To make your restaurant a success, you need effective systems in place to attract new customers and keep them coming back for more! In today’s digital age, a range of marketing software can help you reach these goals efficiently.
But with so many options, how do you know which software will truly benefit your business? That’s why we’ve crafted this guide to the best restaurant marketing software available in the UK. We’ll cover essential tools for increasing your online presence, boosting foot traffic and ramping up revenue to help your business thrive.
Restaurant marketing software refers to digital tools restaurants use to make more customers aware of their business and ultimately build customer loyalty. These tools can take many different forms, but typically serve purposes such as:
There are many different reasons your business should prioritise getting the right restaurant marketing software. These include:
When trying to find the right restaurant marketing software for your business, there are a few key things to look out for:
Curious to know the leading pieces of restaurant marketing software for UK hospitality businesses? We've rounded up seven of the very best to make your marketing life easier.
Booking platforms are used by millions of customers around the globe to find new restaurants to check out. They are therefore an exceptional opportunity to showcase your restaurant to new prospective diners on third party sites and mobile apps.
While integrating booking systems into your marketing efforts can be a great choice, you might find yourself surprised by costly commission fees that can pile up. These fees can be unpredictable and eat into your return on investment, so it's important to bear them in mind when planning your budget for marketing.
Thankfully, there are third party booking platforms that don't charge commission fees. One excellent option is Dish Cult, powered by ResDiary. Dish Cult is used by 9.7 million customers to find new dining spots to check out, making it a great option for appealing to potential customers.
When you sign up for ResDiary's reservation management software, you get a free Dish Cult listing. Dish Cult is also no different from any other booking made through ResDiary, when a user makes a booking, there's no commission fee taken from your business. This makes Dish Cult the ultimate low-cost way to market your business.
ResDiary also integrates seamlessly with other third-party booking platforms like First Table. Like Dish Cult, this integration allows customers to easily make bookings within your diary directly from the platform. This helps to keep things simple and convenient for you and your diners.
When it comes to your booking platform strategy, don’t forget arguably the world’s biggest booking platform, Google! We’ll explore how your business can make the most of Google in more detail below.
For an effective restaurant marketing strategy, it's not enough to focus on getting eyeballs on your business. You also need to ensure that it's easy to convert interested diners into table bookings as easily as possible.
One of the most effective tools to do this is by using booking widgets. Booking widgets enable you to place enticing buttons in a variety of digital locations. These buttons are used to link users directly to make a booking through a table management system like ResDiary - all the necessary information is then captured and processed automatically by the system.
If you want to incorporate booking widgets into your restaurant marketing strategy, ResDiary is the perfect partner for you. ResDiary makes it easy to design and place attractive widgets on your website to draw in more online reservations, ensuring your business is open to take table bookings 24/7.
Importantly, ResDiary also offers a similar integration with Google. It supports the creation and placement of widgets in Google Search and Maps results. This provides another outstanding opportunity for your business to be discovered online and capture fresh reservations there and then.
"Restaurants near me" is Googled 285,000 times a month in the UK, and that’s just one example of relevant keywords you could be ranking for! So, the value of having booking widgets appearing in Google Search and Maps results can’t be overstated. It’s a critical channel for customers to find your venue.
Similarly, we also offer a number of integrations enabling you to place widgets in other online locations. Our Meta integration allows you to place booking widgets on your Facebook and Instagram business pages.
This makes it the perfect accompaniment and point of focus for your social media strategy. When a customer comes across your business page or one of your viral posts, it’s easy for them to become a paying diner.
Having the right strategy in place for using widgets means that you can be confident that all of your hard work marketing your business pays off in the form of bookings.
You may not think of your restaurant booking system as a foundational piece of your marketing strategy, but it can actually sit right at the centre, pulling everything together and driving your efforts to attract diners. Here are some of the ways that a system like ResDiary can play a role in your marketing campaigns:
Marketing is about more than just bringing in new customers. You also need to ensure you are growing deeper relationships with your existing diners, by learning everything you can about them, so you can offer unparalleled personalised experiences.
