Article

Mobile strategies should align your customers’ needs with your business goals

Instead of chasing the latest fads, your mobile strategy must add real value to the consumer and enhance their experience at your stores to be successful.

January 12, 2015

By Anke Corbin, SVP of Sales and Marketing, Splick.it

Mobile technology is a very hot topic in business and certainly within the restaurant industry, so having a comprehensive mobile strategy has become a very important initiative for most restaurants. It’s not always easy to figure out what the right mobile strategy is for a restaurant, there is a lot of confusing information out there making it easy to fall into some common traps.

If you’ve decided that having a mobile brand presence is important, the next move is deciding what a good strategy for your business would be. It really depends upon two things: what your customer’s expectations are for your type of business and what your business goals are today and in the future.

Let’s start with customer expectations. Based on recent data, 14 percent of millennials won’t support businesses that don’t have their own mobile app. Another 42 percent said they may consider supporting the business at some point but they will likely complain and have a negative impression about that business.

Research has also shown that there is a big disconnect between what consumers want from an app and what restaurant executives want from an app. Customers typically expect convenience finding a restaurant, to be able to easily contact a restaurant and to see the menu. For sit-down restaurants, they want to be able to reserve a table and for fast casual, QSR and take-out restaurants, they want to be able to order ahead and eliminate waiting in any lines. Many customers want to get relevant and personalized offers and to be rewarded for being a good customer too.

Restaurant execs on the other hand want to be able to communicate with their customers, marketers want to increase social media engagement, increase the frequency of visits, increase the dollars spent and increase their margin. Excecutives also value the ability to streamline operations and to influence behavior of value to the restaurant without giving a discount to customers that would have come to the restaurant anyway.

Before we get into how to best combine customer expectations and business expectations, let’s first talk about what should probably not be driving your mobile strategy. While a bit cheeky, these are all real-life examples:

• Marketing campaign driven. This is an app that’s all about a short term marketing campaign to get more likes and around a single promotion. Very cool spinning burgers, inspirational quotes and cool games won’t keep those Facebook friends coming back for more than a couple of weeks. Is this really where you want to spend your ‘app clout’ with your customers?
• Hype driven. Have you heard of Apple Pay? Apple Pay may be a very sexy way to pay if you have a lot of iPhone users that can be an important part of a larger mobile strategy. Are stored-value cards your hot button? What restaurant wouldn’t like to have a big chunk of cash on hand from unused gift cards? Is beacon important? You really can’t implement beacons without a bigger mobile strategy since you need app users for this to work. Instead of chasing the lastest fads, your mobile strategy must add real value to the consumer and enhance their experience at your stores to be successful.
• Starbucks driven. Give me whatever what Starbucks has. They’re smart so why not do what they do?
• Boss driven. Our boss wants an app, let’s make sure we check that box off.
• Not driven. Mobile? Why would we need mobile? It’s only a fraction of my business. We don’t need new profitable revenue streams and our customers really don’t have mobile phones.  No one really uses their phone to order anything anyway and we love seeing lines at our restaurant, it makes us feel like we are a success.

Customer-Centric Business Goals Approach

Mobile apps should offer ROI and meet your business goals. In order to do that, you have to start with the customer in mind so you get the adoption you’re looking for. If you are a fast casual or QSR restaurant, the foundation of your mobile strategy should probably be the same as the foundation of your overall business strategy. You need to serve great food, fast. That’s what the ‘fast’ and ‘Q’ stand for. A customer focused, user-friendly web and mobile application with easy ordering and pay that integrates smoothly into your operations can make a big impact.  

1. Reduce Friction. A great place to start thinking about your strategy is how to reduce friction and remove customer pain points. Are your customers spending their entire lunch hour waiting in line? Do you make it easy for customers to use their mobile phones by having both native apps and a responsive website? Is your store easy to locate and navigate to? Can a customer easily access your menu on a mobile phone?
2. Increase Relevance. Send your customers only relevant and rewarding push notifications and other marketing messages. Offer mobile only promotions and deals. Make it worth their time to download your apps.
3. Smart Rewards. Reward the right things. A one size fits all rewards program might be easiest to set up and manage but it’s the least effective and may cost you more than the overall value of the entire program.  The ability to truly target your customers, communicate with them in a relevant way and reward behaviors that match up to business goals make mobile so exciting.

If you can align your customers’ needs with your business goals, you’ll be able to create a mobile strategy that’s just right for you.