Influencer Marketing for Restaurants: 8 Tips for Success

Social media is a crucial part of growing your business and reaching new customers.

According to ResDiary’s Beyond the Booking industry trends report, 28% of diners in the UK and Ireland use social media platforms to choose restaurants. In Australia and New Zealand, 36% of respondents use social media to discover their next dining spot.

With a quality influencer marketing campaign, restaurant owners can reach more of their target audience and see more engagement on social media. In this guide, we will explore the importance of influencer marketing, and share eight tips to ensure it is a success for your business.

What is influencer marketing for restaurants?

Influencer marketing for the restaurant industry involves collaborating with individuals who have a large and engaged social media presence to promote your restaurant. This includes food bloggers, reviewers and local personalities.

These influencers may use various platforms, so it is important to find one that has an audience and platform that suits your brand.

Food influencers allow you to use an authentic form of marketing to connect with potential customers. These collaborations help your business gain more trust and credibility in the eyes of an influencer's followers.

Influencer marketing efforts can also help create local buzz for your business, and generally boost your brand's awareness.

What are the benefits of influencer marketing for restaurants?

The benefits of food influencer marketing include:

• Online visibility: An effective influencer will help your brand gain more exposure on your platforms of choice. This increases visibility for your business, driving up your bookings and revenue.
  
  
• Personable image: With an influencer campaign, your brand has a relatable face giving potential diners a personable experience of your venue. This can help customers relate to your brand more, and can offer publicity that other forms of marketing can’t match. 
  
  
• Attracting new demographics: Using an influencer marketing campaign, your brand will reach a wide audience, including new demographics who use social media more often. If you’re keen to get more young people into your business, influencer marketing is an excellent tactic.
  
  

How to attract more customers through influencer marketing: 8 tips

Here are eight tips for getting the most out of working with an influencer for your marketing campaign: 

1. Choose the right influencers

While it may seem like a good investment to focus on influencers with a large following, that may not guarantee a successful marketing campaign. 

It is crucial that you select the right type of influencer for your brand and the market you are trying to reach. Otherwise, you could lose credibility and generate a poor return on investment (ROI). 

Consider the following factors to choose the right influencer for your brand:

• The influencer’s content: Before contacting an influencer to help you work on your marketing campaigns, examine their content to see if it is suitable for you. Find restaurant influencers based on the quality and tone of their posts. You should also focus on production values and how consistently they release new content. 

• The influencer’s audience: Social media influencers will come to your campaign with their own audiences, who will have expectations for the type of businesses the influencer is recommending. It’s important that this aligns with your needs.
  
  
• Your budget: While it may seem tempting to reach out to the most popular influencer you can find, it’s important to keep your budget in mind. Stick within your price range, keeping in mind the importance of generating a strong ROI.
  
  

2. Collaborate on engaging content

Once you’ve found food influencers that are suitable for your brand and audience, you will need to create engaging content that appeals to your target market. Rely on your influencer’s’ expertise while ensuring the content fits your brand's image.

Depending on your relationship with the influencer, your control over their content may be limited. Establish how much control you will have at the beginning of the process of working with an influencer, and walk away from the arrangement if it isn’t right for you.

Before you begin crafting any content, it is important that you have a complete overview of your restaurant's demographics for more precise results. This involves breaking down your customers by their income, age, location and familial status.

With more information, an efficient influencer should be able to craft engaging content that meets your goals and is appealing to your target demographic.

ResDiary’s table management software helps you gather the data you need to understand your restaurant’s demographics. With customer relationship management (CRM) integrations like Acteol and Nollie, you can segment customers to make their demographics clearer, allowing you to create the most effective content.

3. Leverage special events

Hosting events can be a fantastic point of focus for an influencer's content. When customers see influencers experiencing an event, they can feel more encouraged to visit your venue.

Special events can also be a chance to reach out to smaller influencers that suit your brand. Depending on the influencer, you may be able to offer free access to special events in exchange for influencer content.

