Marketing with
Delicious Results
We are Restaurant & Hospitality Advertising Experts
It takes more than great food for restaurants to become successful and stay that way. It takes effective and efficient restaurant advertising to make sure the market understands your brand, what you offer, and puts you on the top of their “Must Eat” dining list. Redroc Austin has excelled in restaurant and hospitality marketing for nearly 30 years. We have partnered with established brands and new clients who come to us with just an idea. We’ve helped them with a concept, naming, audience building, and site development before opening. We’ve even come up with menu ideas!
Once it’s time to open the doors, we can leverage design, audio, video, food photography, social media marketing, email marketing, digital advertising, traditional advertising… any way to drive revenue. We understand fast food, QSR, full-service and high-end restaurant challenges. With experience on 50+ restaurants, chains, and hotel/hospitality brands, we know the formulas, the numbers, how to budget, and how to build a marketing plan that drives results for restaurants, group events, catering, delivery and beyond.
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Restaurant Marketing Capabilities
We make the cash register ring
Through ideation, branding and design, email marketing, food photography, social media, and proprietary digital media tactics, Redroc has helped scores of restaurants succeed over the past 3 decades. Our experienced team of restaurant and hospitality marketing experts understands the needs of the hospitality industry, and we’ve built a proven system for maximizing results for restaurants of all types.
Restaurant Branding
In the crowded restaurant market, a brand has to stand out. It has to mean something, and very quickly speak to the consumer about what they should expect. We help build brands from scratch and revitalize old brands with design, web sites, photos, video and on-site elements.
Media & Advertising
From the multi-unit chain to the single fine-dining experience, we know the tactics that work to advertise restaurants. From traditional media like TV and outdoor to the most technical cell phone tracking advertising, we have many tools in our media kit.
Web Sites
A great restaurant/hospitality web site balances your need for SEO with creating an optimal user experience. We understand that balance. Our Redroc team has built many web sites for restaurants, from fine dining to fast food. We know how to work with your POS system, how to drive delivery or group orders, and how to best target groups and events. The foundation of your marketing plan is your web site, and we build solid foundations.
Social Media
From organic social media management and community engagement to paid social advertising, our social media team builds creative and manages campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and more. We understand how to build brands and drive visits.
Proprietary Targeting
Redroc has created a number of proprietary digital targeting strategies to help restaurants, using first-party data, geo-targeting and mobile ID technology to drive specific features such as brunch, happy hour and group events.
Unmatched Creative
Our vast experience in this category has trained our team to unmatched in food photography and video, social creative, branding and other creative assets used needed for restaurant and hospitality clients. Just check out our featured work.
Services
Redroc is a full-service sit-down 9 course experience in marketing restaurants
Redoc is a full-service marketing agency and has developed a great number of tactics and strategies designed to successfully restaurants. We’re always trying to out-perform ourselves as new marketing ideas and technologies become available. A sampling of our services include:
STRATEGY
BUDGETING
BRANDING
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
WEB DESIGN
CREATIVE SERVICES
FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING
MENUS & PRINT COLLATERAL
DIGITAL ADVERTISING
EMAIL MARKETING
SEARCH MARKETING
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Iron Cactus Gets Social
01
The Challenge
Stand out among the crowd.
Texas is home to over 15,000 Mexican restaurants. Iron Cactus Mexican Grill & Margarita Bar opened in Austin in 1996, long before Austin became one of the hottest culinary cities in the country. The Iron Cactus story began when the owners restored a historic, turn of a century building on 6th Street in downtown Austin. A second location in San Antonio followed, opening right next to the Selena bridge on the famous River Walk.
The mission was to create a warm, friendly and unique environment and provide guests with the best food and drinks. Their menu features fresh margaritas and a unique approach to creating bold and flavorful Mexican dishes that has stood the test of time.
But with over 900 Mexican restaurants in Austin and over 1,400 in San Antonio – how do you stand out among competitors to both locals and tourists?
02
Our approach
Elevate Social Media.
Social media advertising is becoming increasingly important as part of your overall marketing strategy, especially in the restaurants and hospitality category. It plays a huge role in showing visitors a quick overview of what they can expect at your restaurant – from food, to drinks, location and the overall experience.
We knew that we needed to elevate our social media and make our restaurant a “must visit” after viewing our social content. We started the process by focusing on what we were doing that was already successful for Iron Cactus – our colorful food photography, clean presentation and inviting locations. We focused on capturing new assets of menu items and cocktails, ensuring that all imagery is branded/ownable.
People tend to scroll through social media very quickly, so we also needed a way to make our content more recognizable to our audience. We accomplished this by adding design elements to our content that tied back to our website and other advertising. These elements included the addition of bold colors, modern and textual patterns, and stacked and creative typography.
Staying on top of social trends was also a key step. The increase of “meme culture” in social provided opportunity to incorporate funny and relatable content. With the rise of reels and short form video content across social, we launched a TikTok account and expanded the number of videos we produce each month. Video content included a focus on ingredients, cocktail highlights and playful content that experimented with music, voice and visuals.
03
The Results
Increased engagement.
The changes we made to our social content – from expanding our video content, capitalizing on social trends and staying consistent to our branding – enabled us to successfully grow our social media audience. Below are some metrics we have seen increases in from Spring 2019 through 2024.
Insights + Learnings
3 Ways to Shoot Food Photography on a Shoestring Potato Budget
Shooting your own food photography and video can be intimidating. Here are a few tips that can help you be successful if you are determined to DIY!
Tourist Marketing for Restaurants
Restaurant marketing is a challenge and targeting tourists as a restaurant can be even more challenging, as for the most part, you only get one visit from a tourist! Read on for tips and techniques to build customers before they visit and while in town.
Restaurant Marketing: Should More Ad Budgets Shift to Radio? | Pixels + Points 06
Episode 06: Join Matt and Susie on Pixels + Points as they uncover the secrets of effective restaurant marketing, from radio’s ROI to the latest digital trends for QSRs!