How Restaurants can use ChatGPT for Marketing

Fast food. Delivery. Curbside. So many options. How can restaurants stand out, get more customers… stay open?

Marketing and advertising are fearsome. Maybe you’re a business person running a restaurant or a chef. Maybe a one-person marketing team for the restaurant and you’re trying to do everything at once.

Help is here. AI might still seem intimidating, but check out all of the ways that you can use new tools like ChatGPT to actually improve your website, advertising, and even your menu descriptions. 

What is ChatGPT? #

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot trained on massive amounts of data on the internet. The training data includes a wide variety of topics from books, articles, and websites. Everything on Wikipedia. The New York Times. Even Reddit. 

As a result, it has a versatile ability, from writing poetry and songs to explaining complex subjects. You may have heard that it can even create recipes. Don’t worry, it’s not perfect. You won’t be out of a job soon.

But using ChatGPT is straightforward and similar to texting. On the ChatGPT website, you can type and submit a text. The text can be an instruction or a question. ChatGPT will try its best to answer or complete the instruction. The text that you send to ChatGPT is commonly referred to as a prompt. 

Although ChatGPT is impressive, it cannot read your mind.

ChatGPT may misunderstand your text and intention. So it’s essential to be clear and specific on your prompt. Craft it carefully to get the wanted result. A bad prompt can result in nonsense or very artificial text. And a good prompt can give a quality output indistinguishable from humans.

Luckily, many experts have experimented with ChatGPT and crafted effective prompts that yield remarkable results. In this article, we will use the proven prompts from AIPRM’s prompt library to help us in restaurant marketing.

You can learn more about writing effective ChatGPT prompts in this article:
How to Write Effective ChatGPT Prompts

Benefits of ChatGPT for restaurant marketers #

With ChatGPT versatility, restaurant marketers can use ChatGPT in many ways. You can write catchy captions for your food posts on social media. Write helpful blog posts highlighting your restaurant. And create the perfect description on your Google Business Profile.

ChatGPT can do all of these almost instantly and even match your voice and tone with AIPRM’s help. Hence, saving a massive amount of time for the users. We’ll dive deeper and show examples of the prompts and the results.

How to Build An Effective Restaurant Marketing Plan with ChatGPT #

• Are you going to develop a presence on TikTok? 
• Are you the only restaurant in the area to offer outdoor seating? 
• Do older folks come to your early bird hours?

Your advertising. Your website. Your social media. They all need messaging that speaks to the people you want to come and dine at your establishment. 

ChatGPT can help you figure out who those people are, what they like (to eat, ambiance, etc.), and how you can persuade them to make a reservation.

Creating a digital marketing strategy #

Let’s assume we have a fictional Thai food restaurant named Thai Spice in New York City. 

We’ll use this AIPRM prompt: Business Development & Digital Marketing Strategy.

Pro-tip: If you need help installing AIPRM, read the guide: How to Install AIPRM. 

With the prompt, you can specify your restaurant’s name and location. You can also add any keywords related to your restaurant.

Let’s see the strategy that ChatGPT suggests:

Then it breaks down the digital marketing and social plan…

This plan can be a great starting point for your restaurant. Is it fully fleshed out? Not completely. And you know the nuances of your business. But a prompt output like this can put you on the right track.

It’s even more useful if you don’t have a plan and have never made one before.

Setting clear marketing objectives #

We can use ChatGPT to create SMART marketing goals for our restaurant. A SMART goal is a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

For a restaurant that might look like reservations from our email campaign or increase the average order value by 10% in August. We want 1000 reservations this week. (We can dream, right?)

But the AIPRM prompt can help get you organized with your marketing goals.

AIPRM Prompt: “S.M.A.R.T. Goals for Digital Marketing Plan”

Input:

• Business Name: Thai Spice
• Business Description: Located in the heart of New York City, Thai Spice offers an authentic culinary journey into the rich traditions of Thai cuisine. Our menu is a blend of classic dishes and modern twists, prepared by skilled chefs using fresh ingredients. With a warm and inviting ambiance, Thai Spice provides a perfect blend of flavors and experiences, transporting diners straight to the streets of Bangkok.
• Business Objective: More customers, increase sales, improve reputation
• Digital Platforms: Instagram, Google Business Profile, Email Newsletter

The prompt we use above is a general prompt people can use across industries. Suppose you want responses that are more specific to the restaurant industry.

