

And here’s the kicker: Adding alt-text doesn’t just help you attract more customers and increase your sales—it can also make your website more accessible. It’s a win-win!

Alt-text describes what's happening in the image, which is super helpful for people who use screen readers. It ensures everyone can enjoy your website, no matter how they access it. 

And, if you don’t already have photos of your menu items, make sure to add them. Believe it or not, 61% of customers say that menu photos are the most important part of a restaurant’s website, according to our survey findings. 

4. Make menu pages for popular items

Creating a separate page for each of your menu items is a powerful way to boost your restaurant’s online visibility and attract new customers. Think of it like this:

• Your homepage can rank for broader terms, like "best tacos in Philadelphia." This helps people find you when searching for the general type of cuisine you offer.
• Your individual menu pages can then rank for specific dishes, like "best barbacoa tacos in Philadelphia." These pages make it easy for people looking for exactly what you serve to discover your restaurant.

Turning your menu into standalone pages gives your website more opportunities to appear in searches for specific items, enhancing your SEO and driving more targeted traffic to your restaurant.

For example, Saffron Indian Restaurant gets over 700 new customers from Google. They use Owner.com’s website builder to make special menu pages for their best-selling dishes: 

These pages not only show off their top items but also help them rank for terms like “best Indian restaurant in PA,” which brings in even more customers.

5. Use discounts to earn new guests  

So many restaurant owners ask me, “Adam, won't we lose money on discounts?"

My answer: Not with the right offer. Your “magic offer”, as I call it, is the combination of discount + order minimum that earns you the most sales.

You can find your magic offer by testing a bunch of options, then crunching the numbers. But I want to give you a shortcut. So I dug into the data and looked at the best-performing offers across all the restaurants on our platform:

• $7 off on orders above $40
• $7 off on orders above $30
• 15% off on orders above $50
• 10% off on orders above $40
• 10% off on orders above $30

Are these guaranteed to be your magic offer? Not quite. But they will give you a starting place to test. Or, you can let Owner’s automatic marketing tools find your magic offer for you.

Smart Coupons, a new AI-powered discount tool in Owner, runs these tests for you. And our data shows that almost every restaurant can increase checkout rate and order size from new visitors by 5-7% on average with the right discount + order minimum. (We've even seen some restaurants grow the checkout rate by 10% or more!)

GOAL #2 – Get regulars to order more often

Once you’ve covered the bases for getting new customers, you’ll also want them to stick around. Regulars often make up a huge share of a restaurant’s overall profit—especially if you’re a fast casual or quick-service restaurant.

Keep reading because I’ll share some of my tricks for building loyal, active customers, starting with loyalty programs.

6. Get 85% more reorders with a mobile app  

Customers are more comfortable than ever using mobile apps to order from restaurants. Restaurants with their own branded mobile apps see 85% more reorders. 

For example, if you usually get 60 reorders a week, launching an app for your restaurant could potentially push that to around 111 orders! 

About 52% of guests use restaurant mobile apps to order food at least once a week, according to recent restaurant trends. Having your own app doesn’t just improve the guest experience; it can also save you thousands in third-party fees—making it a smart move for your bottom line.

Take Doo-Dah Diner, for example. After launching their branded mobile app with Owner.com, it quickly became their top ordering channel, with over 500 downloads in the first 30 days alone.

Check out my video below to see how you can get your own mobile app for your restaurant:

7. Use loyalty programs to create return customers 

Loyalty programs are a great digital marketing strategy for restaurants, and they’re a fantastic way to boost repeat orders. Plus, 41% of customers say loyalty programs influence their decision to return to a restaurant.

The main goal of loyalty programs is to reward returning customers with points or perks they can redeem for great deals.

For example, my friends at Cyclo Noodles used Owner.com’s loyalty program to track how many customers were using coupon codes and which marketing campaigns were driving more sales. 

This gave them great insight into whether their digital marketing strategy needed tweaking. It’s a simple yet powerful tool to keep customers coming back.

8. Market to guests based on their rewards progress 

Rewards are effective because they "gamify" the experience of reordering. By setting clear goals and showing visible progress, they make it easier and more engaging for guests to return. 

