3 Marketing Best Practices for Restaurant Expansion

When trying to expand your restaurant’s brand, marketing plays a key factor in your overall success. Having a proven brand marketing strategy that is both replicable and scalable and is built on a solid business infrastructure is critical—especially if you’re trying to franchise. Here’s an overview of best practices when it comes to marketing and restaurant brand expansion.

Have a Proven Brand and Solid Restaurant Business Infrastructure

Having a proven brand that is built on a solid business infrastructure is the first step to ensuring brand marketing success. It’s difficult to market a brand with different franchise partners if there isn’t a cohesive overview of how the brand will represent itself and how the marketing side of the business will be done. Be sure that all partners are clear about the reputation of the brand image that is trying to be upheld. Also consider that there are a lot of new resources that are needed when entering new markets. For instance, you’ll need to hire franchise and field marketing managers, whose job it will be to maintain the unity and standard between locations.

Be Intimately Familiar with Your Restaurant’s Markets

Another key aspect of being able to successfully expand your restaurant’s brand into new areas is to be intimately familiar with the target market. If you don’t know this information already, hire someone who does. Understanding your markets is critical to your overall business success. Your franchisees will have individual knowledge of local markets that can provide valuable information toward your overall marketing approach. Encourage sharing of their marketing ideas and local product testing efforts among locations.

Have a Scalable Marketing Strategy, Customizable to Local Markets

When it comes to brand expansion, a final aspect of restaurant marketing best practices is ensuring that your marketing strategy is scalable and customizable to the level best suited to the new market that is being entered. Markets vary in their media efficacies and small markets can have a lower cost of media marketing, so something like TV advertising might be more affordable and make more sense there than elsewhere. Strong digital platforms can be ultra-local, with deals and promotional messages perfectly suited to the local community it serves. Again, utilize franchisee knowledge and information about their individual needs when setting up an overall restaurant expansion marketing plan.

In sum, successfully implementing a marketing strategy that helps to expand your restaurant’s overall brand comes down to having proven, replicable brand strategies that have enough flex built into their infrastructures that they can be customized to the individual needs of local markets. Understanding the markets that you are trying to cater to is critical to your overall marketing success. You’re shooting for a unified brand message with proven results that can be adapted to any new market or location. Hire professionals, brainstorm with your franchisees and analyze your data to determine the best marketing plan for your restaurant’s brand expansion efforts.

Tags: franchising, marketing strategies, restaurant management