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11 Types of Restaurant Marketing Tools in 2025

Restaurant Marketing Tools

Table of Contents

A restaurant’s success depends not just on great food but also on a smart restaurant marketing strategy

Restaurant marketing tools make your life easy and marketing effortless. 

Let’s say a potential customer goes online, searches for restaurants in their area views your online menu, makes a reservation without any hassle, and then writes a positive review after a pleasant meal. How does it feel to you? 

What makes this effortless is what? The correct set of marketing tools.

These tools can make your work easier, save you time, and generate more customers. With the vast number of restaurants globally, they are a necessity for gaining customers, handling the business, and staying on top.

At Abedin Tech We are specialized digital marketers and use many tools to help our clients to grow. We have listed this from our experiences so that you use these tools to get more clients and beat your competitors. 

11 Types of  Restaurant Marketing Tools

Tool TypePurposeName of ToolsPrice
Online Ordering & ReservationsStreamline table bookings and reduce no-showsResy, Tock, OpenTableResy from $249/month to $899/month; Tock from $79/month to $769/month; OpenTable – varies, contact vendor
Social Media Content CreationDesign stunning visuals for social platformsCanvaFree, Pro $14.99/month, Teams $29.99/month
Email MarketingSend personalized promotions and updatesMailchimp, Constant ContactFree to $299+/month based on plan
CRMManage customer relationships and dataSalesforce, HubSpot CRMSalesforce from $25/user/month, HubSpot Free to $50/user/month
Review ManagementHandle and respond to customer reviewsYelp, BirdeyeStarting at $199/month for Birdeye
Loyalty ProgramsEnhance customer retention with rewardsBelly, LoyverseBelly $50/month, Loyverse Free
Website BuildingCreate professional restaurant websitesWix, WordPressWordPress is Free; cost varies for plugins/themes
WiFi MarketingEngage diners via guest WiFiZenreach, Social WiFiCustom quotes; contact vendors
Local SEOBoost visibility on search enginesBrightLocal, Moz LocalBrightLocal $29/month, Moz Local $129/month
Event MarketingPromote events and upscale diningEventbrite, BizzaboEventbrite Free to $9.99+ per ticket
Text MarketingSend promotions via SMSTextedly, EZ TextingTextedly from $25/month, EZ Texting $19/month

Note on Marketing Tools for Restaurants

Marketing tools for restaurants are necessary. But beyond that what is more necessary is having a budget for your marketing approach. If you try to use all of the listed tools at the beginning that will definitely not be a wise decision. 

There are some tools that you will definitely need and some you can add to your arsenal later. 

Necessary Tools For Most Restaurants

  • Online Ordering & Reservations: Online platforms such as Resy, Tock, or OpenTable are extremely beneficial as they help manage bookings, decrease no-shows, and enhance customer satisfaction.
  • Website Creation: Having a modern website on WordPress or Wix allows your customers to search for you and find relevant information such as the menu, working hours, and contact details.
  • Social Media Marketing: Engaging your current and prospective clients is made simpler with content creation tools such as Canva which allow one to design eye-catching graphics.

Tools You Should Consider As You Expand

  • Loyalty Programs: Customer retention tools such as Belly or Loyverse can be useful but aren’t of paramount significance until a customer base has been established.
  • WiFi Marketing: Guest engagement platforms such as Zenreach are useful for marketing but must be more suitable for cafes and other big businesses that require them from the get-go.
  • Event Marketing: Marketing tools like Eventbrite and Bizzabo are useful for planning events, and help a restaurant wishes to undertake regular events or themed dinners.

Online Ordering & Reservations

Ordering and booking services help restaurants manage orders and reduce cancellations. A Reservation tool keeps everything in order and resolves one more operational challenge for clients: making table reservations.

OpenTable

OpenTable is arguably the most widely used reservation and table booking system which targets both restaurant owners and customers by knitting convenience to a strong feature set. It helps restrain costly no-show scenarios by letting you reach your wider customer range.

Undoubtedly, its integration with point-of-sale systems is one of its most notable features. Other exciting features include touch reminders for guests that are automated and feedback collection to further improve the service levels provided.

However, it is critical to point out that OpenTable charges a ‘no-show’ reservation fee per booking which could be an added expense for smaller businesses. Its increased functionalities can also place a lot of pressure on the initial user. 

