As the Coronavirus continues to spread across the world, there is just no way to tell when restaurants and retail locations can open their doors to on-premise customers once again.
Because of this, businesses have been forced to change the way they think about keeping their revenue stream alive. For those who have the ability to maintain an effective curbside and/or delivery model, it is crucial to turn to their most powerful, yet low-cost, marketing tool – their customer database.
Why are loyal customers important? It seems like an easy question to answer, but not all restaurant owners and operators understand how costly it is to lose, and then have to replace, their customers. Plus, companies may be doing irreparable harm to their brand if they aren’t recognizing why customers aren’t loyal to their brand.
Many restaurant marketers underestimate the importance and value of their loyal customers. Others recognize the importance, but struggle to find a way to track customer loyalty and reward their loyal customers.
Acquiring and keeping loyal customers is critical to the success of nearly every business. Of course, it is not always easy, especially with the amount of competition in the restaurant industry in 2025. Marketers can’t deny the importance of capturing the hearts and wallets of millennials, whose purchasing power is hit nearly $1.4 trillion in 2021. Yet, millennials, and those following behind them, are a new and challenging type of customer to engage.
The real trick is in customer retention. This comes down to, among other things, customer service, access to information, brand recognition and special perks for repeat customers. According to one digital marketing company, sixty-six percent (66%) of customers switch brands because of poor customer service. Likewise, fifty-eight percent (58%) will never do business again with a company after a bad experience.
Conversely, over seventy percent (73%) of customers will fall in love with a brand just from friendly customer service representatives. And, access to information will capture the hearts of fifty-five percent (55%) of customers.
Then, there’s the wallet factor. Many customers are simply looking for the best deal. If one company isn’t offering it, loyalty to that company isn’t going to keep them from shopping elsewhere. Of millennials aged 20-34, sixty-eight percent (68%) would switch brands to get more program rewards.
Brand recognition is also important in 2025. This may be due to people wanting to feel like the brand they love is loved by their peers. In the same way millennials turn to social media for personal reinforcement (hence, the popularity of status-sharing and selfie-taking), they also look for this with regards to the brands they choose to do business with. It’s no surprise that brand recognition is just slightly behind quality as the most important driver of brand loyalty for millennials.
Loyal customers provide the foundation for a profitable and successful restaurant business. These valuable customers not only help a company grow quickly when times are good, but they also help companies stay afloat when times are tough. Loyal customers are your best brand advocates. And, they show their loyalty through their wallets, buying more and buying more often.
A loyal customer also costs a business less. Once acquired, the company has spent what they need to spend upfront (at least for the most part). Losing that customer means having to replace them, and paying the costs of client acquisition all over again. Loyal customers will stay up to date on the brand, find answers to questions, and are willing to spend their social capital on the brands they love.
Sip on this. Coffee is ubiquitous. It’s cheap and you can find it anywhere. To many, it “all tastes the same.” Yet, a loyal customer will not only bypass a closer, more convenient shop, but they will bring their friends in, set up business meetings there, join the loyalty program, post Instagram photos of their cup o’ joe, and put up with a long wait or a mixed-up order. They’ll even tote around your branded tumbler if they really love you.
Yet, because of the prevalence of quality coffee shops, with an instance or two of poor service, a rise in price, or the growing popularity of another nearby shop, loyal customers may well be out the door. Because the lifetime value of a customer is tied to business success, monitoring customer loyalty metrics is a good way of keeping an eye on the overall health of the business.
Here are some customer analytics metrics to which companies should pay attention.
In some ways, hotels have it easy in the brick-and-mortar space. Each time a customer visits, they make a reservation. So, it’s fairly easy to know how many times a customer returns. For a retail store or restaurant, this isn’t so easy. However, with a quality Wi-Fi analytics platform, it can easily be done.
