Restaurant marketing agency

When someone searches "tacos near me" or "brunch" and a town, Google shows a map with a few places before the regular results, and it ranks that map mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile help).

Relevance is the part you control most. Choose the primary category that says what you are, such as Mexican restaurant or Pizza restaurant, not just Restaurant. Add your menu, your price range, whether you do dine-in, takeout, delivery and reservations, and links for ordering and booking where your profile offers them (Google Business Profile help). Post real photos of your dishes, your room and your front door, so people know what to look for when they arrive.

Hours matter more for restaurants than almost any other business, because people search when they're ready to eat. Set special hours for holidays and closures ahead of time (Google Business Profile help). A guest who drives over and finds the door locked may not try you again.

Most visitors want one of those five things and nothing else.

A menu posted as a PDF or a photo is hard to read on a phone and gives Google little to work with, so put it on the page as text and keep the prices current. Mark dishes for common needs, like vegetarian or gluten-free, only where it's true. Use your own photos instead of stock pictures, since guests can tell. Google mainly uses the phone version of a site for ranking (Google Search Central, mobile-first indexing), so check every page on a phone, on a weak signal, before anything else.

If your guests speak Spanish, give them the menu and the site in Spanish too. And if you host parties or cater, give that its own page with how to ask for a date, because those are searches of their own.

Delivery apps help new customers find you, but they charge a fee on each order and keep the customer relationship, so the goal is to move your regulars to ordering direct.

Make the direct way the easy way. Put an order button at the top of your website and on your Google profile, and make sure it opens your own ordering page, not an app. Tell guests about it where they already are: a card in the takeout bag, a line on the receipt, a post on Instagram. Read your app agreements before offering a lower price for direct orders, since some contracts address pricing. When someone orders direct, ask if they'd like texts or emails about specials, so the next order comes to you too. Keep your menu, prices and hours the same on the apps, your website and Google, so a guest never gets two different answers.

A small card with a QR code that opens your Google review form, or a link on the receipt, works without putting your servers on the spot. Yelp is different: it asks businesses not to ask for reviews at all (Yelp's guidelines for business owners), so on Yelp, focus on replying. People choosing a restaurant read the replies as closely as the stars. A short, polite answer to a complaint about a long wait or a cold dish shows the next guest that someone cares, and it's often the last thing they read before deciding. If a review names a real problem, fix it first and then say so in the reply.

You don't need to post every day. A few posts a week of real dishes, the special, the kitchen at work and the people behind it keep your page alive. Short videos of a dish being plated or the room filling up do well. Put your hours, address and order link in your bio, and answer messages, since guests use them to ask about tables and allergies. Facebook and Instagram ads can show a new menu or an event to people near you, because you choose the area the ads show in (Meta ads help).

Pick one slow night and build something around it: a weekly special, a family night, live music or a tasting menu. Then send it to your guest list a day or two before. Build that list as you go, with a sign-up on your website and on the receipt or the order page. Ask for permission before you text: marketing texts need the customer's prior express written consent under federal law (the Telephone Consumer Protection Act). Keep messages short and not too frequent, so people stay on the list. Post the same night on your Google profile and Instagram, so new guests see it too.