Marketing
3 ways pizza marketers can turn up the heat
Brand marketing changes on an almost daily basis. Michael Morris, co-founder and head of growth at Hyperlocology, takes a look at three critical areas on which marketers must concentrate to stay ahead of the competition.
November 2, 2021 by Michael Morris — Head of Growth, Hyperlocology
With success comes higher expectations. Let's face it — this is your reality, brand marketers. The bar has been set higher. Now, you need to look critically at your business, and not be complacent with what's worked to this point, because there are dozens of pizza concepts innovating and vying to eat your lunch. Now that business is booming, here are three critical areas marketers must concentrate on to stay ahead of the competition.
If you don't know, you can't help. Increase transparency per restaurant.
From operations to marketing, brand leaders are taking action to create transparency at the individual store level. From an operational standpoint, they're implementing new technology to increase data accuracy. They're improving on the "pencil whipped" data provided by franchisees to better monitor things like refrigerator temperatures or inventory. Brands that don't have accurate and actionable data per location will increasingly find it difficult to offer solutions that improve operations.
The same holds true for local marketing. Accurate and actionable local data per restaurant is a must in an ultra-competitive landscape. There's a new wave of multi-location platforms to help centrally control store-level marketing across the most powerful channels — creating transparency and new local data to guide marketing and business decisions.
Creating transparency also builds trust with your franchisees. It's easy to forget about the importance of the franchisee relationship when business is going well. As a brand marketer, treating every community uniquely with a dedicated budget, custom message and targeting will allow franchisees to understand how their budget is working for their local business. Franchisees who invest in your brand concept deserve to know.
Focus on loyalty. It may look different in every community.
What actually defines a loyal customer and how is it different from an incentivized customer? How does it differ per community? Is your most loyal customer someone that orders every week, or a customer who adds side items? Anyone can sign up for a loyalty program, but understanding your data per community and per customer will reveal what true loyalty actually is.
Customers want personalized offers and authentic engagement and are willing to share their information and preferences for that personal touch. According to Accenture, 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience, and 91% are more likely to buy from brands who recognize, remember and provide relevant personal offers and recommendations.
Once you've gained a true understanding of the individual communities and customers you serve, local marketing can be customized per community to drive loyalty as defined by your local customers. This increases the odds of converting an incentivized customer into a loyal customer and driving further engagement and long-term relationships within specific audiences. Successfully increasing brand loyalty by just 5% has been shown to grow profits by 25% to as much as 95%.
Understand your local audiences better than the competition.
Pizza brands that understand local preferences and insights will win the battle for loyal customers. Developing customer profiles that reveal the wants, needs and behaviors of customers, and understanding these unique local audiences at scale is now a possibility with multi-location technology.
At a recent industry conference, Donatos Pizza CEO Tom Krouse shared how his company strives to understand customer preferences and tap into their customers to steer the brand experience — from developing their brand logo with feedback from focus groups to understanding the specific interactions customers prefer in every market. This local data, coupled with an analysis of what the local competition is doing, helps Donatos develop a competitive advantage for their restaurants in every community.
If you still rely on national or DMA audience data for marketing, many of your restaurants, and customers, are being left behind. Understanding local customer attributes for every location also opens up possibilities for brand expansion, staff recruitment and franchise development.
When times are good, seize the opportunity to improve: to finally create transparency at the restaurant level across operations and marketing; to understand customer needs at the community level and to focus on driving loyal customers uniquely in every community. Just as your customers can personalize their pizza any way they like, it now takes a hyper-localized approach to maintain and grow sales.
About Michael Morris