Nevertheless, if your primary goal is boosting service efficiency, together with attracting more guests, it places strong performers in OpenTable. Custom pricing is available based on location and usage.

Other Options

  • Resy

When the goal is to secure and simplify the processes of handling dining reservations, while also collecting guest satisfaction information, Resy Radial milks the opportunity. Beginning at $249/month, it represents an advantageous offer for medium to large restaurants.

  • Tock

Tock has gained considerable notoriety for its opening pricing as low as $79 a month but flexible enough to accommodate other rates. Tock has eased the trouble of over- and under-bookings by allowing experiences and pre-paid events to be scheduled with no trouble. 

Restaurants looking to branch out and generate additional streams of income will appreciate the cheap prepayment fee for events.

Social Media Content Creation

Tools for creating social media content make it easier for your restaurant to maintain an online presence. With their help, you can easily create appealing posts, stories, and videos to attract more customers and keep your audience engaged.

Canva

Canva is an easy-to-navigate application that allows you to make great-looking designs for your restaurant’s social media pages. It is suitable for people who are not trained in graphic design because of its user-friendly interface.

Canva specializes in easy content creation by offering over 400,000 templates alongside almost 100 million, royalty-free graphics, photos, and videos. 

They also provide template sizes for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other major social media platforms. This means there is no need to worry about exact dimensions or where to find inspiration for the designs.

However, while the free plan offers a range of tools, advanced features like brand kits and premium assets are limited to the paid plans. This might become expensive for larger teams. Still, Canva is an excellent place to start for any restaurant looking to level up its social media game.

Price:

  • Free – no credit card required
  • Pro – $14.99/month
  • Teams – $29.99/month
  • Enterprise – contact for a quote

Other Options

  • Adobe Spark

Using Adobe Spark you will find an easy way of working with professional tools. It helps you to produce eye-catching posts, short clips, and even graphics. The ability to sync work on all devices is one of the unique things that impress platform users so busy restaurant owners will love it. From 9.99/ month for one user.

  • Crello

Crello works and looks like Canva. It comes packed with thousands of templates, animations, and many design options. Its point of difference is the animation maker, which allows users to create motion graphics for social media. Plans start from 12 USD/month, and there is a free plan with limited functionality.

Related Article: An Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing for Restaurant

Email Marketing

Email marketing tools are perfect for sending promotions, updates, and personalized messages.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a well-known powerful email marketing tool for businesses from beginners to advanced professionals. Mailchimp is popular because of its user-friendly drag-and-drop email templates and over 500 integrations with services like Shopify, Google Analytics, and WordPress.

Their ability to build customer workflows is gold for email marketing. Fulfilling actions such as sending customized emails when a customer is engaged and doing certain activities like signing up for notifications or abandoning a cart. 

Along with those, A/B testing, dynamic content, and predictive demographics are great ways to sharpen the campaign to reach greater heights.

However, Mailchimp might be a bit on the expensive side, as the paid plans require a premium. There are also some limitations such as only 500 free contacts on the free plan, and the services of automation being very limited.

Price:

  • Free (up to 500 contacts and 1,000 emails per month)
  • Essentials – starts at $13/month
  • Standard – starts at $20/month
  • Premium – starts at $350/month

Other Options

  • Brevo

Brevo, previously known as Sendinblue, is a good fit for expanding businesses. It integrates email marketing with a CRM and multi-level automation. Plans start with a free account which allows 300 emails a day. Paid plans start at $25 per month with more advanced features.

  • MailerLite

MailerLite is an inexpensive, easy-to-use option and has an affirmable free plan. It provides automation, landing pages, and tools for design. The free plan offers one thousand contacts and twelve thousand emails a month and the premium plans cost only $10 each month.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM systems help businesses in developing stronger relationships with clients and make operational outsourcing easier.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM wins the hearts and minds of many because it is both effective and straightforward, making it one of the best choices for all businesses. Its free plan includes basic features such as contact management and monitoring deals. Additional plans provide more advanced features including automation and deeper analytics.

For all its ease of use, its advanced features can become pricey as your team scales. We will advise you to begin with the free plan and change tiers only when necessary. 

Price:

  • Free Plan — $0/month
  • Starter — $20/month
  • Professional — $800/month+
  • Enterprise — Custom pricing

Other Options

  • Salesforce

Salesforce has an abundance of features and it is an excellent option for businesses requiring a high level of tailoring and detailed metrics. You can sign up for the monthly plan and expand whenever it is needed starting from $25.

  • Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is cost-effective and ideal for smaller teams, as it offers essential services like lead tracking and workflow automation. It is an excellent pick for growing businesses at $14 a month.

Review Management

Review management tools help businesses keep track of online reviews, respond to feedback, and enhance their reputation.

Yelp

Yelp is arguably one of the most well-known review platforms for restaurants. With a large audience, Yelp is perfect for small businesses wanting to market themselves. Their latest feature, AI-powered Review Insights, helps to see what can be improved upon by analyzing customer sentiment. You also get tools to reply to reviews, track your activity, and improve your service. 

However, advertising isn’t budget-friendly for small-sized businesses. Further, newer reviews could bury newer positive ones due to the algorithm ranking.
Price:

  • Free to manage a business profile
  • Paid advertising starts at $150/month

Other Options

  • Hootsuite

When it comes to review management paired with social media management, Hootsuite does the job very well. It is simply much easier to keep track of mentions and reply to feedback on a single dashboard. Plans start at $99/month.

  • Birdeye

Birdeye offers a focus on automated collection of reviews and easy response management. It is perfect to ensure there is no gap between review sites. Pricing begins at around $299/month.

Loyalty Programs

Tools for loyalty programs play an important role in businesses retaining customers by rewarding them for repeat purchases, which helps strengthen brand connections.

Smile.io

Smile.io is a very famous loyalty reward tool for e-commerce businesses. It’s easy to create programs here, such as point redemptions, VIP tiers, referrals, and other reward systems. 

You also have the option of customizing how your customers earn rewards and how they are redeemed to make it truly feel like your brand. One of its better features is its ability to easily integrate with systems like Shopify and BigCommerce.

Smile.io recently updated its abilities on email notifications and SMS, so you will remain connected to customers. However, advanced features might be further down the line in terms of pricing tiers.
Price:

  • Free plan available
  • Paid plans start at $49/month

Other Options

  • LoyaltyLion

LoyaltyLion provides detailed reporting as well as strong integrations for e-commerce shops. Businesses can set custom rewards as product access or discounts to engage their audience. Perfect for data-driven strategies, it starts at $99/month.

  • Poket

In comparison, Poket is an easier choice for large as well as small businesses as it has omnichannel programs using cashback, digital reward cards, social media rewards, etc. Starting from $49/month, this is a much cheaper option.

Website Building

Website is the foundation of your restaurant business and plays the most vital role in restaurant marketing ideas

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most well-known platforms globally, accounting for more than 40% of the websites on the Internet. It is popular because it allows users to use anything from simple blogs to complicated e-commerce sites. 

It is easy to find thousands of themes and plug-ins to change the appearance and performance of your site. Its built-in SEO tools and integration with the largest platforms like WooCommerce make it an attractive option for growing businesses.

With the launch of the block-based editor, Gutenberg, WordPress has made more practical tools for users. Site editing is more streamlined now.  However, it may take some time getting used to for novice users. But you can always hire a web design service for WordPress at an affordable cost.
Price:

  • Free core platform
  • Hosting costs start at $5/month
  • Advanced themes and plug-ins may involve additional investment

Other Options

  • Wix

Wix is a beginner-friendly website builder offering a low barrier of entry to create personal or business sites, with plans starting from 16 USD a month. Its App Market allows users to drag and drop elements into place, eliminating the need to touch code.

  • Squarespace

They offer elegant templates and built-in tools such as email marketing and analytics, Squarespace is regarded as the go-to site for creative professionals. Most elegant templates need to be paid extra on top of the standard starting price of 16 USD a month.

WiFi Marketing

Wifi marketing tools help you collect users’ data, and behaviors which help you in your digital marketing strategies. 

Adentro (formerly Zenreach)

Adentro, earlier known as Zenreach, is one of the most prominent WiFi marketing tools aimed at used by physical retail stores. It attempts to close the gap between online marketing and offline customer activities. 

One of its most unique features is its proprietary Walk-Through Rate™ metric which tracks when customers are sent marketing messages and subsequently visit a location. Adentro also automatically builds rich customer profiles and updates them with each interaction allowing businesses to develop targeted campaigns based on customers’ visit patterns. Their latest updates include additional analytics information
Price:

  • Custom pricing based on business needs

Other Options

  • Purple

Through the use of guest WiFi, Purple marketing helps with collecting customer information and targeting them with promotions using emails or SMS. Its user-friendly and effective real-time analytics help in improving customer engagement. Pricing starts at $99/month.

