How Sizzle Dining Drove Thousands of Restaurant Visits with HeyNeighbor
Sizzle Dining partnered with HeyNeighbor to boost local restaurant visits across Southwest Florida through a hyper-local geofencing campaign.
🍽️ Bringing Diners and Local Restaurants Together
Every September, Sizzle Dining celebrates Southwest Florida’s culinary scene with a multi-week dining event featuring dozens of local restaurants.
To expand awareness and boost participation, Sizzle partnered with HeyNeighbor to run a hyper-local digital ad campaign that reached nearby residents and tracked in-person visits to participating restaurants.
🎯 Campaign Goals
- Increase restaurant foot traffic during the event
- Raise awareness of Sizzle Dining among local diners
- Support participating restaurants with measurable advertising results
📍 Strategy
HeyNeighbor deployed a mix of geofencing and display advertising across Naples, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, and surrounding communities.
Targeted locations were surrounded by a custom geofence, allowing the campaign to measure when people who saw an ad later visited a participating location.
The creative mix included both mobile and desktop placements, optimized for awareness, engagement, and measurable foot traffic.
📊 Results at a Glance
| Metric | Result | Insight |
|---|---|---|
| Total Impressions | ~750,000 | Strong regional exposure |
| Unique Reach | ~12,000 | Local diners reached within target areas |
| Verified Restaurant Visits | Nearly 4,000 | Core success metric |
| Visit Rate (Ad Exposure to Visit) | 1.04% | About 1 in 100 ad-exposed users visited a restaurant |
| Efficiency | ~20% better than average | Outperformed standard CPV benchmarks for restaurant campaigns |
How Precision Targeting Drove Above-Average Efficiency
The campaign’s strong performance came from a combination of precise targeting, regional relevance, and timing.
Using mobile location attribution, a “visit” was verified when a device that saw an ad was later detected inside one of the participating restaurants. Because Sizzle Dining focused on a defined event window and specific local neighborhoods, the results were naturally more efficient than those of broader campaigns.
Typical geofencing campaigns for restaurants and local events achieve performance levels that this campaign exceeded by roughly 20%, while efficiency was 70–80% greater than that of larger national or retail efforts.
This demonstrates how hyper-local creative, combined with consistent ad frequency, can translate into real-world visits at exceptional efficiency.
👥 Audience Insights
The campaign reached a balanced audience across genders, with the highest engagement among ages 25–44, particularly 25–34, who accounted for the most verified visits.
This aligns perfectly with Sizzle Dining’s target audience: young professionals, couples, and families exploring new local dining experiences.
📍 Regional Highlights
Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers generated the highest volume of visits, confirming strong awareness in the event’s core footprint. Additional activity in Cape Coral, Estero, and Marco Island reflected healthy regional participation beyond the main metro areas.
🎨 Creative Highlights
Top-performing formats included:
- Mobile Banners (320×50) – Largest reach and click volume
- Leaderboard (728×90) – Strong desktop engagement
- In-Content (300×250) – Best blend of visibility and CTR
These placements worked together to deliver both scale and engagement, keeping the Sizzle Dining message in front of nearby diners across apps and websites.
💡 Key Takeaways
- Thousands of verified restaurant visits during the campaign period
- Above-average efficiency, outperforming restaurant campaign benchmarks by ~20%
- Significant regional impact across Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers
- Most engaged audience aged 25–44, led by women 25–34
- Mobile-first creative mix proved most effective for driving real-world visits
📈 The Bottom Line
“This campaign showed how powerful hyper-local advertising can be when it focuses on the right audience, message, and timing,” said Charlie Rose, Founder of HeyNeighbor.
“Seeing measurable visits to participating restaurants during Sizzle Dining was exciting. It’s proof that local businesses can drive real results both online and offline with the right approach.”
About HeyNeighbor
HeyNeighbor helps local businesses advertise directly to surrounding neighborhoods with transparent pricing, simple tools, and measurable results. Businesses can run ads for as little as $5/day, targeting specific neighborhoods, ZIP codes, or event zones.
