Loyalty goes mobile
As more U.S. consumers become smartphone users, restaurants will need to encourage repeated interactions with their brands on their customers’ mobile screens via apps or mobile-optimized websites. According to Kobie Marketing’s report “Omnichannel Loyalty Becomes Omnipresent in the New Year,” more than 25 percent of people who belong to loyalty clubs for restaurants and other retailers prefer to access such programs via their mobile phones.
Cause for action
Brands will continue to make cause marketing integral to their loyalty efforts, from raising money after national emergencies such as Superstorm Sandy to supporting local Little League teams.
“If your brand isn’t known for ‘making a difference,’ maybe you need to think about how it can,” Duke Marketing chief executive Linda Duke wrote in her predictions for 2013. “With nine out of 10 consumers choosing those brands that do community service or contribute to meaningful nonprofit organizations, it’s hard to ignore.”
‘Big data’ grows bigger
Restaurants not only have more broadcast and digital marketing tools available, but also more sophisticated means for measuring everything, from items viewed and purchased online to the impact of websites’ designs and what Facebook posts are written. This so-called “big data” will allow operators to be more proactive, “as traditional brick-and-mortar analytics became so complex [in 2012] that brands can now predict and drive future purchases and incremental behavior, not just catalog what was purchased,” Kobie Marketing said in its report.
New deals
Operators attending the fall conference of the industry’s Marketing Executives Group repeatedly stuck to a theme of building brands in a more-for-less world. The conference included a session on ways to attract deal seekers without using the daily-deal models offered by Groupon and LivingSocial. More chains are likely to develop their own bounce-back deals, such as Domino’s Pizza’s recent Domino’s Dollars for online orders, executives said. Meanwhile, many operators are likely to partner with others for rewards, as in the card-linked offers banks and payment providers send to people who opt to have their spending at restaurants tracked.
Value messaging
Recent menu and pricing moves from McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell, all of which continue to promote low price points on their value menus and to introduce premium sandwiches and limited-time offers, point to barbell pricing as a balancing act that will continue in 2013.
“When we talk about value, we’re not talking aggressive value, but about having a value component that’s a good, solid mix,” said McDonald’s chief executive Don Thompson during a call with analysts in October.
Brands in all industry segments are thinking similarly as they work to drive financially strapped consumers to their restaurants. After Darden Restaurants Inc. reported disappointing second-quarter results in December, Andrew H. Madsen, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said its Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden brands would “more aggressively attack affordability, which means more promotions that are fundamentally about communicating a great deal and less about communicating brand-building news. It also means more price-pointed promotions with shorter durations than we previously planned.”
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @Mark_from_NRN.
