They visited your restaurant, have been regularly placing orders online, and seem to be enjoying the content on your restaurant’s social media accounts  -now you want them to stick around, for as long as possible, preferablyy forever!  Well, you’ve got to track, monitor, and leverage their interactions with your brand!

How? Let’s find out.

Behavioral marketing -  the reason why big chains like Dominos, Starbucks, and McDonald's stay successful!  

For any emerging business, loyal customers are a brand’s best friends. If the customers are loyal, they will always choose you over your competitors and won’t be swayed easily. But what makes them loyal? What makes them keep coming back to your brand? Your ability to read their mind, their needs, and expectations when it comes to food!

Behavioral marketing helps you achieve these goals by leveraging tailored, personal and relevant interactions. According to a report by McKinsey, companies that leverage customer data outperform others by 85% in sales growth. As a business, you want to understand who your regulars are and separate them from those who interact with your brand less regularly.

Decoding Behavioral Marketing

Check your email -  do you see a follow-up email from your favorite brand after you’ve made the purchase at their store? Maybe they asked you to leave feedback on the recent purchase, or presented discount coupons for your next visit, or offered an add-on service at half the price to enhance your experience. This is behavioral marketing.  

Behavioral marketing is a powerful tool that interacts with customers based on their previous activities at your store or the website. The strategy uses data like past purchases, browsing history, average order value, time zone, location, and recent searches. Majorly, it’s an automated process that you can take advantage of with the help of various marketing tools available at your disposal.

If you are looking to develop a meaningful relationship with your customers, and drive-in more sales, Behavioural Marketing will help you target different groups of customers with different offers — at the most appropriate times, through their preferred channels.

Ways your business can increase loyalty while benefiting from behavioral marketing

Now that you know what the concept is all about, let’s move ahead and understand how it can benefit your restaurant business. Here’s how you can integrate behavioral marketing in your existing marketing efforts:

Special Day Incentives

Your guest’s special day coming soon? Send them an SMS incentive. Making your customer feel special is the first step towards earning their loyalty. In the hospitality industry, you have this unique opportunity to turn a simple birthday wish into an exclusive sales opportunity.

Sending a message a week before your guest’s birthday showcases that you care about them. Giving a mere 10% incentive can help you close a customer for a lifetime.

Remind them about the abandoned cart

Savor the Chocolate Volcano Mousse waiting in your cart this weekend!

Use the clear purchasing prompt of an abandoned cart by reminding customers that they are yet to check out. You can also add the image of the dish in the email to entice their senses or offer a special discount to close the deal. Abandoned cart reminder emails have proven to be an effective sales tactic for food-related businesses.

Personalized reminders to re-engage

Your guest has over 10 visits and the last visit was 2 months ago? Incentivize their next visit with a personalized newsletter or a text message with special discounts, offers or a simple “‘We Missed You’. As a restaurant, you need to be more proactive in engaging with potential customers. If you fail to re-engage, even a satisfied guest might not return. Behavioral marketing lets you chase your lapsed customers.

Location-Based marketing

Another effective marketing strategy is to observe location data and strategically target the audience on the basis of their current or previous location. For example, if a user is active in a location a few miles from your business, you can send push-notification to app users reminding them about your business' offerings - such as takeaway or curbside pickup. Something like Care for a burger? We're just a few blocks away, will allow you to guide users to your store.

Increasing ROI with accurate data

Data is no longer just a component of a business, in today’s time and age, it is the “Business”. If you have accurate information on who your customers are and what they expect - you’ve hit the gold. Restolabs' online ordering system provides real-time data and insightful analytics on products as well as customers to help your business have better control over operations and subsequent revenue.

The customers of today seek personal touch. Behavioral marketing can enable restaurant owners to build massive repositories of customer information and generate relevant content for each. If done right, the strategy backed by actionable data can help your restaurant accurately anticipate customer purchasing behavior, giving you an edge over competitors.

If you’re a current Restolabs client, you can use our intuitive dashboard as a place to find customer behavior data and demographics about who your target audience is. Not to mention, Restolabs clients receive free in-build marketing tools for their businesses to grow their business and customer loyalty.  Contact us today to learn more about Restolabs Online Ordering System.

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