Even without influencers, hosting special events is a key marketing strategy for attracting new customers for any restaurant business. Our Beyond the Booking industry trend reports suggest that 42% of UK and Ireland-based venue operators are planning to host more events in 2025. In Australia and New Zealand, 48% of respondents were looking to run more events as well.

With ResDiary’s event management features, you can easily manage a wide array of different promotional events at a single time. You can boost your exposure on discovery platforms like DesignMyNight, and use our partnership with Tonic Ticketing to easily manage tickets for your event.

4. Offer promotions

Deals can be a critical hook an influencer can use to appeal to potential diners. With quality content, the influencer will get the word out about your specials, encouraging more diners to check out your restaurant.

You can help boost sales by using creative and smart restaurant promotions that will be appealing to your target audience and easy for the influencer to advertise. An effective restaurant promotion must provide value to the brand and instil a sense of urgency. Some examples of promotions you can use include:

• Seasonal promotions and special events: Schedule special menus and deals on specific days or seasons. This can allow you to take advantage of high foot traffic to offset your slower periods. Some events you can host include charity events, using a “Tapas Tuesday” menu for summer and holding Valentine’s Day specials.

• Discounts: Offer deals at your restaurant to encourage more of your target market. This can include a happy hour special on specific days, or discounting family meals to draw larger groups to your venue.

• Limited-time menus: Create urgency to visit your venue by promoting a special, limited-time only menu that can be combined with discounts on your high-margin dishes. Using limited-time menus can also be helpful for upselling your most expensive items or using up more of your inventory.

Thanks to ResDiary’s promotions feature, you have restaurant marketing tools available to raise awareness of your specials and promotions. Create your own deals and discounts and market them to your customers with CRM integrations like Acteol and Nollie.

ResDiary also enables you to create your own gift cards and vouchers to reward loyal customers and entice new ones. With a wide array of promotions and the information needed for effective targeting, promotions can be a vital component of your influencer marketing.

5. Organic influencer marketing

With the right floor plan and interior design, you can also make influencer marketing happen naturally in your restaurant. For example, by hosting an event with a specialised aesthetic, like a summer event, you may attract restaurant influencers to visit your venue without needing to contact them.

When you are designing your floor plan and deciding on an aesthetic, consider adding an “Instagrammable” area. This area will need good lighting and features that people will want to photograph or take pictures with. 

Such an area can attract more social media posts from micro-influencers with smaller followings. It can even eventually lead to posts and attention from larger influencers.

With ResDiary’s table management software, you have a digital floor plan you can use to maximise your entire venue. For instance, during the summer months, you can use your outdoor areas as an Instagrammable zone and segment your space to optimise layout and customer flow.

6. Optimise your reservation process

If your reservation process is not optimised you may not be able to fully leverage your social media success. To convert your new audience into customers, it’s important that it is easy for them to place reservations.

Some strategies to optimise your reservation process include:

• Effective linking: To ensure that you are converting your social media campaigns into revenue for your restaurant, the influencer must have the right links attached to their content. This includes links to your social media profiles and your main website. This provides a frictionless process for customers to place bookings.
  
  
• Optimised reservations: If your website is too slow or the booking process is too long, customers may choose not to make a reservation. Using the principles of good restaurant website design, you can create a user-friendly website that is easy to navigate and leads customers towards a smooth, streamlined booking process.
  
  
• Software integrations: With ResDiary’s Meta integration, potential diners can book with your restaurant directly from your Instagram or Facebook pages. This enables you to convert your social media popularity into reservations and reduce the time potential customers are looking at your competitors.
  

7. Maximise your brand

An effective and well-communicated brand is crucial for an influencer marketing campaign to succeed. With a strong brand, you have a throughline for your overall marketing strategy. Potential customers will have a clear view of your restaurant and what makes it stand out from competitors.

To maximise your restaurant branding, you will need to have a complete understanding of your market, a clear, consistent visual identity for your brand and a thorough mission statement. When researching your market, consider the demographics of your local area, and analyse your competitors to understand where they have found success.

