Restaurant Marketing Online - 3 Ways to Get More Customers.

"Restaurant" is one of the most searched for terms on the internet ever. This term or something similar is how your customers try to find dinner before they leave home. If most people search this way, are you benefiting?

I will show you three effective and simple ways to make hungry people find your restaurant when they search this way.

Number 3 – List and edit your restaurant in the online databases

Your restaurant already appears in many places when people search for restaurants that you probably don’t even know about. Do a simple search for “restaurant reviews” or “dining” or other similar terms on a search engine like Google. You will be surprised at what you'll find!

Here are two of the big ones where you should appear:

· Restaurant

· Citysearch

Find everywhere where information about your restaurant exists and give every detail you can - even prices. As owner you are the only person that can sometimes add these details. Therefore some places will have no details or your restaurant may not even exist yet. Restaurants without information, reviews, ratings, menu, or other details are less likely to be selected because they look dead - and people want to go where everyone else is going - to the happening joint.

Work fast to change problems and present the right image. Just one of these sites with bad information or a negative review is costing you lost business everyday.

Number 2 – Use social networking

Visit places like myspace, facebook, and second life where people go to network and meet others with similar interests. Create a profile for your restaurant on myspace at the very least.

Successful profiles possess these traits:

· Simple to navigate and read

· Easy to find lots of information that people care about

· Not overdone with colors, images, songs, and flashy stuff

Your goal once you have a nice profile for the restaurant is to make friends, create a positive image of your business, and spread the word about it.

Number 1 – Build a free website

Unlike the databases listed above, sites like WIKI-EATIA are paving the way because they let anybody create or contribute to a restaurant webpage.

Here restaurant owners can add detailed information about their restaurant located anywhere on the planet for free and people using a search engine will find the page. Restaurant webpages benefit from the collaborative efforts of everybody just like Wikipedia does and better pages bring more customers.

Example:

http://www.iwantnypizza.com/

When some friends told native New Yorker Ed Powers that the first stop on their visit to New York City would be a pizzeria, his idea for IWantNYPizza.com was born. Powers, 46, knew he had many friends and family who had recently left New York and missed authentic New York-style pizza. Teaming up with his two brothers-in-law who run Italian restaurants, Powers developed a website where people could order fresh New York pizza--shipped on ice by UPS nationwide.

IWantNYPizza.com ships from six satellite pizzerias, each of which is a "stretch by hand, roll by hand, throw the dough up in the air" type of place, says Powers, who points out that his customers are buying not just the product, but also the experience of eating New York pizza. He feels an obligation to his customers, especially native New Yorkers who now live elsewhere. "That's why we have to do it right," he says. In 2006, the business expanded its menu to include bagels, and Powers expects sales to reach $500,000 in 2007.