Restaurant Marketing in Brighton

Marketing a Restaurant in Brighton

Brighton has the sharpest seasonality of any city we work in. A venue near the seafront can be turning tables away in August and staring at an empty room on a wet Tuesday in February. The answer is not to market harder in summer, when demand arrives on its own, but to build the local audience that keeps the room busy in the months when visitors are not coming.

Visitors and locals are two different campaigns

A day tripper searching for somewhere to eat in Brighton has never heard of you and is choosing on the street from a phone. A local in Hove is choosing between the eight places they already know. The first is won in the map pack and in search results. The second is won with offers, events and a reason to come on a quiet night, usually through Meta ads and email rather than search.

The map pack decides the walk ins

For a venue in the Lanes or North Laine, the three local results Google shows on the map are worth more than anything else on the page, because almost all of that demand is deciding within the next twenty minutes. Winning it comes down to the right primary category, correct opening hours including bank holidays, photographs that show the room busy and a reply under every review.

Plan the quiet months in advance

The work that fills January is done in October. Occasion pages for Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, Sunday roast and set menus need to be live eight to ten weeks before the demand arrives, because that is when people start searching and when Google needs time to rank them.

Be the answer in AI search

When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers where to eat in Brighton or the best vegetarian restaurants in Brighton, it names venues whose details it can read and trust: a menu written as text rather than trapped in a PDF, an address and opening hours that match everywhere they appear, and reviews that are current and answered.

Measured in covers

We separate searches for your venue’s name from searches by people looking for somewhere to eat, and we report on the second group, because that is where new guests come from. Book a free 15 minute strategy call and we will show you which searches your venue is closest to winning.

Questions venues ask us

Do you work with restaurants in Brighton? Yes. We work with restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels across Brighton and Hove and the wider Sussex coast, including the Lanes, North Laine, Kemptown, Hove, the seafront and Shoreham.

Are you based in Brighton? We are based in Kent and work with venues across the UK, including Brighton and the South East. Everything is reported monthly and measured in your own Google accounts, so you see the same numbers we do.

How do you deal with how seasonal Brighton is? We split the year. Summer campaigns target visitors deciding on the day, mainly through local search and the map pack. Autumn and winter campaigns target people who live in Brighton and Hove, with occasions and offers built eight to ten weeks ahead of the demand.

How long does it take to see results? Google Ads and Meta ads can bring bookings within days. Google Business Profile improvements often show within weeks. Competitive organic rankings usually move within three to six months.