Using CRM and POS integrations such as Acteol and PowerEPOS from Triniteq, you can gain a full overview of your sales and booking data and precisely determine your vital demographics. Plus, ResDiary’s email marketing features and Silverstreet integration allows you to directly communicate your brand’s tone to your customers.

8. Monitor your success

By examining and monitoring your campaigns, you can optimise your marketing costs and ensure you are only supporting what is working, and removing what is not.

To monitor your campaign's success, it’s important that you intently understand your restaurant key performance indicators (KPIs) and have communicated them to your staff. You can also establish new KPIs for your campaign.

With ResDiary's analytics suite and table management software, you can quickly and effectively gather the data you need to measure your campaign's success. ResDiary makes it easy to understand the channels your visitors have come through, allowing you to attribute reservations to your campaign.

This enables you to understand just how successful your campaigns have been.

How to create an influencer marketing campaign

Take the following steps to create an effective influencer marketing campaign:

• Set your goals: Before you hire an influencer or even consider a marketing campaign, it is crucial that you determine what you are trying to achieve in the first place. Determine if you are looking to attract more customers, overcome negative press or advertise a new venue. You should also set a time frame for your goals.

• Decide on your marketing budget: With an influencer marketing campaign, you often will not just be paying for the influencers themselves. You’ll also need to account for special promotions, hosting events and complementary marketing efforts. Be sure you have a clear measure of how much you're willing to spend before you begin paying for any marketing. 

• Look for the right influencer accounts: Now that you’re finally ready to hire an influencer, it’s important that they are the right choice for your brand and budget. An influencer with a massive following could be a poor fit for your brand and cost more than you’re willing to pay.

• Negotiate terms: Once you’ve found the right influencer, you will need to negotiate the price of their services, your expectations and what deliverables to expect. Aspects to consider while creating a contract include types of posts, the platform the content will be on, how often content will be posted, image and IP rights, and more. 
  
  
• Launch your campaign: Once the details are confirmed, it’s finally time to launch your campaign. Have the influencer visit your venue, try your services and create content.
  
  
• Evaluate the results: Evaluating success on social media can be challenging, but with the right data you can more clearly see if your campaign was worth the investment. Rely on statistics like social media impressions and reservations you can attribute to the campaign.
  
  
  

Market your restaurant more effectively with ResDiary

ResDiary has the tools and services you need to make the most of an influencer marketing campaign. Easily create special promotions or segment your venue to maximise your space and make it easier to hold special events with our quality table management system.

Using ResDiary’s built-in email marketing features and integrations like Silverstreet, you can follow up with customers once they’ve dined with you, giving you a chance to promote your campaigns and offer new deals and discounts.

Book a demo with ResDiary today and make the most of your influencer marketing campaign.

Frequently asked questions

How much does influencer marketing cost?

How much influencer marketing costs varies widely based on the size of the influencer's audience, their rates, the type of their content and where they are located. Hiring a smaller influencer is typically cheaper, but you may not reach as wide of an audience. 

Comparatively, hiring a more popular influencer can cost thousands, especially if they have millions of followers. 

In Australia, the typical cost of hiring an influencer is:

• Nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers): $3 - $393 per post.
• Micro-influencers (10,000 -100,000 followers): $39 - $1,965 per post.
• Macro-influencers (100,000 - 1 million followers):  $5,000 - $10,000+ per post.

In the UK, the cost of hiring an influencer is:

• Nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers): £125 - £250 per post.
• Micro-influencers (10,000 -100,000 followers): £250 - £600 per post.
• Macro-influencers (100,000 - 1 million followers): £600 - £1,000 per post.
  
  

What are the best platforms for influencer marketing?

In the UK and Australia, the most popular platforms for influencer marketing are Instagram and TikTok. Bigger influencers are more easily found on Instagram, while many TikTok influencers are at the nano level. However, micro-influencers can have higher engagement rates and a deeper connection with their audiences.

In addition to other platforms, Joli is a restaurant-focused platform that features over 6,000 influencers with a combined follower count greater than 240 million. This can be a powerful alternative for your influencer marketing efforts.