Every cell phone has a unique identifier known as a MAC address, and your Wi-Fi hotspot can use this to identify individual customers, whether they log into WiFi or not. Every time they visit the store, the device will be recognized and those visits can be counted. If you find that customers are not returning very frequently, you can work to address this with your marketing. Over time, you can also create buyer personas so that you better understand individual customer patterns and customize your marketing, accordingly.
Customer loyalty programs are important to perk-driven millennials. Wouldn’t it be nice to know how many customers who are presented with the opportunity to join your customer loyalty program sign up? If you were to introduce the program with a seamless sign-up process as your guests log into your free wireless internet, you could have that data.
If you find that you’re struggling to get customers to join the program, you could survey your Wi-Fi users about what they look for in a loyalty or rewards program. All you need to do so is implement custom messaging on your Wi-Fi connection landing page. Or, offer a discount for signing in to the internet with an email. With that email address, you can invite them to join the program, reminding them of all the benefits they will receive.
Churn rates and customer loyalty go hand-in-hand. If customer retention is low, it is indicative of a problem with the company’s ability to build and maintain loyal customers.
One way to track the churn rate is to track how much traffic fails to return to the location after they visit. In tracking this metric, it is equally important to know the personas of the customers, so churn rates aren’t calculated as higher than they truly are. Having the tools to identify and understand individual dining habits provides more accurate data.
Marketers can employ various tactics to avoid losing customers and improve customer retention. One way is to quickly and effectively manage feedback. Online reviews are becoming ever more critical to solicit and digest, as they can be a key indicator of why a company’s churn rate is higher than it should be.
Easily deployable tools such as a Wi-Fi marketing platform can provide guests with the opportunity to give instantaneous feedback, with the capability to send negative feedback to your customer relationship management team and positive feedback to online review websites.
A net promoter score tells a business how likely their customers are to recommend your product or service to others. This is an important component of customer analytics. If few of your customers are willing to tell others about your brand, you may lack the base of loyal customers you need.
Tracking net promoter scores can be particularly easy if you offer free Wi-Fi at your locations. When someone logs in, you can present the user with the question of “how likely are you to recommend our business to others?” You could even consider requiring that customers answer this question before they connect. With the response data, you can start to understand this important metric of customer loyalty.
If your net promoter score is low, you can consider what next steps you need to take to boost the experience your customers have. Consider increasing opportunities for your customers to “bond” with the brand. Host “limited-space” events, dedicate time to “like” and “share” photos your customers post on Instagram and Facebook, train your employees on ways to remember customers and their “usual” order.
One cannot overemphasize the importance of finding a tool that can track these key customer loyalty metrics. Such a tool can help operators maintain a profitable and thriving business and can give marketers extra ammunition to fight brand wars. A Wi-Fi marketing and analytics platform that complements the free internet a business already offers to its guests is one tool to seriously consider.
Customer ratings and reviews can have a significant impact on your retail or restaurant business. Whether good or bad, these reviews provide priceless feedback you can use to improve your overall customer experience. They allow you to recognize specific things that customers love about your business, as well as those that need improvement.
Smart restaurateurs are constantly monitoring their online ratings, reviews and conversations about their business. They understand that positive reviews not only generate a great deal of marketing power and social proof, but they contain hidden gems of information about your food, drinks, service and atmosphere. It’s real-time custom market research at its finest.
If you’re not paying close attention to your online ratings and reviews, you are missing out on vital information that can help grow your business.
Using Customer Ratings and Reviews to Improve Your Business
The first step in utilizing reviews to improve your business is to monitor and evaluate them consistently. Once you are on a regular schedule of evaluating your reviews, you may begin to see patterns emerging. When an issue is identified, good or bad, you should take swift action to improve it.
For instance, if you are seeing consistent positive comments about a certain menu item, you might want to feature it as a special. Or, if you see consistent negative reviews about a certain menu item, you could try modifying the recipe, or removing it from your menu altogether.
