Over the years, location sharing has become typical for most social media users. Whether you are sharing the location for a photo or checking in to a new place, there is always some reason to allow location sharing.
More than 80% of the world’s population now own a smartphone, and a huge chunk of these smartphone owners are constantly sharing their location for different reasons. It was only a matter of time before businesses utilized this to develop innovative marketing solutions like proximity marketing.
Proximity Marketing for Restaurants has become a popular tool to reach more customers and market their businesses. This marketing strategy makes it easy to pass the information on the latest deals, special offers, and discounts.
As a restaurateur, you need to know what this marketing technique is all about, starting with what it exactly entails before you can utilize it to attract more customers.
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What is Proximity Marketing?
Proximity or location-based marketing is an advertising tactic that allows businesses to target customers based on their location. It relies on the localized distribution of marketing content via location technologies like WiFi and Bluetooth.
The main goal of proximity marketing is to entice customers to make a decision to buy from your business in the immediate or near future.
This marketing strategy is all about marketing to your customers at the right time and place. Also, it entails creating highly personalized and relevant marketing messages. This personalization can deliver some outstanding results if you combine it with the right tools.
Although it has always been widely used to deliver discounts and coupons, many restaurant owners now realize that proximity marketing has more potential.
When used correctly, it will make it easy to understand your customers’ buying behavior and needs to optimize your marketing strategies for higher conversion rates.
How Can Proximity Marketing be Used in Restaurants?
Proximity marketing allows you to target a specific location. Unlike broad-based marketing tools, you can focus on a particular customer group that is easier to convert based on their proximity to your business.
This marketing technique can be highly effective at increasing conversion rates for restaurants when done right.
Here are some simple yet effective proximity marketing ideas for your restaurants to get started with:
1. Make your Restaurant More Visible
One of the basic foundations of location-based marketing strategies for restaurants is to make your eatery visible online.
Most people will use the internet to search for the best places to eat when in a new locality. Therefore, it is essential to ensure your restaurant is visible on Google Maps, Bing, and Yelp searches.
You should check your restaurant’s online presence on these platforms often and make sure important information such as the name of your restaurant and the exact location is correct and up-to-date.
2. Use Beacons for Geomarketing Ads
Geomarketing is the practice of serving customers with specific ads when near your restaurants. The ads can be advertising discounts, new offers, or specials for the day. The main aim is to get more people within your restaurant’s locality to give it a try.
There are different ways of doing it, but beacon-based proximity marketing is perhaps the most effective.
Beacons are small Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices that you set up in particular spots in your restaurant. You can then use them to pass information as text or images/videos to consumers within its range.
Consumers must have Bluetooth-enabled devices and also need to download the relevant app to get the messages. However, some solutions can allow you to set up your beacon marketing without having a mobile app, such as using dynamic QR codes.
Customers can scan or tap the QR code using their mobile devices to reveal the marketing campaign. These QR codes are easy to create and customize with QR code generators.
3. Market to New Customers
A new development in your locality, like a new apartment block, will bring in new customers. You can use proximity marketing for restaurants to market directly to them.
As a restaurant owner, one of your main goals should be to get return customers. You can use discounts or offer some free items to attract these new customers to your restaurant and make sure they have a wonderful experience, so they become regular customers.
The big idea is to think about how you want your new customers to feel when they visit your place. Keep this in mind when setting up your proximity marketing campaign.
4. Promoting Loyalty Reward Programs
If your restaurant has a loyalty reward program, proximity marketing can be beneficial for its promotion. Here it would help if you used the marketing technique to speak to a particular audience and make sure you have a special message for them.
There are several ways of promoting your loyalty reward programs, but the most important thing is to make sure your proximity marketing message offers something to the members. This can include exclusive discounts and events such as free food sampling to incentivize loyalty program members to remain loyal.
5. Partnering with Other Restaurants/Businesses
If your restaurant is located in a concentrated location with several other eateries, you can use proximity marketing to partner with others. It will allow you to create combo deals that can help you refer customers to each other to increase sales.
