You are the owner of a local coffee shop. One of your best customers comes in daily and orders their usual beverage. This customer also tends to order the daily breakfast special that your store promotes. About once a week, this customer also brings a colleague or friend with them. That colleague or friend has now started coming on their own, although they order items that they like from your shop.
This customer - your best customer - initially came to your shop because they drive by the shop daily on the way to work. This customer noticed the "free Wi-Fi," advertisement outside the store, and figured a cup of coffee and some time to browse the web before work would be a good way to start their day. Upon walking into the store, they were prompted to sign in on your landing page in order to connect to the free Wi-Fi. The landing page promoted that this customer would receive a free cup of coffee for liking your store's Facebook page. The customer enjoyed the food and experience so much, that they returned. This time - and every time they visit since - they check their location in on Facebook as being at your shop. Their friends and colleagues notice this, ask the customer, and are invited to tag along.
This is just one of the many great ways that personalized marketing works for your business. Personalized marketing is the use of digital technology and data analysis to offer individualized messages to current or prospective customers. Below are three ways how your restaurant can leverage personalized marketing.
Using products such as customer Wi-Fi sensors, businesses are able to gather and analyze customer information. That customer data is vital in many aspects of your business from engaging customers, building customer profiles, and leveraging that information into personalized marketing initiatives. This technology allows your business to collect and analyze customer behavior such as new or returning customer, length of stay, frequency of visits to your restaurant, etc.
Customer Wi-Fi sensors allow your business to track peak traffic times, allowing you to know exactly when, how, and to whom to advertise your deals. Let's say that your business experiences a morning rush and a lunchtime rush. For the morning rush, you're able to see that customers visit Facebook in overwhelming numbers. For the lunchtime rush, you're able to determine that these are frequent customers who have yet to sign up for your rewards program. Armed with this information, you decide to promote a special on your Facebook page specifically for the morning rush. You also decide to use the demographic data of your morning customers to purchase a Facebook ad to attract more customers. For the lunchtime rush, you decide to promote your rewards program more aggressively for those customers.
Let's say your smart Wi-Fi page includes a customer registration tool. With that tool, you are able to collect customer data such as zip codes. Also, when customers leave reviews on sites such as Yelp or Trip Advisor, you are able to (through third party integration) pull data in from those sites. Using these tools, you determine that 20% of your customers are from a zip code that is across town, but closer to them. You also learn from reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor that there is a growing demand for a location in this zip code. This data gives you a clear blueprint of not only how, but where to grow your business.
Personalized marketing is an amazingly efficient way for your business to engage customers, attract new customers, offer one-to-one deals, and predict growth for your business. It's a smart way to determine what customer needs are individually and as a collective. This improves the efficiency of how your business is run, allowing you to get the most out of your resources while growing your profits. It's more than personalized marketing. It is smart marketing.