By increasing the knowledge you have of diners who have visited your venue, you will have more information you can use to target future customers.
That's why ResDiary integrates with the Acteol CRM software. Acteol boasts a number of features to level up your restaurant's marketing. The system works by pulling together a wide range of customer data points into a single customer view.
You can then use this information to tailor your marketing campaigns for maximum effectiveness. Stop relying on guesswork and use real data to develop your campaigns.
Thanks to a smooth two-way integration between Acteol and ResDiary, your business can get the most out of the system. Your booking data can be incorporated in Acteol's customer views to paint the fullest picture of your diners.
With overall smartphone penetration in the UK at 94%, SMS communications can be a highly valuable way to market your business. ResDiary makes it easy to collect your customer's phone numbers, so why not put them to use?
SMS communications are the perfect way to keep your business top-of mind for your customers. People rarely leave their homes without their smartphones (or even let them leave their side), so you have the chance to stay in touch with your customers at virtually all times.
To help you with your SMS communications, you can use the ResDiary Silverstreet integration. Silverstreet automatically sends messages to customers in your SMS database according to rules you set up.
This means you can set-and-forget SMS communications to be sent for booking confirmations, reminders and cancellations. You can also use Silverstreet for specific promotions and events in your venue.
Using this ResDiary integration to manage your SMS marketing efforts is an excellent choice for your hospitality business. It allows you to draw on booking data collected by the ResDiary system to build up your SMS database. You can link a customer's contact details to other elements of their booking, allowing you to send more effective, targeted communications.
You can also use the insights from other integrations like Acteol. You can use the customer data points collected by Acteol (and ResDiary's booking data) to create the most effective possible SMS marketing campaigns.
The perfect accompaniment to your SMS marketing campaign is a great email marketing campaign. Emails are an ingrained part of our daily lives, and they can be far less competitive spaces for customer attention than the likes of social media.
You can enjoy intuitive email marketing functionality within ResDiary, making it easy and accessible to send branded communications to your customers, straight from your restaurant booking system.
These emails can be used for just about anything. You can trigger emails to thank customers for placing a booking. You can give them the opportunity to place a pre-order using a set menu via ResDiary's promotions feature - great for large parties or special events. Or you can simply showcase your latest seasonal menu options.
They can also be used to remind customers about their upcoming booking, reducing the chance they’ll forget and become a costly no-show.
After a diner has visited your venue, you can continue to target them with emails to drive greater customer loyalty and return visits. Let them know about upcoming promotions or events to entice them to return.
For further information on email marketing in your restaurant, check out our complete email marketing guide.
Once you've started working on your email marketing campaigns, you'll want to build up the best possible database of emails. That's the value of guest Wi-Fi solutions such as Wireless Social.
The leading guest Wi-Fi provider in the UK, Wireless Social collects the email addresses of diners who want to log in to your venue's Wi-Fi. These can then be added to your email marketing database.
Without a guest Wi-Fi solution, you'll only collect one email address from a party of 10 diners. With guest Wi-Fi, you can get email addresses from the entire party.
Wireless Social also works in tandem with CRM solutions to get a better understanding of guests in your venue. It helps to provide more data points to elevate your marketing efforts.
Want to smash your marketing goals and get more table bookings for your restaurant? Here are a few tips to get the very most out of your restaurant marketing tools:
ResDiary has built-in functions and an array of excellent integrations to help you market your restaurant as effectively as possible. This integrated approach is the perfect way to create highly-targeted and effective advertising campaigns to help fill more seats in your restaurant.
From easy bookings through widgets to email communications, ResDiary offers an end-to-end approach to bringing more customers into your venue. Once you've established a relationship with diners, you're empowered to stay in touch with them and keep them coming back for more.
Book a ResDiary demo to fast-track your way to some of the best restaurant marketing tools available.