The key is making that progress visible and easy to track. Guests are much more motivated to reach their next reward when they can quickly see how close they are to hitting their goal—whether it's a discount, a free item, or a special offer. This visual progress boosts excitement and encourages repeat visits.

You can take this even further. Send targeted emails to guests once they unlock the next reward or level in your rewards program. Or right when they’re about to unlock a reward. This ideally happens whether they order in your app or online.

The key to these emails is to visually show guests what rewards they can claim. High-margin sides are best because they get guests to “complete” their order with an entree.

9. Reach regulars with email and SMS campaigns  

People are busy, and they may need a little nudge to come visit you again. To do this, I usually suggest both email marketing and SMS campaigns—and both are cheap and easy to navigate. 

Email marketing has one of the smallest costs of the marketing channels you can use and can directly impact how often customers come back and your profits: 

To get customers to reorder with emails, set up a campaign that will send a current customer a message after a period of time with no order—around 2 weeks usually works for casual restaurants. Your message can include a small discount or potentially remind a guest of what they ordered before.. 

The same applies to SMS marketing. All you need to do is send them a “We miss you, here’s 10% off your next purchase” text. 

10. Use the discount ladder to stay top of mind

Keeping your restaurant top of mind for past customers is key to encouraging repeat orders, and discounts and special offers are a powerful way to get “inactive” regulars to order again. 

However, we need to be mindful of profit margins and not train customers to always expect discounts.

I recommend using the discount ladder approach, created by marketing expert Drew Sanocki. Here’s how it works:

After a short period of no orders (~14-21 days), send guests a small discount (e.g., 5-10%). If the customer doesn’t bite after the first offer (~30-40 days), the discount increases (e.g., 10-20%). Then, if a customer begins slipping away (60+ days), the discount reaches its highest level (e.g., 20-30%).

Here’s a basic series of emails you can use to create your own discount-focused campaign:

1. Initial discount: In the first 7 days, send a small, straightforward discount.
2. Loyalty program enrollment: In the first 7-14 days, ask guests to join your rewards program for even more chances to save.
3. High-margin bonus offer: Send customers an offer to get a free side with a minimum order. For example, this could be a free dessert for orders $10-15 and up.
4. New rewards are unlocked: Automatically send guests an email when they earn rewards in your loyalty program. Have this email show them the next reward, too.
5. Special app offers: Offer regulars a generous discount to download and order from your app. 20-30% will often do the trick.
6. VIP offers: Some guests order a lot. Send them special discounts and combo offers that aren’t available to every customer.

Remember, not every email needs to include a discount!

12. Use app push notifications

Mobile marketing is a game changer for restaurants, especially when it comes to making the most of customer data. One effective way to do this is through app push notifications. It’ll give your guests a little nudge when they’re most likely to be nearby and hungry.

For example, imagine a customer walks past your restaurant, and their phone buzzes with a “free item with a purchase” push notification. Or, it's around lunchtime, and your app reminds them of today’s special. 

These notifications are a subtle but powerful way to keep your restaurant top of mind.

GOAL #3: Increase your average check size

Getting more orders from customers is key to boosting your order size.

To get more orders, you need to offer a great online experience. In fact, our data says that 87% of people are more likely to order again if they have a good experience, while 75% won’t order at all if your website or ordering system is hard to use.

With that said, I’ll show you how to get more from your orders with these next four online marketing tips for restaurants. 

13. Pair high-margin sides with your main dishes  

My favorite tip for getting more orders from your customers is to encourage add-ons at checkout for online orders. This step is key to increasing your average check size and boosting your bottom line.  

Showing customers popular pairings at checkout makes ordering easier and helps them complete their meals without hassle. Our latest study even shows that 63% of guests say convenience plays a crucial role in their ordering decisions.

To remain profitable, I always recommend using your low-cost, high-margin items, like sides, desserts and drinks, as add-ons. 

You could add optional modifiers to your POS system or website, but that can take up a lot of time. Instead, I recommend using a platform like Owner.com to streamline the process.

Owner.com’s online ordering system automatically suggests add-ons at checkout. It uses AI that syncs with your POS system, so less legwork for you and more free time to focus on other operations.   

