• Restaurant Marketing

Restaurant Guest Segmentation Using Your Customer Data Platform

by: Allen Graves
5 min read

In our previous three posts, we discussed what a customer data platform is, how to gather guest data, the insights you can discover, and how to create effective restaurant marketing campaigns.

This post with dive further into making those marketing campaigns even more effective and engaging for your guests.

Restaurant Guest Segmentation Using Your Customer Data Platform

Even in the face of the pandemic, marketing and business technology solutions continue to advance at a rapid pace.

Today’s marketers are enjoying an excess of tools and solutions to utilize when creating, executing, and measuring their restaurant marketing campaigns.

Many people, however, still think small even when they have technology capable of providing big returns.

Understanding and using technology effectively is necessary to get the most out of your marketing and advertising budget. And it is most effective and cost-saving to invest in a customer data platform that can consolidate these solutions into one platform.

This can be achieved with adequate training and a proper mental approach of those using the software.

Above all, marketers must have the detailed data required to create segmented, personalized marketing messages, and measure the marketing attribution of each campaign.

Restaurant Marketing with a Customer Data Platform

Every time a potential client opens a website on their desktop browser or smartphone browser, social media platforms, entertainment apps, and even productivity apps, they’re faced with all kinds of marketing messages.

How do you get the right eyes on your marketing content to promote your business effectively?

Successful restaurant and coffee shop marketing is essential for staying competitive in a highly populated industry. No matter where you’re located, you probably have to contend with various other competitors offering similar products to yours.

Like the competition for successful marketing, competition to successfully draw guests to your restaurant or coffee shop (and away from your direct competitors), should be top-of-mind.

After all, marketing is an ongoing process. You have to stay competitive and stay present on various internet platforms in order to attract clientele.

Thankfully, there are unique marketing strategies that you can utilize to your ultimate benefit.

Market segmentation is a particularly excellent way to boost return on investment from your restaurant’s marketing budget.

What Is Guest Segmentation?

Guest segmentation is a marketing strategy of “segmenting” your current and potential guests into distinct groups (market segments) and then marketing your business to them using focused, group-specific methods.

Guests are split into groups based on their demographic data–age, location, etc.–and their behavioral and psychographic data–what online content they interact with, how they behave at your place of business, and their perceived interests.

These groups are called guest segments, and each segment has its own persona. Different personae like to be marketed to in certain ways.

Based on marketing research, when you engage with clients with unique, individualized methods, you’re more likely to garner interest and ultimately draw leads to your website.

Marketers can successfully collect segmentation data, then optimize their marketing campaigns based on which “segments” they’re addressing with a given advertisement, social media post, etc.

Restaurant guest segmentation improving business

How To Group Your Guests

You might wonder how the power of the internet and WiFi can split your potential clients into these segments. The answer lies in guest data collection.

There are ways to retrieve data to form customer profiles, which help you understand your guests better. Then, you can subdivide your restaurant guest database at large into segments.

You can also use software to collect and analyze data for much less than outsourcing these services to an agency. Check out the Bloom Intelligence WiFi Marketing Automation & Guest Intelligence Platform to see it in action.

Once you collect customer profile data, you can sort and filter profiles to view grouped segments. Then, use this information to create targeted marketing messages. Fine-tune your current marketing strategies or devise new ones to personalize the guest experience online.

restaurant guest segmentation list builder

Why Send Different Marketing Messages to Different Segments?

The ultimate goal of guest segmentation is to adjust your messaging to appeal to different segments. Guest segmentation helps certain demographic-specific businesses find their guests among the highly populated masses online.

For instance, cosmetic companies are probably looking for young, female clients that are particularly interested in beauty products. They’ll market themselves exclusively to this relevant segment.

Similarly, a skateboarding company knows that it isn’t relevant to the population at large. They will try to find relevant clients in urban teenagers and young adults.

So, marketing their products to seniors and middle-aged business people would produce little return on investment. Therefore, these companies would be wasting their marketing budgets without using effective guest segmentation.

The restaurant industry, meanwhile, has mass appeal. You aren’t necessarily looking to narrow down your audience as much as fine-tuning the voice of your marketing strategies to speak to different restaurant guests.

The voice of your marketing messages should be very different for older business people as it is for teenage skateboarders, but the message at the root of your strategy is the same: people should come to your restaurant!

