By: Shama Hyder

Marketing is an uncertain science, a mix of luck and intuition, data and experimentation. And, when it comes to restaurant marketing, innovation can come from creative agency minds, restaurateurs with pluck, or franchise corporations that want to give their values, concrete expression. The following seven are a mix of the above. Whether big or small, they each offer a glimpse, or insight, into the best way to promote restaurants, win customer loyalty, and develop a compelling brand.

Think globally, act locally.

Nando’s Peri Peri, a South African-based fast casual chicken chain, entered the Chicago market, with a spirit of generosity and goodwill. Forgoing aggressive promotions and the usual giveaways, the new location set up a temporary pay-what-you-want invitation and donated all monies made to a local nonprofit, endearing itself, in the process, to local residents, both through its kindness and its kickin’ “peri peri” spice. What it lost in profits at the start, it more than made up for with its well-earned reputation as a “good neighbor.”

Turn data into dollars.

Dallas-based Marketing Vitals has a unique value proposition for the restaurants it works with. Through its painstakingly precise analytics software, it offers business consultants, restaurant owners, and national and international restaurant franchise c-suites the chance to turn guess work into certainty, and data into dollars. By offering answers for everything from which servers are high performing to what’s driving traffic and when, they empower restaurants to scale intelligently. For an industry with an infamously low-profit margin (on average, 60 percent of full-service and quick-service operations fail within the first three years), such accuracy can make the difference between living the dream and filing bankruptcy.Make the experience memorable.

Jax Cafe, a well-loved Minneapolis steak house, spends 50 to 60k per year on printing personalized matchbooks for its customers. Given that people are often celebrating special occasions, like prom or anniversaries, at the restaurant, the matchbooks end up being both treasured mementos and reminders that the restaurant was a part of those wonderful memories. What more could a restaurant ask for than to be associated with people’s most joyful events? And in such an elegant and romantic way, much less!

Use technology to create smiles.

At the San Francisco-based “The Melt,” the ordering app comes with a little bonus. When customers sign up for the app, they are also given the option to add their favorite songs into their profile. The next time they go in to pick up an order, their preferred tune is added to the restaurant’s playlist and they’re served their food, along with a side of whatever they love to rock out to. This is personalization taken to a whole new level, and it can mean the difference between a customer and a fan.

It would have been easy for Starbucks to rest on its laurels as a popular spot for out of office business meetings. But rather than taking this traffic for granted, Starbucks created a free plug-in that made it convenient and simple for Microsoft Outlook users to arrange and organize professional powwows at nearby locations. The best marketing strategies are win-wins, and Starbucks’ proactive plug-in saved professionals time while increasing shareholder profits.

Prioritize value-creation over self-promotion.

When B-Dubs TV, Buffalo Wild Wing’ internal TV network, began to recruit high school sports superstars and their supporters to submit clips of epic moves and moments, it transformed from a corporation trying to sell beer and wings to a company invested in the peak experiences of its customer base, which incidentally helped it stand out from all the other businesses selling wings and beer. It was able to capture the powerful sentiments people feel at a sport event — elation, excitement, and investment, and direct them to its brand. Not in an evil genius kind of way, but by supporting high school athletes and their school spirit.

Honesty sells.

Arby’s and its agency, Fallon, were faced with the challenge of reviving a marketing strategy that was simply failing to convert. In a time where many QSRs were striving to include healthier options, like salads and fruit cups, to their menus, they decided that their real strength was meat. By embracing their passion for meat and sharing it in a bold and irreverent way, Arby’s not only came to thrive, but set an example for other similar brands to embrace what made them distinct.

♦ Forbes