In that case, you can use the prompt forking feature to modify the prompt.

Learn more about the forking feature here.

Identifying your target audience #

Why do we need to identify a target audience?

Let’s look at an example. A BBQ joint will naturally have a different customer base and target audience than a vegetarian salad bar. Vegan people will probably visit the vegetarian bar. So, tailoring your marketing to resonate more with vegans may help you attract more customers. 

With ChatGPT, you can quickly identify the audience that would most likely be your customer. It can describe various details of the target audience and even create a customer persona.

AIPRM Prompt: “Buyer Personas & Target Audience PRO”

Input: Thai Food Restaurant in New York City

What about marketing channels and strategy?

Creating a Brand Persona with ChatGPT #

Brand persona sets a consistent style and values across all marketing materials. When this brand persona resonates with your target audience, it becomes essential in shaping a memorable brand. For example, Hell’s Kitchen relates greatly to thrill seekers and casual food critics. The brand gives the feeling of being courageous and inspiring because of Gordon Ramsay’s personality.

While Mcdonald’s evokes a family-friendly personality. ChatGPT can assist you by recommending a brand persona that aligns your restaurant’s values with your target audience.

Completely starting from scratch? Like you don’t even have a name yet? There’s a prompt for that.

AIPRM prompt: Brand Creator

You can specify the target audience and the target’s goals.

Main Target Group: Thai cuisine enthusiast and health-conscious food lover in New York City
The goal: eating diverse and healthy Thai food
Business idea: healthy Thai food restaurant in new york city

The prompt suggests a suitable brand name based on your goals and audience. So it is ideal if you are still in the business ideation phase or looking to rebrand.

There are some great suggestions here. What about Empathy Mapping and Positioning Strategy?

A concrete positioning statement and a starting point for your website copy:

How Restaurant Marketers Can Craft Content with ChatGPT #

ChatGPT can be useful in crafting various types of content, including blog posts, website copy, call-to-actions (CTAs), and AI-generated images.

How to write blog posts and articles about your restaurant topics #

ChatGPT can write informative and engaging blog posts about your restaurant’s offerings and topics of interest. You can write about a new menu. Or maybe an upcoming live show at your restaurant. If you don’t have the topic in mind, you can even use ChatGPT to decide on the titles and content schedule that would be best for your niche.

AIPRM prompt: “E-E-A-T Niche Authority SEO Strategy Blog Post Generator”.

Input: Italian pasta fine dining restaurant in London

Then, you can use this prompt to write each article based on the title:

AIPRM Prompt: Human Written |100% Unique |SEO Optimized Article

Input: Decadent Deserts to Complement Your Pasta

This is a great outline for the article, let’s see what the actual writing looks like.

Okay! This is great. And as a restauranteur, you might be able to level up this post with your own images of these delicious desserts.

How to develop website copy and landing pages for a restaurant #

Landing pages for your restaurant are crucial for establishing your digital presence and attracting customers.

Nowadays, people will check out your restaurant on their phones before going. So, it’s important to have general info like menu, opening time, amenities, and promotions on your site.

Using ChatGPT, you can optimize the copy on your website to be SEO-friendly.

AIPRM Prompt: Website Content Creation | SEO Friendly Updated

Input:

• Business name: Patriot’s Pint
• Description: Nestled in the heart of the city, Patriot’s Pint offers a classic American pub experience, echoing the country’s rich traditions. With a curated selection of locally brewed beers, a menu bursting with hearty American favorites, and an ambiance that marries rustic charm with modern comfort, Patriot’s Pint is where stories are shared, memories are made, and great times are always on tap.
• Keywords: Best American pub near me, Local craft beer selection, Traditional American pub food

We even get some great About Us content.

Now, ChatGPT is pulling purely from the information that we’ve provided. If you want to add or change anything, it’s a smart move to review first before putting anything on your website.

In this example, we didn’t tell ChatGPT that there were live music nights. We appreciate the suggestion ChatGPT, but that’s not on our radar.

Additionally, as you use AIPRM more often, you can set up Multiple Custom Profiles to include any information about your restaurant so ChatGPT already has that info added to any AIPRM Prompt.

