Leveraging your DMO for your Restaurant or Bar

Opening a restaurant or bar in this day and age is a difficult and expensive exercise in perseverance and attention to detail. From design, concept and execution, the month or year long creation of your dream can be taxing. Once you've opened, you need to be busy from the beginning to survive but how do you do that?

Marketing and public relations are usually the last things many first-time restaurateurs contemplate when logos, paint swabs and plate-ware are paramount to opening the doors. Using social media as a primary, somewhat organic way of building brand loyalty and following in the very beginning is a simple and easy way but with the algorithms on platforms such as Facebook becoming harder to build true organic growth, more creative ways of marketing must be used. Enter a very traditional form of marketing, your local DMO or Destination Marketing/Management Organisation.

Your local DMO or Tourism Organisation is one of the untapped marketers for many small, start up restaurants and bars. Most DMO's ask for an annual membership fee that covers their costs in the way of tourist centers, media and content creation and the like. But the biggest advantage of being a member of a local DMO is the new network of journalists, bloggers, writers and influencers that will visit your restaurant or bar in the first year. A significant bump in marketing and PR for a new restaurant.

Most restaurants and bars in small cities aren't able to afford a big city marketing company to get the word out. But utilising your local DMO to help build your business within a symbiotic relationship is a step in the right direction; you want your business to grow and succeed and the your DMO representatives want to showcase the wonderful offerings their town or city has. This relationship can create and build a creative culture that spreads throughout the city and as the old saying goes "A rising tide lifts all boats".