Restaurant marketing plan: a 12-month template and how to fill it in

A restaurant marketing plan is one clear goal, your current numbers, the jobs in the right order, a 12-month calendar and a budget built from those jobs. It should fit on a few pages, and someone should be able to open it on the first of the month and know what to do. Download the free template: a spreadsheet with a budget, a month-by-month plan and a page for your numbers, with no sign-up.

This guide shows how to fill it in. Our restaurant marketing guide explains the channels themselves; this one is about turning them into a year's plan you can actually keep to. Every number in the template is an example to replace.

Most restaurant plans fail by being too long, then forgotten. Five parts are enough:

You can't choose a goal without knowing where you stand, and an afternoon is enough to find out. Use last month, or better, an average of the last few:

• Your margin and prime cost: the profit margin calculator takes five numbers.
• What delivery apps cost you: the delivery commission calculator shows it for the year.
• What Google brings in: calls, direction requests and website clicks from your Business Profile's performance view.
• Your reviews: the rating, how many are from the last three months, and how many are unanswered.
• Who comes back: if your POS or ordering system can show it, the share of orders from repeat guests.

Write them in the template's Monthly numbers sheet. That first column is your starting point, and you'll want it later, when you ask whether any of this worked.

A plan with six goals is a wish list. Pick the problem that costs the most and give it a number and a date. It might look like this:

These are examples. Choose numbers you can measure from tools you already have. If you can't count it, you can't manage it.

The order matters more than the choice of tactics, because each step makes the next one pay better. Ads send people to your profile and your website, so any leak there wastes the money.

1. Google profile: correct hours, menu and categories, with your own ordering link set as preferred.
2. Website: a menu as text, hours, and buttons to order and book. Our website guide has the steps.
3. Reviews: a steady flow, all answered, as our reviews guide explains.
4. Direct ordering: see online ordering without commission.
5. Email and text: the automatic messages first, as in our email and text guide.
6. Paid ads and catering: once the rest is working.

Don't rush this. A restaurant that gets through the first three by March, and keeps them up, is ahead of one with a full calendar and a broken order link.

Now spread it across the year. Give each month one focus and one owner. The template's 12-month plan sheet has a filled-in example you can edit, and a year usually looks something like this:

Build it around your own year, not a generic list. Some occasions are worth planning well ahead: the National Restaurant Association called Mother's Day "the most popular holiday of the year to eat at restaurants" in its 2023 release, when 40% of adults planned to use one (NRA). But a college-town pizzeria, a brunch spot and a steakhouse have very different busy weeks. Look back at last year's sales by week and mark the real peaks and troughs first.

Plan backwards from each date. For a big occasion, tell guests two to three weeks ahead, which means the menu and pricing are decided a month ahead, and the photos before that. Spend your effort on the troughs you can fill as well as the peaks you'd fill anyway: a full Mother's Day may need better logistics, not more marketing.

Search for how much a restaurant should spend on marketing and you'll find wildly different answers. Lightspeed notes that some professionals suggest "as little as three percent of revenue, others as much as 30%" (Lightspeed), and one FSR Magazine author recommends 12 to 18% for an established restaurant, without citing a source for it (FSR). Neither cites data on what restaurants actually spend, and we found no reliable published benchmark.

Set those beside what restaurants really keep. The National Restaurant Association's median income before taxes for 2024 was 2.8% of sales for full-service restaurants and 4.0% for limited-service (NRA). A budget of even 5% of sales is more than a typical restaurant's whole profit, so it has to bring in more than it costs, quickly. That's why we budget from the bottom up: list what each job needs, in money and hours, then ask what it must bring back.

The template's Budget sheet does the adding up. Your own time isn't on it, so note that separately: for most owners it's the largest cost of all. And check what a point of sales is worth to you. On the calculator's example month of $80,000 in sales, one point is worth $9,600 a year, which puts a marketing line in perspective.

Start paid ads with a small fixed amount you can measure and stop. Spend more only on what you can show is bringing in orders, bookings or catering inquiries.

Pick a date, such as the first Monday, and give it half an hour. Fill in the numbers, compare them with last month and the same month last year, and decide one thing to change. Restaurant demand is seasonal, so last year's month is the fairer comparison. If a number hasn't moved after 90 days of real effort, change the tactic rather than the budget. Keep the plan short enough that this stays easy; if nobody opens it, it's too long.

Download the template, then spend an afternoon on your numbers. Pick one goal. Check that your Google hours and order link are right, because that's where the plan starts anyway. If you'd like a second opinion on where to begin, the free restaurant audit looks at your Google profile, reviews, website and ordering, and tells you the first three things we would fix. We sell the work of running this, so the audit is how we introduce ourselves; the template is yours whatever you decide.