What the Studies Show

Studies show that guest segmentation works and actually improves the guest experience, too.

CMO.com states that on average, advertisements targeted to unique guest segments are twice as effective as broad-audience, non-targeted ads. And, in fact, the Federal Trade Commission reports that almost 70% of polled consumers actually prefer marketing that tailors to their interests.

Guest segmentation isn’t just powerful; it’s popular.

Your direct competitors may very well be using this strategy. So, to stay competitive, you should as well.

How to Use Guest Segmentation

In the restaurant and coffee shop marketing industry, guest segmentation has plenty of benefits.

First, you can use this tactic to improve messaging. Messaging refers to your approach to communication with your audience.

How do you engage guests and highlight the value of your products? Modify your voice to speak to different segments of your customer base.

For example, if your restaurant has a formal, sophisticated ambiance, you might use professional language and elegant imagery to appeal to an older, higher-income segment of your audience.

Meanwhile, you can appeal to a younger, lower-income segment with more relaxed language and references to date nights or other special occasions.

Marketing messaging for your restaurant can be playful, refined, value-focused, or even exclusive – all based on who you’re speaking to.

restaurant manager using guest segmentation

Automate Guest Segmentation with Bloom Intelligence

Guest segmentation may seem like a difficult strategy to implement. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to collect and analyze the data you need in order to segment clients without the use of a guest intelligence platform like Bloom Intelligence.

You can either hire a third-party marketing company to track guest data–a potentially expensive option–or save money and use Bloom to collect large amounts of guest data for you in real-time.

With Bloom, you can quickly and easily segment clients yourself and create targeted automated marketing strategies for much less. This will save money and time, increase guest lifetime values, bring in new guests, improve your reputation, and increase your bottom line.

To see more of what Bloom can do for your restaurant or coffee shop marketing, schedule a free demo today, or call us at 727-877-8181.

Bloom Intelligence Guest Segmentation

Restaurant Marketing FAQs

What is Restaurant Marketing?

Restaurant marketing is the process of getting people to visit your restaurants. Restaurant marketing creates loyalty, provides data to research, analytics, and allows restaurants to gain a better understanding of their ideal customer profile. It utilizes all customer channels: guest WiFi, website, social, rating sites, mobile apps, email, text, and advertising.

Learn More About Restaurant Marketing Here

What is WiFi Marketing?

WiFi marketing is a marketing technique that uses guest WiFi to collect & clean customer data such as names, emails, phone numbers, customer behavior, and demographics. This data is used to personalize marketing campaigns to increase customer loyalty, build online reviews, and save at-risk customers. The performance of every campaign can be tracked down to the tangible ROI of a customer walking back in your door.

Learn More About WiFi Marketing Here

What is Restaurant Reputation Management?

Restaurant reputation management is the process for restaurants to manage customer feedback and creating systems to improve customer experiences, passively build positive online reviews, and save at-risk customers. It is a very important aspect of running a successful restaurant business.

Learn More About Restaurant Reputation Management Here

How Does Bloom Identify and Bring Back Lost Customers?

Bloom Intelligence uses machine learning to identify at-risk customers. When one is recognized, the system will send them a message with an incentive to get them to return and re-establish their visit pattern. Bloom users are seeing up to 37% of churning customers return.

Learn More About Saving At-Risk Customers Here

SAVE TIME, INCREASE CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUES, CREATE NEW CUSTOMERS

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“Bloom Intelligence really is a step ahead in terms of marketing software and metrics. Their product is reliable, fast and innovative and has helped the company I work for really grow.”

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“Working with Bloom Intelligence has been amazing. They assist you every step of the way and work with you hand in hand to make sure you are optimizing your advertising potential. We are excited to use this tool to help learn more about our customers so that we can personally engage with them and understand our strengths/weaknesses.”

Ariel Ramirez

“In these challenging times, it has been a pleasure working with Bloom Intelligence to help facilitate our service offering to our clients. They were extremely responsive and provided support to mitigate risk and minimize revenue loss. Great partner!”

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“We’re extremely pleased with the wealth of customer data that we’re able to gather, at a very attractive price.  In addition, we’re able to communicate our new product promotions by using  the landing page as a digital billboard.  A “no-brainer” for anyone working with limited Marketing $$.”

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