  • Aislelabs

Aislelabs has developed an entire suite dedicated to the in-depth understanding of customer data and location-based advertisement which makes it a perfect choice for large venues or retail chains. 

Local SEO Tools

Local SEO Tools maintain their relevance for businesses interested in increasing their local search rankings.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a Croatian agency that offers a wide array of local and reputation management services. Some of its core features consist of local rank tracking, building citations, and managing reviews. 

In addition, it generates more in-depth data and white-label reports, providing added value to the agency and its small business customers. 

The lowest subscription fee is $29 per month and scales up according to various levels the user might need. While it is extremely dependable, other SEO tools are more geared to specialized functions and therefore may lack some advanced features.

Other Options

  • Moz

Moz Local works on enhancing business profiles by maintaining the information available on various platforms to help improve the local positions.

  • Whitespark

Whitespark is the best for citation building and finding links to competitions within a local or niche market.

Editors Pick: We have a detailed guide on Local SEO for Restaurants

Event Marketing Tools

Event marketing tools make the process of planning, promoting, and managing events easier and more efficient helping ticket sales and attendee tracking.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is one of the most intuitive platforms to create and organize events of all scales. Some of the outstanding functionalities are customizable event pages, catering for ticketing, and social media which assists in promotion. 

Analytics tools refine the strategies based on attendees. The charges are incurred on sales of tickets ($1.79 and 3.7% per ticket sold), and free events do not incur any charges. Although the fees can be too much for very expensive events, the ease of use means it is a preferred option for many.

Other Options

  • Cvent 

Cvent has venue sourcing and analytics as well as all other large-scale event management tools focusing on enterprise users.

  • Bizzabo

Bizzabo focuses on audience engagement and advanced analytics in mid to large-scale hybrid and virtual events.

Text Marketing Tools

Whether it’s through newsletters or advertisements, Text marketing tools assist businesses in reaching out to their customers through SMS marketing campaigns.

Textedly

Textedly is one of the most comprehensive and intuitive text messaging platforms available. Its primary offer includes text blast scheduling, auto-response capabilities, and advanced metrics for your campaign. 

Much like other restaurant marketing tools, Textedly integrates well with various CRMs and other marketing tools. Its pricing plans begin at 24$ for 1200 SMS a month and are adjustable for bigger campaigns. 

Some users might feel like the more nuanced features are outdated when compared to other offerings, but regardless this tool has many benefits.

Other Options

  • SimpleTexting 

Very well-known SimpleTexting provides excellent text marketing features such as Text-to-vote and MMS for more interactive campaigns.

  • EZ Texting

EZ Texting comes with ready-to-use templates and marketing automation, which makes it very useful for small to medium businesses.

FAQs About Restaurant Marketing Tools

1. What is the “Marketing Mix”?

Marketing Mix refers to the Four Ps — Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. These are the four elements of the marketing strategy for your restaurant which includes how the menu will be marketed, prices will be set, sales channels will be selected, and how the restaurant will be promoted.

2. Why does my restaurant need a website?

The purpose of a website goes beyond displaying menus and reserving tables, its main objective is to increase the customer base and promote the restaurant’s brand. It is also the focal point for managing all other marketing work and linking them with SEO.

3. How can social media tools help my restaurant?

They allow for the scheduling of posts for Instagram and Facebook, track analytics, and publish photos of food, events, and places which helps to increase engagement.

4. How do marketing tools improve SEO?

If you want to increase your chances of appearing in the keyword: ‘restaurants near me’, then your website would need local listings, keyword optimization, and a well-functioning site. These are all the tasks that an SEO tool will take care of.

5. How can I manage my online reputation?

Tools can compile reviews and draft responses to comments made on your page which can then be sent out on your behalf at the right time to gain, maintain, and build customer trust and brand reputation.

6. How long before marketing tools show results?

With the use of social media tools, many people have seen the fruits of their labor in 3-6 months, however, with SEO tools the duration extends to 6-9 months.

Abedin Tech is Here to Help you 

We hope this list of best restaurant marketing tools was helpful to you. At the same time, we understand it can be quite overwhelming, especially if you are totally new to this digital marketing industry. 
That’s why we are here. We have worked with many restaurants to grow them digitally. You can contact us for a free consultation session and we will more than love to hear you. Contact us NOW.

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