You want as many people as possible to attend your restaurant’s grand opening. And if you want your marketing promotions to reach as many people as possible, you need to advertise where they spend their time. In 2024, that place is social media.
With over 5 billion active users worldwide, social media is a powerful marketing tool for any restaurateur looking to get more people through the doors. However, it’s not as easy as making a few posts and hoping for the best. Here are six tips to promote your restaurant grand opening on social media.
Design some eye-catching graphics
Billions of users means millions of posts uploaded every single day. That’s a lot of competition if you want your content to be seen. To help your promotions stand out from the hordes, it’s important to ensure your content is of the highest quality.
Since you’re busy building a restaurant, you probably don’t have time to design professional graphics from scratch. Luckily, there are thousands of free grand opening flyer templates available from websites like PosterMyWall.
Simply choose the design that best fits your restaurant’s style, customize the information with the easy drag-and-drop editor, and you’re ready to upload eye-catching, professional graphics to all your social media feeds.
Upload regular content
Having the best content is very important to any social media marketing strategy. But it’s not all about quality; it’s about quantity, too!
All those posts uploaded to social media every day push your content lower and lower in your followers’ feeds. If you want to stay at the top, you have to upload new content regularly.
Most social media professionals suggest posting between five and seven times per week to stay top-of-mind for your followers. The more frequently you post, the harder it’ll be for anyone to forget about your restaurant grand opening!
Engage with your followers
Many marketers forget about the most important aspect of social media: to be social. Actively engage with other users to help build a relationship between potential customers and your brand.
Respond to comments and direct messages (DMs) and even like or comment on other people’s posts. Each engagement helps to build a positive relationship that will hopefully encourage a future full of loyal customers for your restaurant.
Work with an influencer
Influencers are people with large followings on social media. And for a fee, they’ll tell all their followers about your restaurant grand opening.
The key to influencer marketing is to pick the right influencer. There are millions of influencers on social media, and they all specialize in a different niche. Since you want to promote a restaurant grand opening, partnering with a food influencer will likely be the best way to reach your target audience.
It’s also a good idea to look for a local influencer. Since people likely won’t travel from very far away for your grand opening, it’s not worth your marketing dollars to partner with an influencer with a large nationwide or global audience. Keep it local and on-niche (food) to make the most of your marketing efforts.
Host a contest or giveaway
Everyone loves winning free prizes. And social media contests and giveaways are a great way to build engagement and promote your restaurant grand opening.
For example, if you’re opening an Italian restaurant, get your customers to upload a funny picture of them preparing their favorite Italian dish and tag your restaurant. After the deadline, you’ll pick your favorite, and the person who posted it will win a free meal at your grand opening celebration!
Since everyone will want a free meal at your amazing restaurant, they’ll quickly create a bunch of content for their social media accounts. All their friends and family will see their posts with your restaurant tagged, helping you reach a wider audience to promote your grand opening.
Run some social media ads
Another way to expand your marketing reach beyond just your followers is to run a few social media ads. With social ads, you pay the platform a small fee, and it’ll promote your post to a target audience of your choice. You can choose demographics to target, like age, gender, location, and interests to make sure you reach the right people with your ad.
Since your restaurant isn’t even open yet, you likely don’t have a huge marketing budget. But that doesn’t matter with social ads because you can choose how much you want to pay! You can easily get thousands of views for your grand opening promotion posts for just a few dollars per day.
Launch your restaurant the right way with social media
Your restaurant grand opening is a big deal! So make sure tons of people show up with some amazing social media promotions. Create eye-catching graphics to stand out from the pack, upload regularly, engage with your followers, work with an influencer, host a contest, and run some social media ads.
When all your marketing efforts work together, there’s no way anyone in town will miss your restaurant’s grand opening!