14. Offer discounts for order minimums

Encourage customers to spend a bit more by offering discounts when they reach a certain order minimum. For example, you could provide a 10% discount on orders over $50 or free delivery for orders over $30. 

This not only boosts your average order value but also gives customers an incentive to explore more of your menu. 

It’s a win-win that increases revenue while making your guests feel they’re getting extra value.

15. Promote bundles for group buys and events

Offering bundles and combo deals is one of my favorite ways you can add to your order size while also giving value to your customers. In fact, combos and bundles made up 41% of all special price offers for quick-service restaurants in 2023, and for a good reason. 

Bundles not only make ordering easy but also encourage customers to spend more by providing a sense of added value.  

Here are some ideas for bundle offers:

• Family feast: Create a package that includes a variety of items like an appetizer, main courses, and a dessert, catering to families or groups looking to order quickly without choosing individual items.
• Office lunch packs: Design combo offers that are perfect for workplace orders, such as sandwich platters, pizza bundles, or taco kits, all with sides and drinks. It’s a simple way for customers to get a complete meal for multiple people without the hassle of individual orders.
• Send larger combo deals to VIPs: Your VIPs will often make the largest and most consistent orders from you. Nurture this by giving special combo deals for items with a high check size. 

16. Focus on your menu’s “star” items 

Every menu has its “star” items—dishes that are both popular with customers and profitable for your restaurant. Focusing on these items is a key part of menu engineering, where the goal is to maximize sales of high-margin, high-demand dishes. 

When you identify your stars, you can strategically promote them across your menu, website, and marketing materials to draw more attention to what truly sets your restaurant apart.

To help categorize your menu items, I like to suggest putting them into these four categories. This is your menu engineering matrix: 

• Stars: These are your most profitable items and dishes you want to keep consistent and promote a lot. 
• Plow horses: These are popular items, but not your most profitable. For these, I’d recommend updating your recipe of tweaking your portion sizes to help boost profitability. 
• Puzzles: Puzzle items are profitable but not popular. To make these items more of a hit, I’d suggest lowering the price, improving the description, or moving them to a more prominent spot on your menu.  
• Dogs: These are not popular or profitable items and it’s best to just remove these from your menu. Or, you can really double down and rework the recipes to make them higher margins and more profitable. I’d recommend this route if you still have a lot of inventory for these items left. 

By spotlighting your star items and fine-tuning your menu, you’re setting things up to boost profits and make it easy for customers to choose crowd-pleasers. This way, not only do you increase check sizes, but you also give guests more reasons to order (and love) your best dishes.

17. Promote best sellers online or on your app 

Featuring your best-selling dishes online or through your app is a smart way to grab your customers’ attention and boost your profits. These popular items are often high in demand and can have a great profit margin, thanks to lower food costs and higher sales.

Use your online ordering platform to put the spotlight on these crowd favorites. You can also create a “Recommended for You” section that tailors suggestions based on customer behavior or previous orders. 

By promoting your best-sellers and high-profit dishes, you not only make it easier for customers to choose, but you can also give your bottom line a healthy boost.

Attract and keep more customers with these digital marketing tactics

Digital marketing for restaurants can sometimes feel overwhelming and confusing. But from digging into the data, I've learned that success really comes down to executing a core set of strategies really well. 

Once you focus on those, digital marketing becomes a quick, cost-effective way to attract new customers, boost order values, and build loyalty.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the strategies that work best, check out my latest YouTube video where I cover the top marketing tactics I’m seeing work in 2024: 

Attract and keep more customers with these digital marketing tactics

Digital marketing for restaurants can sometimes feel overwhelming and confusing. But from digging into the data, I've learned that success really comes down to executing a core set of strategies really well. 

Once you focus on those, digital marketing becomes a quick, cost-effective way to attract new customers, boost order values, and build loyalty.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the strategies that work best, check out my latest YouTube video where I cover the top marketing tactics I’m seeing work in 2024: 

And if you want extra support to get your digital marketing set up the right way, let’s team up. Schedule a free demo of Owner today, and see how our platform can enhance your visibility and drive profits with an automated website builder designed to increase conversions.

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