“Hey, did you see that there’s a great new burger place opening in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah!! They even have an offer for the first week where two eat for the price of one!”
“It was awesome. I was walking into our usual burger haunt, browsing Insta and I saw this ad pop up. Perfect timing. And how on earth did they know I love burgers?”
“Man, I even saw their ad when I was watching a show on Prime Video the other day.
“I heard an ad for them on Spotify when I was at the gym as well. We should go.”
This is a new store opening (an NSO) for a restaurant done right.
Why?
– Their digital advertising has targeted a segment that is highly likely to care about the restaurant opening
– They’ve gone to market with a great offer to entice customers in. And you don’t know this, but they have a way to track exactly how much sales their offer got them
– They’ve advertised on platforms that are high engagement and relevant
– They’ve advertised in a geo-fenced area to maximize outcomes
– They’ve gone hyperlocal with their ads to target customers who are likely at competitive restaurants
Opening a new restaurant in a new neighborhood or city or zip code isn’t a matter of just getting the real estate and throwing the doors open. Without a cogent marketing and advertising plan, your new store opening will likely be lack-lustre.
Effective digital advertising can boost footfall and sales tremendously. And digital advertising is not just about putting up an ad on your Facebook page or running ads in the local news site.
Here’s what else you need to consider from a digital advertising standpoint to ensure your NSO delivers incredible outcomes:
1. Audiences: Who is likely to eat at your restaurant? Age groups? Any specific ethnicities? What are the most common demographics in your target audience?
2. Targeting: Where does your audience spend their time online? Which social media sites do they frequent? What TV shows do they watch? What time of day are they most active? Where do they shop? What are they most likely to be shopping for?
Location: Are there specific neighborhoods that your audience visits or lives in? Are there competitors in the area that you can zoom in on for hyper-local advertising?
3. Ad formats: What kind of content does your audience prefer to consume? Do they watch specific genres of TV shows? Are there specific podcasts or music types they listen to? Are they gamers?
4. Data and Insights: Is there anything you can understand from their online shopping habits that make them potential customers? Can you get pre-populated segments from platforms that you can use? Are there any other platforms where you can extract data and insights from?
Take this example, where we helped a restaurant chain in the US drive 150+ table reservations and a 31% reduction in cost per reservation by focusing their advertising on tourists in the city as well as people in the vicinity of the restaurant. This allowed them to use their advertising budget in a highly targeted manner, reducing wastage and maximizing outcomes from segments that were most likely to convert. This doesn’t happen by accident – it required us to work through all 5 areas above, and optimize it regularly.
You have to be able to gather insights and analysis from sources you haven’t explored before. For instance, we helped a quick-service restaurant in the US improve their return on ad spend by 20% by using insights from Amazon DSP to get at highly targeted segments and audiences.
Such targeted advertising and insights-based campaigns can change the way your restaurant gets itself in front of potential customers in a very noisy advertising environment.
And such campaigns don’t need to break the bank. It’s possible to retain your exact same advertising budget, while ensuring that your ad dollars run that extra mile for your business. It’s about squeezing every advertising variable for outcomes.
To put it in terms a restauranteur might understand – it’s like seeing your chef cut away most of the flesh from a watermelon while peeling it. You know there’s wastage. You know you could get far more fruit from it. If only the chef was using the right knife, and knew how to properly peel a watermelon. And you know you’ll be telling them to do a better job.
Don’t allow your digital advertising to go the improperly-peeled watermelon way.