It’s Time and energy to MEASURE: Creating and Executing a Menu for Success With Location-Based Marketing

The restaurant industry has undergone an enormous upheaval because of the pandemic. As consumer options and demand shifted, businesses were forced to adapt and prioritize new technologies and alternate ordering experiences that could allow them to provide on customer expectations. Adopting a digital-first environment quickly became important and mobile technology is playing an intrinsic role.

Probably the most successful brands seeing probably the most growth and customer loyalty are people with implemented omnichannel strategies blending the digital channels with offline channels. Enhancements in off-premise services for pickup and curbside continue steadily to remain on leading burner and location technology is really a main ingredient with regards to successful implementation and measurement around these efforts.

How do restaurants bridge the gap between your digital and physical worlds and gauge the impact?

Feeding Consumer APPetites

Having a mobile app is arguably probably the most important ingredients to any restaurant’s mobile strategy. Even though many brands will work with third-party delivery services – out necessarily but additionally awareness – a lot more are buying their O&O apps. This enables for brands to get a direct relationship with customers, and subsequently, create more personalized, frictionless engagements.

Among the key functionalities within many QSR and fast casual mobile apps nowadays is the capability to order ahead and choose curbside pickup. This puts the client in the driver’s seat and removes the reliance and uncertainties on timeliness of delivery provided by third parties. That is precisely where in fact the value of location data is necessary. By understanding whenever a customer places an order, if they’ve left to choose it up, so when they arrive onsite, restaurants can deliver that hot, fresh, and ready experience that customers attended to anticipate.

Slicing and Dicing: Segmenting Customers Predicated on Real-World Behaviors

During the past, brands had to focus on different customer types with little understanding of their ordering preferences. Now, they could separate out customers predicated on how they order, where they order, what they order, their loyalty status, and much more.

They are able to even break it into off-premise preferences such as for example delivery, curbside, walk-up windows, drive-thru, or mobile order ahead. At first glance, this might not mean much, however when you take into account the impact that personalization might have, catering to different personas is actually a make or break with regards to customer loyalty.

Say for example you’re trying out a fresh breakfast item in a particular region available limited to curbside or mobile app orders. Geotargeting is a superb tactic to operate a vehicle awareness, mobile app usage, and curbside pickup traffic. You can start to answer questions such as for example:

• Has there been an uptick waiting for you traffic during the early morning?
• Is this attracting customers that have a tendency to order from the dinner or lunch menu?
• What lengths are customers driving because of this new menu item?
• Has there been a reduction in the share of visits to competitor locations?

All this could be measured via geofencing and geo-conquesting technology. Brands may then take these details and retarget subsets of customers predicated on their behaviors sufficient reason for different messaging. They are able to even gather information regarding the client experience via location-triggered exit surveys.

Another possibility is segmenting customers into app users and non-app users for geo-targeted campaigns to operate a vehicle app installs. This all compatible less wasted ad spend and a far more loyal user base. What’s more, this kind of location technology may be used to power omnichannel strategies such as for example email, SMS, and location-based push messaging.

By combining CRM data along with location data, marketers will start to piece together a far more well-rounded picture of these customers and their preferences. So when restaurants pull increased sales through their digital menus they reap the benefits of additional first-party data, stronger customer relationships, and margin expansion.

Upgrading the Off-Premise Experience

In accordance with research from the National Restaurant Association, off-premise traffic composed 70 percent of restaurant traffic industry wide in July 2020, and risen to 80% in July 2021.

Curbside remains among the most highly adopted off-premise services and can be a mainstay because of its convenience. However, not absolutely all curbside experiences will be the same and the difference might have a large effect on client satisfaction. Examine these stats:

• people said wait times longer than four minutes for curbside pickup is too much time
• The common time per order at junk food restaurants in 2020 was 6 minutes – nearly 30 seconds slower than 2019
• The share of consumers that are unwilling to hold back longer than ten minutes for food ordered with a mobile app is 90 percent

These slowdowns cost QSRs typically $32,000 per store each year. Compound that for chains with larger footprints and we’re talking vast sums of dollars per year.

What’s clear? Speed of service is more important than ever before. But how are restaurant’s solving because of this and how are they measuring their efforts in reducing wait times? Sprinkle location insights in to the mix and you also have your answer.

Adding Location Insights to the Menu

Evaluating changes between pre- and post-pandemic visitation (such as for example frequency, day of week, period, dwell time, where they originated from, and where each goes after) can help brands in segmentation and messaging strategies, however they are more than simply a marketing tool, they’re a value increase every aspect of the business enterprise.

Using real-world insights, brands can analyze how effective their strategies come in increasing restaurant visitation – whether that’s for dine-in or various off-premise services. This may even help with decisioning on shrinking down square footage and/or checking locations used limited to pickup (no dining rooms).

Updating restaurant layout and design in addition has been an enormous undertaking through the pandemic. QSR and fast casual chains such as for example Taco Bell, Chipotle, Del Taco among others are building a selection of drive-thru lanes predicated on how customers are ordering and the techniques they are choosing to get their order. Analyzing dwell time metrics by placing beacons in these lanes is an excellent solution to evaluate how effective they’re in accelerating service.

The question for brands expands from “did my location-based marketing efforts work?” to “how are my efforts impacting my store operations?” There’s great value to be drawn from location-derived strategies when viewed beyond only a marketing angle. With location services, brands may bring all of the data together to measure how their cross channel efforts are impacting the complete business.

Creating the best Value

Consumers will continue down the road of least resistance making use of their cell phones acting as a handy remote control for the physical world, offering up unique data insights for restaurants to benefit from now and well in to the future.

As market conditions stay in flux, optimizing marketing efforts and analyzing what’s working via real-time, contextual data allows brands to boost service and develop a more frictionless experience because of their customers.

It ultimately boils down to piecing together all of the different data points – like things that make up a training course – every ingredient, i.e., data touchpoint, is integral to delivering an event that delights.