Some days, you can feel the excitement in your restaurant. Maybe you’ve got a beautiful ingredient to feature from a local farm or have a great local band bringing down the house. You’re rushing around, watching that good-food-good-company glow on your diners’ faces, knowing that you created something special.
Some days, you’re folding napkins and silverware for the fifteenth time, staring at the door and wondering why your tables are empty again.
Every restaurant goes through those ups and downs. Whether you’re excited about upcoming special events that diners will love or stuck in the worst of the off-season and hoping to fill a few more tables on a Tuesday night, there are a few marketing tactics you can use to drive more diners to your restaurant right on Tripadvisor.
We created two new features, Updates and Special Offers, to help you draw in more diners exactly when you need them.
- With Updates, showcase what’s happening around your restaurant, like upcoming events, celebrations, tasting menus, and more.
- Then, Special Offers sweeten the deal and encourage diners to book a table.
If you’re already a Premium subscriber, you can access these features today in your Management Center.
Explore the new features now
Both features are designed to work together in your marketing efforts. Let’s take a look at each one:
Updates keeps diners in-the-know about your restaurant
To bring in more diners, you need to get them to notice you online. Updates helps you promote menus, events, and other exciting things happening at your restaurant with photo stories that appear on your Tripadvisor page. You may be sharing this kind of info already with diners who follow you on social media or who sign up for your emails, but with Updates, you can let anyone searching for restaurants on Tripadvisor know about the great stuff you have cooking.
You can customize your page with two different kinds of posts:
- Updates promote new items, menu offerings, or specials for your restaurant.
- Events promote upcoming events, such as live music, wine tastings, or upcoming holiday celebrations.
You can use Updates to promote anything exciting or new for your restaurant. Feature special menus, live entertainment, trivia nights, sports watch parties, ticketed events, and more. It’s easy to add Updates to your profile:
Log in to the Management Center. Choose “Updates and Offers” from the left-hand side. Click “Create” to post a new Update.
Choose the category for your post, Update or Event.
Make your post eye-catching with imagery and a description, set a time frame for your post to display, and add a button and URL to link if you wish.
Click “Publish Update.” Your post will be live within 24 hours.
You can go back and edit your posts or see performance at any time in the “Manage” section.
Add your first update
Special Offers attracts diners looking for a sweet deal
Once you’ve captured a potential diner’s attention, it’s time to reel them in.
Special Offers allow restaurant owners and managers to offer deals and discounts directly on their Tripadvisor page. This is a great strategy to turn someone interested in your restaurant into a reservation.
Everybody loves a good deal. But including a Special Offer on your restaurant’s page doesn’t mean you need to cut into your profit margins. Instead, running value-added promotions entices diners looking for a great deal while showcasing what makes your restaurant great. It’s easy to add a variety of different promotion types within the platform, such as:
- Happy hour offers
- Buy-one-get-one appetizers or drinks
- Prixe fixe menus
- Seasonal promotions
- Special menu items
- And more!
With Special Offers, you can reach a highly engaged, interested audience of travelers and diners who are actively searching for restaurants in your area. Hungry diners can use the “Special Offers” filter when searching for restaurants they want to see, which will show them only restaurants that have promotions available. As this is an exclusive Premium feature, not all restaurants in your area will have it available — helping you stand out from the competition.
Adding a Special Offer to your Tripadvisor page is a great strategy to fill tables during slower periods or off-hours. By offering promotions directly on your restaurant’s Tripadvisor listing page — whether it’s a special wine pairing or a partnership with another business, like discounted movie tickets — you can show your unique offers, menus, and other features that set you apart.
Add a Special Offer to your Tripadvisor profile in just a few steps:
Log in to the Management Center. Choose “Updates and Offers” from the left-hand side. Then, click “Create” in the “Special Offers” section.
From there, choose the appropriate offer type from the dropdown. This includes: Buy one get one, percentage discount, and custom offer.
Fill in the details of your offer, such as title, description, an eye-catching image, a headline, valid dates, and an optional redemption code to complete your set up.
When you’re finished, click “Post Special Offer.” Your deal will be live within 24 hours.
Create a special offer
List your offer on your page
Explore Special Offers now
Updates + Special Offers = Filling More Tables
Show off what’s happening around your restaurant with Updates. Special Offers seal the deal and get them to book.
These are just two ways within Tripadvisor Premium’s suite of tools that help your restaurant stand out from the rest. With Premium, you can also upload a multimedia Storyboard, add Top 3 Reasons to Eat Here, pin a Favorite Review, and more.