Perhaps you notice positive comments about the cleanliness of your front-of-house. You can use those reviews in your marketing to tell the world what other people are saying and experiencing. If, on the other hand, you notice consistent comments about uncleanliness, you can begin paying more attention to keeping your restaurant clean, smelling good, and free of clutter.
I remember years ago when I was waiting tables at a fast-casual restaurant, one of my guests ordered a French dip sandwich. He later told me that the sandwich was great, but it would have been even better with slices of bacon on it. I began suggesting this to other guests when they ordered the sandwich and it turned into a big hit with customers. The owner of the restaurant even added the option in the menu.
Responding To Customer Ratings and Reviews
It is also very important that you respond to your reviews. If the review is great, thank the reviewer and tell them you hope to see them again soon. If the review is positive, but not glowing, try to see if you can spot something that would have made their experience better.
Responding to negative reviews is also very important. Your response to a negative review can actually influence and impress potential future customers. Make sure to respond in a positive tone and provide an effective solution to the issues that caused the negativity. This shows that you are actively listening to your customers and that you are committed to making things better. Again, make sure and take action to resolve the issue.
The sooner you react to customer ratings and reviews, good or bad, the more it will show that you care about what your customers think. Over time, this will not only build more customer loyalty, your overall ratings and reviews should also inherently begin to improve.
These are just a few examples of using customer reviews to make your customer experience better – the options are endless. By monitoring and evaluating your online reviews and conversations, and then taking action based on them, you can keep your restaurant top-of-mind of your local consumers, build that five-star reputation, and watch your business bloom.
Related Posts:
– Dealing with Poor Customer Ratings and Reviews of Your Restaurant
– Why Every Restaurant Should Care About Customer Ratings and Reviews
When most marketers think of content marketing, they think of the online variety. To be fair, the internet is a perfect medium for content marketing. But it’s often forgotten that this powerful marketing strategy began long before the idea of the World Wide Web was even conceived.
One of the original pioneers of content marketing was John Deere. In 1895, he published The Furrow magazine. The Furrow was not a sales-focused publication. Instead, it focused on informing and educating farmers on how to be better business owners. In fact, in the history of The Furrow magazine, which is still in publication some 125 years later, Deere & Co. have only mentioned their products and services in the magazine a handful of times.
This is a perfect example of content marketing.
What Is Content Marketing?
As it is defined today, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action. It involves creating and sharing online and/or offline content that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to indirectly generate interest in its products or services.
“Traditional marketing with content means talking at someone about you. Content marketing means talking with someone about them.”
While it may be easier to run a successful content marketing campaign online, it is entirely possible to execute offline as well, as John Deere and many other companies, including restaurants, have shown us. It is also possible to create a hybrid content marketing strategy, using online and offline channels together.
The Best Tip To Get You Started – Customer Data
The first step for any successful restaurant content marketing campaign, whether online or offline, is becoming intimately familiar with your customers or intended audience. You need to know who they are, how they behave and interact with your business, and what kind of information they might be seeking.
The best way for restaurants to do this is to install and utilize a quality WiFi marketing and analytics platform, like Bloom Intelligence. Other data collection options are available, but they are very expensive and only provide a current snapshot of a small portion of your customer base.
WiFi marketing and analytics platforms, described in more detail below, can provide an ongoing, real-time view of a very large portion of your customer base – whether customers log into your WiFi or not. And WiFi analytics can be implemented at a small fraction of the cost of traditional market research solutions. You will also have the ability to collect very detailed customer information, behavior data and demographics.
Through thorough research on the data you collect, you can begin to create your most ideal customer segments and craft the perfect strategy for each of them by finding the emotional value in the data. Remember, content marketing is not about going for the sale. It is providing each of these customer segments with information to show them, inherently, that what you offer can,and will, satisfy their needs.
At this point, your content marketing can begin to take shape. As you begin publishing and sending out your content, it is important to remember that this is just the beginning. You will want to constantly test new types of content, as well as new content topics, on each of your restaurant’s customer segments.
