Six Restaurant Marketing Trends For 2012

By Carin Oliver What’s in store for restaurant marketing in 2012? We see six key restaurant marketing trends that will lead this next year’s efforts to gain market share, better understand the customer and turn a profit in 2012. We also believe there is one trend that will consume marketing dollars in 2012 but will turn out not to be influential in driving consumers into restaurants.

A recent Harris Poll reported that the majority of consumers surveyed planned on reducing their spending on dining out occasions. We believe this will make dining choices in 2012 even more selective as consumers opt for safe, trusted brands and rely more heavily on recommendations from friends and online research.

The most important restaurant marketing tactics restaurants will employ for 2012 include:

Data

The biggest restaurant marketing trend in 2012 will be integrating data capture and in-depth analysis from social media, public relations, email marketing and advertising teams. Savvy restaurateurs will also increase the data points collected on customers to better allocate tight marketing dollars into the marketing channels that are delivering the most return on investment.

Although data reporting services are in abundance, they alone will not be able to deliver the multi-platform analysis required. While social media participation and listening was a great first step for many organizations, in 2012, it will be time to go beyond gathering data and to bring in senior customer intelligence analysts to extract usable information from the data. Analysts will need holistic marketing training to effectively mine and merge insights from webpage analytics, onsite restaurant data capture and social media analytics from Facebook, Yelp, OpenTable, Twitter, YouTube and others.

Many restaurants are still keeping data in separate silos, maintaining marketing, public relations, influencer relations and business data in different departments. Although we believe this will be a protracted process, in 2012, we will begin to see silos break down and the emergence of more fully integrated communications programs that inform each other to reach a highly defined target market with customized messaging and provide a robust understanding of marketing effectiveness. The organizations that can effectively streamline internal data from multiple touch points will have a significant lead over their competitors that will extend well beyond 2012.

Identifying And Activating Influencers

If you ask any restaurant marketing professional, they report that the number one way consumers find and decide to dine is based on a positive word of mouth recommendation from a close contact in their social sphere. But when it comes to finding and activating those customers who have the most authority to drive recommendations, there has been a significant lack of data to understand who those individuals are and which tools to give them to encourage pass alongs.

In 2012, we will see more programs identifying and activating the hidden individuals who influence a greater number of diners. The big play will be in digging deep beyond the top traditional media influencers and food bloggers to uncover the passionate foodie who is prime to spread the word about their great restaurant experience.

Specialized tools, techniques, and word of mouth marketing agencies will be engaged to identify those individuals who are passionate about a particular kind of restaurant, have both the digital and offline reach to be influential and are considered knowledgeable by their social sphere. Activating the individuals who have access, motive and credibility to make restaurant, food and dining recommendations will see wider adoption at a diverse array of restaurants.

While we don’t think the perfect tool that seamlessly blends on and offline dining influence will arrive in 2012 it will be the year that restaurants get serious about working with influencers.

Signature Items

While signature items have been around since restaurants began, a new marketing importance will be placed on them. In 2011 we witnessed an increase in chatter on websites, blogs and in traditional media discussing specific dishes versus specific restaurants. This will place more emphasis on restaurant marketers to make sure signature items are getting sampled by key influencers in order to steal share from competitors. This will also play heavily into local search as consumers research individual items instead of types of restaurants.

Gamification Of Loyalty Programs

2012 will be a transformational year for how restaurants will attempt to differentiate their loyalty programs from their competitors with social gaming-type rewards for performing certain actions, such as referring friends, visiting multiple times and more.

Location based services with their badges, titles and rewards will merge with restaurant loyalty programs to play a major role in incentivizing repeat visits, facilitating sharing and making rewards easier to redeem for diners. Check-ins in 2012 will begin resulting in real offline rewards from savvy restaurants. Integrating gaming dynamics to impact diner action will accelerate restaurant loyalty programs.

One to One Accessibility

Social media has made getting to know the brand much easier and connecting with diners outside of the restaurant has been a simple communications evolution for many restaurants. Restaurants, unlike many industries, excel at customer relations and social media has given operators another channel through which to make a meaningful connection with diners. However, diners are now demanding more: They want to get up close and personal with who’s cooking in the kitchen.

Specifically in 2012, consumers want to hear from but also interact with the chef directly, both on and offline, not with the intermediary in the marketing department. Expect to see personalized messages directly from the chef to best customers telling them when the menu changes, nightly specials, and suggestions based on past orders.

While this might sound like another daunting task on top of an already busy schedule, chefs will manage this enhanced engagement by relying on the marketing team to first identify the restaurant’s best customers both on and offline. In the restaurant, the chef will also need to play a prominent role on the dining room floor.

People are looking for more personalized, direct connection with both what’s on the plate and who’s plating the food.

Coupon Personalization

In 2011 many restaurants experimented with social coupon sites such as Living Social, Groupon and others. Unfortunately, many reported neutral and often negative results. We believe restaurants will continue to experiment with coupons and certificates in 2012, but with more realistic expectations of results, more control, customization, flexibility as well as insist on reporting data.

We also believe that most restaurants will realize their own customer lists are gold mines for helping to promote them, focusing again on the top influencers and providing them with additional opportunities for value added experiences and tools and rewards to facilitate the pass along recommendation.

Couponing will be more select and personalized for the brand with restaurants running their own deals to loyal customers. This trend will accelerate as restaurants see the benefits in tracking and engineering word of mouth recommendations that a well designed application and program can deliver.

Search is the New Social…NOT

And now for the trend we will see that will waste precious resources.

In 2012 we will most likely see restaurants allocating resources to local search. We do not believe this will provide an adequate return on investment for dining establishments. Preliminary results from our current dining survey point to search as one of the least influential channels for diners. While we don’t see local search as having a huge impact on dining decisions in 2012, we do believe it is part of the marketing equation that restaurants should not totally ignore this next year, but should earmark resources judiciously.