Crafting compelling call-to-actions (CTAs) #

Suppose you need more compelling CTAs for your marketing materials. Create more effective CTAs that encourage customers to take action, such as making reservations or placing orders.

AIPRM prompt: Call to Action (CTA) Generator

Input: Mexican tacos fast food restaurant in Bali

These are pretty compelling. Want to take a deep dive into the best ways to build CTAs?

Read more: How to Generate CTAs with ChatGPT

Creating Midjourney prompts for AI-generated images for your restaurant #

ChatGPT can only generate text. However, there are several AI image-generation services that you can use to create images for your marketing content. You can create thumbnails for your blog posts. Use the images for your landing page, e.g. happy customer photos. Or even use your restaurant images as the seed/initial image to personalize it further. MidJourney is one of the most popular services for image generation. Similar to ChatGPT, these AI models take a prompt as the input. The quality of the prompt is crucial to get the desired image. Fortunately, you can use ChatGPT to generate the prompts that would yield quality images. 

AIPRM Prompt: Photography-like Midjourney (v5) PROMPT Maker

Input: New York Style Pepperoni Pizza Slice

Once you get the prompts, you can use them in MidJourney to generate the images.

Let’s see what we can get in Midjourney with this prompt:

Read More: Best Practices for Using ChatGPT for Content Creation

Improving SEO with ChatGPT #

There are three key ways that you can use ChatGPT to improve your restaurant’s SEO effort:

Optimize Your Google Business Profile #

The first is optimizing your Google Business Profile to be more informative and SEO-friendly. This next prompt can identify target keywords, write business descriptions, and suggest services that should be added to your profile.

AIPRM Prompt: Optimize Your Google Business Profile (GBP)

Let’s try this out with a fictional Sushi Restaurant (Thanks ChatGPT).

Input:

Restaurant Name: Sakura Blue Ocean Sushi

Location: Newport Beach, California

Concept and Specialties: At Sakura Blue Ocean Sushi, we offer a unique blend of traditional Japanese sushi and coastal Californian flavors, capturing the essence of the ocean that surrounds the scenic Newport Beach. As a beachfront establishment, our restaurant boasts panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean, ensuring a dining experience that is both gastronomically and visually delightful.

Menu Highlights:

1. Golden State Roll – Fresh California avocado, crab meat, and cucumber topped with seared Yellowtail, jalapeño, and a drizzle of lemon-infused olive oil.
2. Pacific Sunset Nigiri Set – A selection of the day’s freshest catches, from Bluefin Tuna to Sweet Shrimp, each piece brushed with our house-special soy glaze and garnished with edible gold leaf.
3. Newport Dream Sashimi Platter – A lavish platter of thinly-sliced fresh fish, including Toro, Salmon, Kingfish, and Scallop, paired with exotic garnishes such as truffle oil, gold caviar, and microgreens.

Unique Selling Points:

1. Beachfront Dining: Every table offers a spectacular view of the Newport Beach shoreline, allowing guests to dine while watching the sun dip below the Pacific horizon.
2. Chef’s Counter: For sushi aficionados, the exclusive chef’s counter provides an interactive experience where diners can watch our skilled sushi chefs in action and even customize their orders.
3. Sake and Wine Pairing: We boast an extensive selection of premium sakes and Californian wines, with knowledgeable sommeliers to help pair your sushi choices with the perfect beverage.
4. Sustainable Seafood: We prioritize sourcing sustainable and locally-caught seafood, ensuring the highest quality while promoting environmental responsibility.

Keyword Research #

The AIPRM Prompt “Keyword Generator” on the other hand can generate a list of keywords related to your restaurant.

AIPRM Prompt: Keyword Generator

Input: Deli in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Generating meta tags and descriptions #

A beautiful image of your food entices someone to visit you. A beautiful meta description entices you to click through to the website. 

Improving your meta tags and descriptions can improve your click-through rate. Meta titles further increase the visibility of your blog post and website on search engines like Google. Meta tags are like short messages that tell search engines what a webpage is about. They are hidden in the web page’s code and are not visible on the actual page. These messages help search engines understand the topic of the webpage. So they can show it to people who are looking for that kind of information.

