Advertising for restaurants serves to help people find, recognize, and choose your business.
If your restaurant doesn’t appear, communicate, or convert online, it simply doesn’t exist for those who are searching. And today, that means empty tables.
A restaurant that is invisible online loses reservations every day.
Below is the most complex part: understanding why this happens and what you can do about it.
Before talking about campaigns, posts, or budgets, you need an honest diagnosis. And that’s where we start, Dear Colleague.
Dear Colleague: how to understand if your restaurant is truly visible
Dear Colleague, the first mistake is to think that “being there” online means “being visible.” You have a website and a social media page, but the question is: can people find you when they’re looking for a place to eat?
Try this simple exercise. Search Google as a customer would: cuisine, area, time.
If you don’t appear among the top results, your restaurant advertising isn’t working for you.
Visibility is not an abstract concept. It is being present at the right times, in front of the right people, with a clear message.
Advertising for restaurants and restaurant reservations: where the journey breaks down
The restaurant reservation is the end point, not the beginning. Many restaurants communicate without thinking about the journey that leads a person to sit down at the table.
The customer sees, seeks confirmation, compares, and decides.
If your website is slow, the menu is unclear, or contact is not immediate, the journey is interrupted.
This is where restaurant advertising often fails: it drives traffic but does not drive action.
Every lost click is a reservation given away to someone else.
Common mistakes on Google, social media, and websites in restaurant advertising
On Google, the most frequent mistake is an incomplete or abandoned listing.
Incorrect opening hours, old photos, and unanswered reviews convey neglect.
On social media, on the other hand, posts are published without a strategy. Beautiful images, but no direction. No real reason to choose you.
The website, when there is one, often doesn’t help. There is no clear proposal, no call to action, no direct link to restaurant reservations.
Advertising for restaurants is not about appearing everywhere. It’s about being consistent everywhere.
Dear colleague and hotel marketing: what you can learn from their approach
Hotel marketing has been working on funnels, seasonality, and conversion for years.
Nothing is left to chance: visibility, trust, booking.
A hotel knows that each channel has a specific role. It knows when to push, when to reassure, and when to simplify the process.
Dear Colleague, restaurants can learn a lot from this approach.
It’s not about becoming a hotel, but about thinking like someone who lives off reservations every day.
Advertising for restaurants works when it becomes a system, not improvisation. Because digital invisibility costs empty seats
Every day, someone is looking for a place to eat. If they can’t find you, they won’t choose you. Not because you’re worse, but because you’re absent.
Digital invisibility makes no noise. No email arrives, no negative review arrives. Silence arrives.
And it is silence that empties the tables.
Advertising for restaurants serves to avoid this void, even before filling it.
Dear Colleague: where to start without improvising
Before campaigns, clarity is needed. Before posts, a strategy is needed. Before advertising, a method is needed.
Dear Colleague was not created to sell you quick solutions, but to help you read reality. Understanding where you are invisible is the first step to becoming visible again.
Because today, it’s not the loudest who wins, but those who are there at the right time.
Book your call now at this link!
Article written by Giancarlo De Leonardo, former restaurateur and hotelier, founder of Caro Collega.
