Who should handle your restaurant’s PR and marketing

GM, staff, a dedicated hire or an agency: who should run your restaurant's PR and marketing, and what each option costs and returns.

Somebody has to handle your restaurant's marketing and PR. Maybe your chain has someone Instagram-ing in head office. Maybe an agency manages your press and social profiles. Maybe you expect your manager and their team to generate the hype. And if marketing and PR isn't anyone's remit right now, that's exactly why this post is for you: the pros and cons of trusting people inside and outside your business to keep customers coming.

Your general manager

In single-venue restaurant businesses, marketing and PR often falls to the general manager. Even in chains, managers are frequently expected to lead on promotions and events.

Your manager knows your business and customer base inside out. But depending on their background, they may not be qualified to run your marketing at all. An ideas person will have good suggestions for plugging gaps in custom or attracting new diners; reaching those people well and getting a return from your PR and marketing budget are separate skills. So is time. Managing social media profiles, organising press nights and planning events is time-consuming, and general managers tend to be a dedicated bunch with every operational problem landing on them. Promotions rarely run to their full potential that way, and their work-life balance counts too.

Other staff members

There are attractive advantages to keeping marketing and promotion in-house. Your staff know your brand, offering and customers better than outsiders. With someone on site handling it, you can be reactive: advertise availability after a last-minute table cancellation, or push a dish or drink that matches the weather forecast, something that is tricky to plan in advance.

You may already have staff with useful marketing and PR skills. Is one of your team studying photography, or into writing? Encouraging a staff member to combine that interest with a front-of-house or junior management role can be savvy for smaller businesses. The people at the heart of the action end up driving the marketing, which is a real plus when you are working with a limited budget, and it gives that person a route into self-development as they pick up more skills.

A dedicated marketing manager

In multi-site independents and chains, it is much more common to find a dedicated marketing and PR manager. They plan communications and promotions across venues while keeping the brand consistent.

If your business isn't at that stage yet, a dedicated marketing person can look like a big financial commitment, but it can offer good value: every hour of their working week goes into driving your business and brand forward. A manager covering a group commands a serious salary, and someone working on a single site would cost substantially less. Set goals and track the return on your hire and the value they bring becomes visible.

A good marketing and PR manager should win you consistent custom as well as coverage. With time for individual events and campaigns alongside an overall strategy, they also feed trends and market insights back into the business.

A marketing or PR agency

If you want marketing or PR skills and experience without committing to an employee, hiring an agency or a freelancer is a common choice. You can bring them in for a business launch or a specific campaign, like a new menu launch or event promotion, or work with them on a retainer.

Narrow the field to people with a specific focus on hospitality and you should benefit from their established network of press and influencers, plus plenty of ideas to help your business shine. The open question is whether anyone external can fully get what your business is about. Vickie Rogers, Managing Director at North PR, thinks hiring a professional is often the key to telling the best stories for your audience, and that this is sometimes easier from the outside looking in.

She told us: "Owning a restaurant, bar or cafe in this day and age is hard. It's an incredibly competitive market and customers are much more picky about where they spend their money. You have to shout louder and with more compelling stories than the place next door.

I personally think freelance or agency PR and social support for restaurants is a really cost-effective way of getting an experienced team who can develop campaigns that deliver. You don't know what you don't know, and many businesses don't tell the right stories about their business. Creating a compelling narrative that turns on their customers can sometimes only be unearthed by an external, independent team."

Getting more from your budget

For many restaurants, the biggest factor in deciding who handles marketing and PR comes down to budget. Restaurants and bars that are starting out often rely on the general manager or team members for everyday promotion, bringing in agency specialists for important campaigns. It's usually when a business goes multi-site that it hires a group marketing manager and steps its efforts up. Whichever route you take, the key to getting the most for your money is to set clear goals and keep measuring progress.

It also pays to use all the tools at your disposal. As Vickie points out, you don't know what you don't know. At Stampede we work with businesses of all sizes to use analytics and data to sharpen their marketing. Whoever handles your restaurant marketing and PR, the right data helps direct your budget more effectively and keeps customers coming back. Book a demo to see what your own guest data says.