Yesterday I talked about the two different restaurant catering campaigns I’ve encounter recently.  One that was from our company and another from a local coupon magazine that restaurants use incorrectly way too often.

I spoke about this in episode 586 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, have a listen.

Let’s break down these two different campaigns

First we dig into the print catering campaign

1st – There’s no way to no who sees it and when you want their attention again, you have to buy the exact ad from the exact company and pray the right people turn to your page in the 50 page coupon magazine.

2nd – There’s no way to retarget the people who looked at your page, tore it out or heck even showed it to their co-worker

These are really the two main points of weakness for a restaurant ad campaign like this in a coupon magazine.  I won’t go into how poorly the ad was designed, that’s another blog, but the biggest missed opportunity for this campaign was two prong.  They had a QR code in the ad which went to the catering page on their website, I love that…but this is where it all went downhill.  First there was not a tracking pixel installed on the webpage.  If there was, they could retarget people who visit the catering page with targeted ads, and these ads work GREAT!  Second, the page had no CTA (Call To Action) or form.  There was ZERO effort put into getting visitors to raise their hand and give you their information

Now, let’s dig into WHY the digital campaign is awesome.

1st – We are targeting local decision makers with a high value CTA, telling them to register to win a party.  These ads get a TON of clicks and engagements.  This means we can retarget those people for with other ads, like our catering ad.

2nd – When they engage with our ad via clicking the CTA or commenting, it takes these customers on a journey where the restaurant owner gains their contact information.  As the clients text message said, he’s received over 600 leads in a month.  

3rd – When we get a lead if does 4 things

– The owner gets a lead sent to them to contact.

– The customer gets put into a Facebook retargeting audience so we can nurture them to order.

– The customer is now put in an EXCLUSION audience so they don’t get the same ad again.

– And finally they get put into a multi step email and text nurture sequence that educates them on what the restaurant offers and entices them to place a catering order.

The differences between these two are night and day.  It’s honestly depressing as a marketer to see restaurants doing crappy ads like that in 2024.  How do they not have an expert in their corner and how is the print magazine not able to offer them digital solutions to go along with the ad?  There’s zero reason to spend your money on that ad in 2024, but if you are going to do it, at least make an effort to use the tools available today to optimize it.