Advertising Options for Restaurants at the Delaware Beaches

First: we get it. You probably don’t need us on a Saturday night in July.

If you’ve got a two-hour wait, a packed bar and people circling the block looking for parking, congratulations — marketing is not today’s problem.

The opportunity is October. February. That weird stretch between holiday weekends when you’ve still got staff on payroll, food in the walk-in and plenty of people around town — but now they have choices.

And that market is getting bigger. Sussex County now has 277,140 year-round residents, up 16.8% since 2020. Rehoboth and Dewey actually see more visitation in September and October than May and June.

The customers are here. The question is whether they’re eating with you or somebody else.

Start With the Places People Actually Look for Restaurants

If you’re sitting directly on Rehoboth Avenue with people walking past your door all day, you have an advantage. If you’re tucked into a shopping center, off Route 1, or depending on people actively deciding “where should we eat tonight?”, your digital presence matters a lot more.

1. Yelp

Yes, Yelp. Don’t roll your eyes.

Yelp remains heavily tied to restaurant discovery and high-intent local searches. Yelp reports that 76 million people visit Yelp monthly, 73% of users are 35+, and more than half report household incomes above $100,000.

Claim the page. Use great photos. Keep the menu, hours and information accurate. Monitor reviews. Respond like a human.

2. Google Ads — and Don’t Ignore Bing

Google is obvious. Someone searching “seafood near Rehoboth” is about as qualified a customer as you’re going to get.

But don’t forget Microsoft/Bing. Sussex County is an older market — 32.8% of residents are 65+ — and we routinely see Bing perform well with that audience.

It isn’t Google-sized, but it isn’t irrelevant either. Bing currently accounts for about 12.8% of U.S. desktop search traffic. In campaigns we manage, we’ve often seen Bing clicks come in roughly 30% cheaper than comparable Google clicks.

The boomers have money. Let them click.

3. Social Media: Great Content or Don’t Bother

Restaurants are made for social media. Food. Drinks. People. Entertainment. New dishes. Behind the scenes.

But social is best handled in-house unless you’re willing to pay someone enough to actually create good media.

A $500/month “social media package” isn’t magically producing professional photography, video shoots, editing, Reels and strategy. If somebody on your team already creates great content and you just need help publishing it? Fine. Otherwise, quality production costs money.

And pay for ads. Organic social is increasingly pay-to-play. Even food and beverage brands commonly see only about 4–7% organic Facebook reach.

4. Email: Promote a Reason to Come In

Your email list should know about happy hour, Wednesday specials, prix fixe menus, trivia, live music and whatever else gives somebody a reason to leave the couch in February.

Also get yourself onto local happy hour, restaurant-special and off-season dining lists. You’re borrowing somebody else’s audience instead of always having to build your own.

5. SEO, Backlinks & Local Foodie PR

Your restaurant should appear when people research where to eat before they even arrive at the beach.

That means useful website content, strong local listings and backlinks from relevant local websites. Google specifically confirms that links are a signal used to determine page relevance.

Get featured in local foodie articles, restaurant roundups and guides. Google even supports restaurant “Top Places” lists within search results when they come from legitimate editorial sources.

And Then There’s Delaware Beaches Online

This is where restaurant advertising at the Delaware Beaches gets interesting.

We can photograph your food, create the Reel, feature the special, put it in the newsletter, include it in our off-season restaurant content, link back to your website, build a giveaway, promote it socially, feature you in the DBO app and put paid reach behind the content.

DBO isn’t built around selling you one banner ad or one sponsored post. Depending on your partnership, we can promote your restaurant across multiple parts of the DBO ecosystem:

• Professional photo and video shoots — food, drinks, atmosphere, staff and events.
• Original Reels and social posts — content created specifically for your restaurant, not recycled graphics.
• Stories and timely promotions — specials, events, new menus, openings and last-minute pushes.
• Weekly newsletter placement — alongside the events, specials and information our audience is already looking for.
• Dedicated email campaigns — higher-level partners can get an email focused entirely on their restaurant, promotion or event.
• Happy hour and weekly-special features — especially valuable during the shoulder and off-seasons.
• Restaurant discovery in the DBO app — helping users find places to eat while they’re already at the beach.
• Website banner advertising — ongoing visibility across DelawareBeaches.Online.
• App advertising and sponsor placement — reaching users inside the DBO mobile experience.
• Featured articles and restaurant guides — useful, searchable content that can continue working long after a social post disappears.
• SEO backlinks — links from relevant local content back to your website.
• Sponsored giveaways and contests — putting your restaurant in front of a larger audience while creating engagement around your brand.
• Event promotion — trivia, live music, tastings, holiday events, prix fixe dinners and other reasons to visit.
• Seasonal campaigns — built specifically around slower weeks, shoulder-season traffic or major beach weekends.
• Custom app and website integrations — for larger partners who want more than standard ad placement.
• Paid social amplification — putting additional reach behind content when it makes sense.
• Cross-promotion across channels — one idea can become a Reel, article, newsletter feature, app placement and social campaign instead of living in just one place.

In other words, one partnership can cover content creation, social media, email, web, app exposure, local PR and SEO.

Will Delaware Beaches marketing replace Google, Yelp, your own email list and everything else you’re doing? Probably not. It shouldn’t.

But we’re building DBO to be one of the highest-value local advertising channels available to restaurants at the beach — partly because we’re still new, growing quickly and hungry enough to work for it.

More importantly, we want your business. Give us a piece of the budget. We’ll work to earn more of it.

See our Delaware Beaches restaurant advertising options and let’s figure out what we can create.