A quick search online turns up many ideas for restaurant promotion. But do they work? It’s a shame to spend your hard-earned money and time on a promotion strategy that is doomed from the start. The following 3 promotion ideas have been proven to work for others and will work for you too.

1. Create a fan page on Facebook. Facebook is often the most visited site on the Internet (it goes back and forth between first and second with Google). Facebook allows you to create a page where you can collect followers and promote your ideas and your restaurant.

The way to promote your restaurant using Facebook is to create some kind of contest that people want to join and want to share with their friends. Consider “free ribs for a year” if you are a rib restaurant. That’s something people in your community can really get involved in and share with their friends. The key is that visitors to your Facebook page can only enter the contest after they have liked your page. This gives you an immediate boost in traffic to your page and restaurant and a long-term asset as you can continue to promote your restaurant to all of your new Facebook fans.

2. Formed a strategic alliance. With this restaurant promotion idea, the key is to find a business in your community that has a similar clientele to yours, but isn’t a direct competitor. For example, if you own a fancy restaurant, you might consider partnering with a local luxury car dealer.

You can arrange for the auto dealer to give a $50 gift certificate to your restaurant with each qualifying test drive. Chances are, the test-driver isn’t coming alone and spending more than $200 at your restaurant. The key is not what you do for the first meal, but keeping these customers for life. And there’s no need to stop at the luxury car dealership, why not add jewelers, dentists and more? The possibilities are endless.

3. Create and mail a customer newsletter. People want to feel like they belong in your restaurant, and regular communication is key to fostering that sense of belonging and increasing return visits. The key to creating a newsletter is to make it interesting (personal is best), consistent (once a month works well), and contain a call to action. The newsletter should reflect the personality of the restaurant and present a special offer to the reader if they take action and call for reservations right away. Regular communication sprinkled with special offers is a great way to promote your restaurant.

There you have 3 restaurant promotion ideas that really work. The key, of course, is to do something with them and put them to work for you and your restaurant.