You can use the AIPRM Prompt “5x meta title and meta description” to generate the meta title and descriptions based on the title of your article.

AIPRM Prompt: 5x meta title and meta description

Input: Hawaiian Restaurant Dishes

How a Restaurant can use ChatGPT for Reputation Management #

It sometimes takes your employees a lot of time and stress to request and manage customer reviews. ChatGPT can help automate these tasks. Here are several ways ChatGPT can assist:

Asking for Reviews via email #

Using ChatGPT, you can automatically draft professional and courteous emails requesting customers’ feedback and reviews. Let’s rewrite our poorly written email into professional ones.

AIPRM Prompt: Polish Up Your Emails Before Hitting Send

Input: Can you give a review of your experience at our restaurant: Taste of Asia on Google?

Pro-Tip: You can still make edits. In this example, you’d want to include a link to your Google Business Profile so they know where to leave the review.

Responding to reviews in a timely and professional manner #

In addition to asking for reviews, ChatGPT can assist in responding to those reviews. The AIPRM Prompt “Customer Review Response Bot (Bulk)” enables you to create the responses in bulk.

AIPRM Prompt: Customer Review Response Bot (Bulk)

Input: [I love the food at Johnny Rocket’s restaurant!][The service is top notch.][The price was affordable][Best Hot Dogs in Jersey]

Crafting responses to address negative reviews #

If you don’t know how to handle negative reviews. Let ChatGPT do it for you. For example, here’s a prompt to respond to a bad review regarding late service.

AIPRM Prompt: Customer Review Response Generator

Input: Service at Del Ray’s Bistro was really bad. Food did not arrive after 30 minutes. 

How Restaurants can use ChatGPT for Email Marketing  #

Like managing reviews, ChatGPT can also assist you in writing emails for your marketing campaign. You can even do an A/B test on the subject lines and content.

Utilizing ChatGPT for email marketing #

Using ChatGPT, you can consistently compose engaging newsletters that keep customers informed about your restaurant’s latest offers and events. Generate the newsletter for your restaurant with this prompt

AIPRM Prompt: Professional Newsletter Generator

Input: Nevada Nights Steakhouse – best ways to prep and eat steak

A/B testing subject lines and content with ChatGPT #

A/B testing in email marketing is when you send two slightly different emails to a small group of people. The reason is to see which one gets better results, like more people opening the email or clicking on links. Once you know which version performs better, you can send that one to the rest of your email list to get the best outcome.

This next prompt allows you to generate alternative lines for A/B testing based on your audience, business, and offers.

AIPRM Prompt: Cold Email Subject Lines | 70%+ Opens

Input: delicious southern comfort food in Alabama, fried chicken for your soul, grand opening offer

Read More: How to Use ChatGPT for Email Marketing Campaigns

How Restaurants can build their Social Media Presence with ChatGPT #

With the help of ChatGPT, restaurants can enhance their social media game. You can utilize it for scheduling and posting content across various platforms. Hence, ensuring a consistent and engaging online presence. It can assist in crafting captivating captions tailored to resonate with your target audience. 

Moreover, ChatGPT enables restaurant owners to respond promptly to comments and social media direct messages. Thus, fostering meaningful interactions with followers.

By leveraging ChatGPT’s capabilities, restaurants can establish an active social media presence, ultimately driving customer engagement and loyalty.

How to Leverage ChatGPT for social media scheduling and posting #

Quickly generate a posting schedule with tailored captions according to the platform and your keywords.

AIPRM Prompt: Social Media Schedule

Input:

• Denver craft beers
• Smoked meats Denver
• Boulder Brews
• Colorado barbecue
• Denver BBQ joint
• Craft breweries Denver
• Colorado smoked meats
• Denver brewpubs
• Boulder Barbecue
• Artisanal beer Denver

How to Create Social Media Content for Restaurants with ChatGPT #

If you want to create a more detailed single post for all platforms, use this:

AIPRM Prompt: 30 Social Media Posts & Image Suggestions With 1 Click

Input: Bayou Bites is a restaurant that makes Cajun & Creole cuisine in New Orleans, Louisiana

Writing Instagram Captions #

For Instagram specifically: you can also use a prompt more tailored to a visual social platform to generate the caption.

