Advertising in New Jersey

[Dolce]

What are all the avenues that restaurants use in New Jersey to advertise? Besides just putting an ad in local or regional papers what are some other successful forms of advertisement?

[babyluck]

What kind of restaurant are we talking about (how fancy)?

[tommy]

Besides just putting an ad in local or regional papers what are some other successful forms of advertisement?

you're looking at it. word of mouth.

[Rosie]

New Jersey Monthly has a restaurant issue out this month that is worth looking at. Many people use it to find restaurants as they have a very good dining guide.

Some restaurants use PR agents. If you need names of some PR agents email me.

[menton1]

Any restaurateur will tell you, WORD OF MOUTH and REPEAT CUSTOMERS are 1000X more important than any advertising. You must make the customer happy, and you have to get him/her back often. For reasons unknown, many restaurants fail to do this.

One easy example is Saigon Republic in Englewood, they opened a little over a year ago, and they are full 6 nights a week-- no advertising.

Are you opening a restaurant?

[Holly Moore]

I'd expand word-of-mouth to include Public Relations (PR). In my experience PR is what generates word of mouth - initiates the "buzz." Keep pushing the local and not-so-locate press to talk about you. Reviews, of course. But also special events and happenings.

When I had my restaurant I once got a blurb in the Philadelphia Inquirer by telling a columnist that we had just added hamburgers to our lunch menu. First customer who ordered one asked for ketchup. I had to send the dishwasher to a nearby market to buy a bottle of ketchup because we never needed it before. Got me the opening spot in his column.

You just need a feeling for what is news-worthy. That you're offering a free desert with a dinner isn't newsworthy, except perhaps for a shopper where you are already advertising. That your uncle in Florida sent you a case of key limes that you are making into pie may be.