Commentary

Restaurant CMO: The Riskiest Job In Town?

  • by , Op-Ed Contributor, October 4, 2017

In the restaurant business, it’s common to talk about “table turnover.” The more parties that can be sat at a table, the more profitable it is for the restaurant.

Today, it seems that restaurants are applying the same principle to their chief marketing officers. According to headhunter Russell Reynolds, between January and June of this year, a whopping 35% of the top 20 quick-service restaurant CMOs were fired. Wow!

The reason? They’re not delivering the marketing that drives sales goals. 

The QSR world is fiercely competitive, and — with the arrival of online ordering, mobile apps and big data — increasingly complex. More than ever, restaurants must be unrelenting in the ways they vie for the attention (and, hopefully, loyalty) of ever-more demanding customers.

When it comes to food service, customers want a completely seamless experience. Whether they’re ordering from an app for pickup or delivery, reserving a table online, or simply walking in, they want value for money, they want consistency, and they definitely don’t want to waste time. If they don’t get it? They’ll look for it somewhere else. Immediately.

advertisement

advertisement

Challenging times for restaurant CMOs, to be sure. They’re only as good as the results of their last marketing campaign, and revenue is slipping for many restaurant chains. The problem: too many are still using “mass marketing” — pushing out the same ads and offers to everyone as if they’re all the same.

But there is a solution: Start talking to your customers — potential, existing and lapsed — as individuals. Connect with them by tailoring your message, timing, and delivery, using these variables:

  • opinions about your brand
  • relationships with competitor brands
  • predicted future purchases
  • likelihood to purchase
  • media consumption
  • eating locations
  • pickup preferences
  • price sensitivity
  • other influences such as gender, age, family status, location, and payment preferences.

Try to calculate the permutations and combinations of these variables, and you’ll see you really should serve a different ad to every single person — often referred to as “people-based marketing.” Of course, to do that right away might be a stretch, so it’s best to define a step-by-step plan to reach that goal over, say, two to three years.

Start With Customer Journeys

As a first step towards people-based marketing, a CMO should identify, understand, prioritize, and target key customer journeys. 

One restaurant chain we work with requires precise, up-to-the-minute customer targeting, identifying those who order delivery versus pick up versus dine in. Each preference is different, so the ads are tailored accordingly.

Identifying behavior is one piece of the larger puzzle. Geographic distance is another, and targeting zip codes for 1,000+ locations adds complexity. Each behavioral group scattered within these areas can be targeted with customized ads, enabling the restaurant to profit more from its marketing spend.

The customer journey also means delivering the right message at the right time — time of day… day of week… even current weather conditions. (Home deliveries, for example, spike during bad weather, an ideal time to push out promotions to customers at dinner hour.)

P.F. Chang’s is a great example of how a restaurant chain can tap into local markets profitably, using extensive customer journey marketing. While many QSRs are shrinking in size, P.F. Chang’s is actually growing, in no small measure because of its progressive marketing methods. With its advertising now 100% digital — no traditional broadcast or print media at all — the chain outperformed its competitors by 75% in sales and 81% in foot traffic in Q1 ’17, according to Business Insider.

So, all is not lost for restaurant CMOs — if they act now. Restaurants, perhaps more than any other kind of business, can become integral to the communities they serve — if they demonstrate an understanding of the individuals they serve. Communications based on individual customer journeys will win the day. And so will the savvy CMO.

Next story loading loading..