 Image: Willie Lawless/ Networld Media Group A panel at the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit in Myrtle Beach will look at how brands are wasting their marketing money and how to get the most out of their ad spend. By Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Managing Editor, Networld Media Group Restaurant franchises are still struggling with a century-old marketing dilemma: knowing which half of their advertising spend is actually working. A session at the upcoming Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit, titled "Stop Wasting Marketing Dollars: Optimizing Media Spend for Restaurant Franchises," aims to tackle this challenge by exploring data-driven strategies to maximize ROI and customer engagement across all levels of a franchise organization. The Summit is being held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, March 11-13 and brings together restaurant operators and owners for a two-and-a-half-day workshop designed for education and fellowship. Session speakers include Samantha Hebel, director of marketing for Hungry Howie's Pizza and Subs; Erin Levzow, growth advisor for Batch & Box, Andy Linke, senior director of marketing for Ziggi's Coffee and Frank Solis, senior director of marketing for Taco Cabana. Corbett Guest, president and chief strategy officer for Imaginuity, serves as moderator. Imaginuity is sponsoring the session. Linke said in an email interview that restaurants tend to spend excess money on tech that doesn't talk to each other. With advancements in technology come more tools and new tools, Linke said. "Often [new tools] they are to make one task or one person's job easier. But with each new tool comes a larger and larger tech stack which creates the need for more resources to manage it and find the single truth from all the data." Levzow said restaurants often spend excessively by not tracking results effectively and failing to evaluate the ROI on the various platforms, services and management tools in use. "I recently was speaking to a brand that had 10 to 12 different platforms and all the systems were not even speaking to each other let alone tracking results without cannibalizing the other one. Tech consolidation could lead to significant savings by streamlining these resources, ensuring better investment returns, and creating more efficient operations," Levzow said. To harness customer data for improving targeting and conversion rates at the brand, regional and individual franchise level, Levzow recommends restaurants have all customer data set up in a customer data platform/data warehouse and parsed out for appropriate targeting. "If you can get 80% of your customer data in a usable format, you can target efficiently and cost-effectively at every level, from the brand to individual franchises, maximizing conversion rates and enhancing customer engagement." Linke said marketing is never a one-size-fits-all and restaurants need to measure and work with what's best for the organization. "Having a reliable loyalty/ customer capture program is important," he said. "It's always easier and cheaper to retain customers than it is to acquire but you need the right data and insight to do so effectively."The summit will be held at the Marriott Myrtle Beach Resort and Spa at Grand Dunes. Register here for the event. It is a Networld Media Group event, which also owns the Fast Casual Executive Summit and the Pizza Leadership Virtual Summit. Do you know what part of your marketing spend is actually working? |
