Marketing

How to fix restaurant marketing post pandemic

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October 12, 2021

Driving incremental revenue has become harder than ever for restaurant brands. Traditional mass marketing techniques are missing a lot of customers, and for the ones they do reach, they are often missing the mark.

What's a restaurant marketer to do?

A panel of restaurant marketing experts offered an hour's worth of tips during a webinar, "Is restaurant marketing broken? Find out what is working and the techniques needed to drive growth," sponsored by Mobivity Inc.

The panel included Jamie Turner, an internationally recognized author university professor and management consultant; Deena McKinley, chief marketing officer at Papa Gino's Pizzeria and D'Angelo Grilled Sandwiches; and Chuck Moxley is senior vice president of marketing at Mobivity. Elliot Maras, editor of Kiosk Marketplace, moderated the webinar.

"Prime time network TV viewership is down," Turner said, citing a recent survey. In addition, "28% of digital ads are clicked on by bots." In addition, 34% of consumers say the ads are inappropriate or irrelevant, while 84% said the ads create a bad impression.

Research also found 93% of QSR ad spent went to TV and radio. A listener poll during the webinar found most are funneling their marketing funds into digital.

"The more focused you can get and the more personalized you can get, the better off you're going to be with the entire campaign," Moxley said.

Brands need to embrace one-to-one marketing, Moxley said.

"You're reaching the people that are more likely to buy your product and you're being more precise in how you do it," he said.

A Mobivity study found text marketing subscribers visit stores 44% more frequently than non-subscribers, Moxley said.

After a customer joins a text marketing program, their frequency and spend rises by 23% within the first year. In addition, 96% of subscribers remain in the text program from 90 days, compared to 66% for email and 21% for apps, while 90% stayed in the program after two years.

The average text subscriber generated $12.15 in incremental revenue during the first six months.

McKinley, a text message marketing Mobivity client for three years, said her company launched the program after seeing other brands have success with text message marketing.

"Food is a real impulse business, and you want to be on the go when people are on the go and be ready to be top of mind when they're ready to make their decisions about what they want to eat," she said.

"If you find a good offer and the offer works, you won't need to reinvent the offer," she said. "You don't have to figure out what different offer to keep sending. You just have to know how to make it relevant and to which group of people you need to make it relevant for."

Data ownership is another benefit a text message marketing program can provide, McKinley said.

"We really need to have our own first party data to be able to understand our guests and be able to market to them ourselves and have some owned channels that we control," McKinley said.

Mobile market messaging offers an opportunity to be distinctive, the panelists agreed. It allows the operator encourage more digital downloads, highlight new products, feature videos, promote contests and giveaways, and promote live events and sponsorships.

To view the webinar, click here.