AIPRM Prompt: Instagram post description / caption generator

Input: A sunset view over Miami’s coastline, with a table set at night. The table has an array of Spanish small plates, from albondigas to patatas bravas, next to candlelight. A pair of wine glasses filled with sangria. In the distance, the signage of “Luna Mar Tapas Bar” is visible.

Responding to Comments and Engaging with Followers #

Need to generate replies to comments or messages?

Here’s a prompt you can use:

AIPRM Prompt: Social Media Engagement Reply

Input: Hi, I’d like to book a table tomorrow. What is the opening time for Golden Gate Dim Sum Palace restaurant and when is the least crowded?

Sometimes ChatGPT doesn’t have the necessary information to answer the customer’s question. Like the example above, ChatGPT doesn’t know the opening of the restaurant and the least crowded time and makes up the answer. In this case, simply edit the text and replace it with the correct information. 

Read More: Using ChatGPT To Create a Social Media Strategy

Overcoming Challenges with ChatGPT Implementation #

There are several considerations you should take when using ChatGPT in your business:

Dealing with language barriers and cultural nuances #

ChatGPT can translate text into another language. However, it may face challenges with cultural nuances during translation. Cultural differences in language usage and context can lead to misunderstandings or inappropriate responses. Hence, reviewing the output carefully is ideal to avoid offensive remarks or misinterpretations. Considering that, you can still use a prompt like this to effectively translate your text:

AIPRM Prompt: Best Translator | Translate any Language

Input: “Hi there! We’re thrilled that you want to show your support at Thai Spice restaurant! 😄 Tomorrow is going to be an amazing day. Thai Spice opens at 11:00 AM, and we recommend arriving around 2:00 PM for a quieter and more relaxed dining experience. Looking forward to having you join us and enjoy some delicious Thai cuisine! 🍜🍛 Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions. Cheers! 🌶️”

Handling Potential biases and Ethical considerations #

Since ChatGPT learns from vast datasets collected from the internet, it may inadvertently reflect existing biases in the data. These biases can lead to generating content that perpetuates stereotypes or discriminates against certain groups. 

As regular users of ChatGPT, here are some ways we can avoid biases and unethical practices:

• Be mindful of prompts: avoid biased prompts.
  For example: Use “Write a post about pros and cons of eating pasta over burger ” instead of  “Write a post about how eating pasta is much healthier than a burger”.
• Review and edit the outputs from ChatGPT
• Avoid discriminatory language
• Stay informed on the guidelines and ethics of using AI-generated content
• Report inappropriate responses in ChatGPT

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) #

What is ChatGPT, and how does it work for restaurant marketing?
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can generate human-like text responses. For restaurant marketing, ChatGPT can assist in many ways, such as content creation, social media engagement, and customer interactions.

**Is ChatGPT suitable for small restaurant businesses? **

Yes, ChatGPT is especially suitable for small restaurant businesses. As small business owners, you tend to have limited staff. ChatGPT is like having an army of experts that can complete various tasks. With ChatGPT, you can do more while saving a huge amount of time and labor costs. Visit the guide below for more information on using ChatGPT for small businesses.

Read more: The Complete Guide to ChatGPT for Small Businesses

How can ChatGPT improve social media performance?

ChatGPT can improve social media performance by generating compelling content, crafting captivating captions, and assisting in quick responses. This helps businesses maintain an active and engaging social media presence. 

What are the potential risks of using ChatGPT in marketing?

The potential risks of using ChatGPT for marketing are the generation of biased or inappropriate content, which can harm a brand’s reputation. It could also misunderstand what people are asking and give wrong answers, which might upset customers. To avoid these problems, it’s important to review the content that ChatGPT produces carefully.

Have Fun Increasing the Visibility of Your Restaurants with AI #

In conclusion, ChatGPT offers restaurants a powerful tool to build an effective marketing plan and strengthen their online presence.

From content ideation to SEO optimization and social media engagement, ChatGPT’s capabilities allow small restaurant businesses with minimal labor force to save huge amounts of time.

Remember that prompts are crucial in getting quality responses from ChatGPT. Hence, using the free proven prompts from AIPRM can help tremendously in getting the desired responses. You can install AIPRM here.