For example, if you run a coffee shop, you can partner with a dessert shop close by to give customers a combo deal that includes popular coffee beverages and accompaniments. You can then create a theme for the combo deal and create an ad and landing page for the deal.
Proximity Marketing Can Improve Customer Experience
Every business is continually working to gain customer trust and make the customers loyal to its products and services. However, the only way to achieve this is by ensuring the customers have a good experience when interacting with your business. Proximity marketing can be helpful with this, and this is how it can help:
1. Personalized Experience
Personalization is a key element for enhancing the customer experience. Proximity Marketing for Restaurants will not only allow you to send personalized messages to your customers but can also alert your staff when a loyal customer walks in.
This allows the staff to offer the customer the best experience based on their preferences from previous interactions and the data collected through proximity marketing.
2. Real-time Connection
Proximity marketing provides a real-time connection with the customers, unlike other marketing methods. You can place all your discounts, offers, and latest deals in the hands of a customer the minute they get within range.
The real-time connection will give your business a better opportunity to engage the customers and build stronger relationships.
3. In-depth Customer Data
You need to know your customers well to enhance their experience. With proximity marketing, you can get crucial insights from their buying behaviors to how much time they spend in your restaurant.
Using this information, you can promote your restaurant and the unique benefits it offers in a way the customers will find most relevant and appreciate. The in-depth customer data collected can be even more helpful if your restaurant runs a loyalty program.
4. Easy Delivery of Time-Sensitive Offers
Proximity marketing will be highly useful if you have time-sensitive offers like a discount of the day for your restaurant. The marketing technique makes it easy to deliver the offers straight to the customer’s mobile phones, ensuring they do not miss out on the offer.
5. Laser-focused Targeting
Unlike broad-based marketing campaigns, proximity marketing will allow you to focus on relevant customers more precisely. You will never have to bombard individuals far away from your restaurant with irrelevant messages, which most people dislike.
Narrowing down your marketing target and making it more targeted also increases your conversion rates and significantly reduces your marketing costs.
How Can Proximity Marketing Enhance QSR and Restaurant Services?
1. Helps Customers Decide What and Where to Eat
The biggest advantage of proximity marketing for restaurant services is that it allows you to push out marketing messages to customers.
This can be very useful for individuals walking around trying to figure out where and what to eat. A message popping up on their phone with your deal of the day can effectively influence them to try out your restaurant and help them decide what to eat.
2. Allows you to Deliver Tailored Menus
Proximity marketing for restaurants allows you to know your loyal customers better. You can then use this information to create a tailored menu for them that you are sure they will love every time they visit your restaurant.
This further enhances customer loyalty and ensures they have the best experience in your eatery. Moreover, you can also use smart solutions like QR codes to build custom menus for your loyal customers.
3. It is Easier to Create Custom Prices for Customers
Besides custom menus, proximity marketing can also help you develop custom prices for different customers. A well-executed dynamic pricing strategy can win you more loyal customers.
For example, you can create a push notification to alert a new customer of exclusive pricing for them when they buy a specific food you think they are likely to order based on the customer data you have collected.
4. You Can Let Customers Know if the Restaurant is Crowded or Not
Customers hate waiting in line or lengthy delays before their food is served. Proximity marketing can help you minimize the time the customers have to wait.
You can use beacons to determine the number of people in the restaurant and use this to inform other customers whether the restaurant is crowded.
Also, beacons can help you show customers the average traffic in the restaurant at different times of the day based on previous days’ data. It will then be easy for them to decide the best times to visit your restaurant for quick service.
Bottom Line
Proximity-based advertising or marketing is almost becoming a standard practice for retailers and restaurateurs. It has been proven to be an effective tool for boosting sales and enhancing customer experience.
Targeting customers in a specific location with a particular message means more likelihood of converting them and making them loyal customers.