Restaurant Marketing & Customer Experience Blog

How to Engage Your Loyal Bricks-and-Mortar Customer Base

Written by Robin Johnston | Jan 3, 2017 7:37:00 PM

A little competition can be a good thing. It can inspire, motivate and encourage forward momentum for all parties involved.

In terms of business strategy, it keeps everybody on their toes, and helps companies avoid stagnation. Knowing full well customers have numerous options, business owners must understand it's essential to evolve and adapt to current market trends.

Not only that, however, if they really want to build and retain a loyal customer base, they need to go above and beyond, offering something novel to the consumer. Something that really fulfills a need, or goes above standard expectations.

Sounds pretty obvious, but there's a catch. It's easy to come up with general strategies and test them out at your location, but coming up with the right strategy for your specific market, at your specific locale, can be a little trickier.

It takes insight and analysis.

Customer analytics for e-commerce is nothing new, but it's something that hasn't been fully developed for brick-and-mortar locations yet.

Luckily there is a pretty simple way to get a true grasp on the needs and habits of your clientele using your Wi-Fi connection.

By offering visitors free Wi-Fi access, you're not only providing a service they will appreciate, you're also getting handed a foolproof way to get to know them a little better.

You will be able to track visits with accuracy, such as how often your clients are coming and how long they stay at your location, the amount of time that passes between visits, and what times of day, or even days of the week are particularly busy or slow. This information will help you target marketing and promotions to fill those sales gaps and boost your bottom line.

Additionally, using the emails provided as visitors login, you can tailor messages to your clients, thanking them for repeat visits, perhaps offering a discount once they reach certain milestones. Or, conversely, you can automatically trigger emails to customers who haven't stopped in for a while, letting them know you miss them and hope to see them again soon. Consumers will reap loyalty benefits, which is always a good thing, and those who haven't had a chance to come in, will get a friendly nudge to take some time out of their busy schedule pop back over.

As an added bonus, you can customize your landing page to encourage customer reviews or social media follows, or even promote special offers and hot deals. Here's where you can get creative with marketing, highlighting loyalty programs, or offering coupons for likes or shares. Utilize your repeat visitors to get the word out about your brand.

The more communication you have with your customers, the better relationship you'll build, and the more you understand their habits, the more efficiently you can entice them to visit again and again.

For more information on bringing the power of customer analytics to your location, contact Bloom Intelligence to schedule a no-obligation demo.