For optimal testing, you’ll need to be able to measure the success of each campaign. This is another reason why marketing and analytics platforms are so powerful for brick-and-mortar businesses. Solutions like Bloom Intelligence are ideal for tracking individual campaigns down to the individual customer level. You’ll be able to monitor each campaign and adjust/optimize your campaigns on an ongoing basis.
Using the definition of content marketing above, let’s examine a few of the ways that brick-and-mortar businesses and restaurants can reap the remarkable rewards of content marketing.
Blogging
Perhaps the most effective way to begin a content marketing campaign is to start a blog on your company website. Once set up, you should post to your blog on a consistent basis. You can blog every day, or once a week, or once a month, but whatever schedule you decide on, you should keep it consistent so that you’re not leaving your audience guessing when to come back for more.
Some topic ideas for content marketing for restaurants include:
Again, you won’t be selling your brand on your blog, you should simply be giving your customers the information they may be seeking. You could blog about specific types of diets, local events, holiday meals, different craft beer types or how to make a dollar go farther when dining out.
Guest Posting
Another great way of getting content out to the masses is by guest posting. This involves reaching out to related websites and offering to write content they can publish on their website. Typically, they will allow you to publish an author bio with your image and a short biography. This is where you would quickly mention your place of business.
You are essentially getting eyeballs on your content by way of the website’s loyal visitors. When they read your bio, they can make the connection between great, educational content and your place of business.
Likewise, you can usually link back to your website, which will increase your traffic and help with search engine optimization.
Podcasting
There are many great restaurant-related podcasts available today, covering anything from operations and management, to technology, to recipes, to new trends in the industry. Much like guest posting, you can reach out to these pod-casters and offer to be interviewed on a future show.
Think about what you can offer that is above and beyond the ordinary so you can showcase it in your outreach, and in the podcast as well.
You can easily query your favorite search engine to find them, but here is a short list of some of the top restaurant-related podcasts:
Content Marketing Through Email
Email has been, and continues to be, one of the best ways to reach consumers.
As you can see, collecting your customer email addresses is a crucial part of a successful offline content marketing campaign. When paired with a WiFi marketing and analytics platform, collecting email addresses becomes extremely easy. Testing various content types and topics also becomes easy while it allows you to track each individual campaign.
All you have to do is install the platform and everything is done behind the scenes. You will passively build a customer list thousands of customers without lifting a finger.
Using a WiFi Marketing and Analytics Platform
These platforms utilize your customer WiFi access points. They gather data from any mobile device with its WiFi signal turned on. Since each device broadcasts its own unique ID, the system will recognize each customer individually based on their mobile device. Specific behavior data can then be tracked on each device, including dwell times, repeat visits, days of the week or hours of the day when at your location, and much more. This data is collected by Bloom whether customers log into your WiFi or not.
When a customer logs into your WiFi, the system will capture their email address or social media profile, so you will be collecting those valuable email addresses and customer profiles passively. At this point, the system can then associate all previous activity from that device to the customer’s profile, as well as demographics such as gender, age, birthday and more.
With this kind of data, you can send content to your customer segments on a very granular level. And you’ll know each and every time they come back to your location.
With Bloom’s advanced reporting, it is easy to track the results of every campaign, all the way down to a customer coming back to your restaurant and/or redeeming an offer.
Get Started Today
One of the greatest things about content marketing is that you can get started immediately, and on a very limited budget. In some cases, it costs you nothing but the time it takes to write your content and find the perfect place for it to be published.
But the most important thing is that you get started as soon as possible. Competition is fierce in today’s marketplace and it’s up to you to stay a step ahead. Content marketing can provide you with an inexpensive and powerful way to create relationships with your customers, keep you top-of-mind, and keep them coming back again and again.
