Key steps to launching a 360° marketing campaign for your restaurant

A 360° marketing campaign can be very beneficial to help restaurants achieve added success and growth, however it takes a bit of planning and designing to launch an impactful 360° marketing campaign.

A 360° marketing campaign is a rollout of communication to a range of audiences across multiple channels with a cohesive and consistent brand message. A 360° marketing campaign can be used to support and achieve a range of different goals for your restaurant. 

Some common needs and goals that motivate restaurants to implement a 360° marketing campaign are:

📋 New/Seasonal Menus 

📍 New Restaurant Opening/Location

🔃 Restaurant Rebranding

📢 New Offer/Promotion

While every goal or key point indicator (KPI) of your 360° marketing campaign will require different planning considerations, here are a few key tips to keep in mind when building and launching a successful and impactful campaign.

Know your Audience

A key first step when planning your campaign is understanding your audience of diners. 

What kind of diners do you want this campaign to reach? 

When launching a 360° campaign, make sure you have a clear idea of the type of person/group that you hope to reach with your messaging. While many diners may simply see your campaign, the impact comes from how effective your targeting is and how well you understand who the message is designed for.

A few examples of campaign audiences are:

• Diners who have never dined with you 
• Diners who love a great offer 
• Diners who have dined with you 
• Diners who love Italian food 
• Diners who love high-end restaurants 
• Diners between the age 40-60 or 20-40 

Your audience targeting should be specific but not too specific that you greatly limit your reach - good reach can help build brand awareness and capture the interest of people who may sit outside your target market. Utilise your database or any previous insights you may have (such as your social media audience insights) to better identify who your key campaign audience should be.

Find a tone of voice

While your restaurant will have its overall tone of voice, a 360° campaign should be very specific, with a defined tone. The campaign tone of voice could be slightly bolder or safer in comparison to your restaurant tone of voice, depending on what makes sense for your target audience. 

For example 

Your restaurant might have a very classic tone of voice as it is frequented by older diners, but you would like to launch a 360° campaign to attract younger diners to your restaurant. You will need to adapt your campaign tone of voice to be a little less classic and more casual/informal to gain the attention of your target audience.

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience you can start thinking about your distribution channels. 

Choose your Channels 

Once your target audience is identified, another important step is deciding on your distribution channels.  

Each channel will reach a different type of audience and require a different form of creative. Understanding and identifying the most relevant channels to reach your target audience is an important step in a successful launch of your a 360° marketing campaign. 

Each channel has a different purpose, function and primary audience. 

Adapting your campaign to your channels

As the goal of a 360° campaign is to send consistent messaging out across a variety of channels, whether it is social media, web banners, print or newsletters, you will want your creative vision as well as message to be adapted to each channel and make sense.

Channels such as:

Instagram or Facebook Feed Ads can be more visual/photo driven than text driven 

Web Ad Banners can be more text driven with messaging  

YouTube Ads will require landscape visuals in video format 

TikTok Ads will require portrait visuals in video format 

Newsletter will have space for more detailed campaign messaging 

Instagram Story Ads will have limited space for campaign messaging 

Creating the assets for your campaign can be costly or time consuming, so it's always best to identify specific channels that will be most impactful.

Launching a 360° marketing campaign is a great opportunity to reach diners and let them know what your restaurant is all about, and with these key steps you can bet on a more impactful launch!