A recent study conducted by The NPD Group, ranked the 8th largest market research company in the world by the AMA Gold Top 50 report, found that Generation Z may soon be giving a large boost to restaurant industry traffic.
WiFi marketing & analytics are making a huge impact on brick-and-mortar revenue, customer engagement and satisfaction. Using guest WiFi access points, businesses can collect customers names, contact information, and demographics while measuring their behavior data at the location. The data can be used to create targeted remarketing campaigns to influence customers, increasing their visit frequency and spend, and you can measure their satisfaction in real time.
Customer profiling is a great way to get a detailed portrait of your current customer base to help you make smarter, more effective marketing decisions as you engage your customers on a more personal level. Using customer profiles, your customers can be broken down into segments, or groups, based on certain demographics and behaviors.
When most marketers think of content marketing, they think of the online variety. To be fair, the internet is a perfect medium for content marketing. But it’s often forgotten that this powerful marketing strategy began long before the idea of the World Wide Web was even conceived.
You’ve done all the work to gather information to use email to get your customers coming back again and again. You may have gotten their email addresses a number of ways. If you collected the addresses through your free Wi-Fi or social media accounts, you probably already know a lot of things about your customers, including things like their: name; address; gender; educational level; marital status; income; and more. You would like to send personalized emails, but it seems like too much work. Don’t worry. It’s not. Here are simple ways to send personalized emails in far less time.
Use a system that will allow you to create one email template, but send out as many personalized, individual emails as you have on your subscribers’ list. Depending on the platform you use, you’ll have a database field or token for a name. When it sees that token, it will replace with an email address. This will allow you to send many emails from one template, while including a personal touch in each email.
Case studies have shown that emails and newsletters that use personalization experience higher conversion rates. If you use email personalization in the subject line, the recipient will be more likely to open your email.
How long has your customer been visiting business? That is information you will have in your CRM or Wi-fi analytics software. If you have used social media, Wi-Fi sensors, and analyzed online and offline behavior, you will know a lot more than that and can gather information about a customer in your business, even if he or she is not using your Wi-Fi. Personalizing your emails will be simpler and faster with this data. Surveys have shown that more than half of customers want businesses to remember how long they have been coming. Craft an anniversary email for a customer that has been coming six months, a year, or longer. You could even offer a coupon, or special discount, too.
Have you started sending birthday emails yet? You should be doing it already. Statistics show that people open emails that mention their birthdays 200 times more often than they do other emails from businesses. Create a custom coupon or discount, based on the customer’s past purchase behavior.
This could be something as simple as his or her name, or whether he is married or has children, while offering a discount. Do you know what he does for a living? You could send an email mentioning that, with a special offer you know he would appreciate. The more relevant your email is, the more likely it is that the customer will engage with it.
Most emails will greet the recipient by first name, but including the individual’s name again throughout the email will really catch their eye.
Has your customer not visited for a while? Use your email system to automatically send emails to your customers based on a certain action or behavior, such as not coming for a certain amount of time. Studies have shown trigger emails to have a 152% higher open rate compared with traditional emails. They can help convert casual customers into lifelong ones. Even though they are personal, they can be easily automated and sent out for welcoming new customers, telling some customers you miss them, telling them you hope they had a happy birthday and thank them for coming in your business on that special day, and many other occasions.
As you can see, sending personalized emails doesn’t have to be time consuming or complicated. It can certainly be profitable. {{cta(‘f5bf467c-b07f-4dbc-af08-162dd4e93b82’)}}
As a business owner, it’s important to understand who your customers really are. After all, without them your business wouldn’t exist. For this reason, it’s integral that you are able to meet the demands of your customers to achieve a competitive advantage. One of the best ways to do this is by collecting customer data.
Customers are spending an increasing amount of time online and because of that, the options of gathering customer data have advanced beyond measure. Collecting this data will not only help you build a loyal base of customers, but will assist in attracting potential new customers as well. Here’s why collecting customer data is essential to your business.
