Restaurant marketing for the next century; the rise of analytics

For years, restaurant owners were told by marketing firms, spend x amount on marketing, but they were never told why. Traditional media (television, radio, and magazines) lack the capability of monitoring an ads true impact. The good news for restaurateurs is, new media (Google Adwords, social media, blogs, etc.) come equipped with analytical tools at no extra cost. The difficulty arises in finding specialists who understand that data, and then incorporating that into your organization’s decision-making processes.

Word of mouth is still the best form of marketing for your establishment, but now there is a way to track how much buzz your concept is creating in social media sites, most notably Facebook. Financial analysts can truly measure the Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return of a web marketing campaign, especially when linking POS sales data to specials run through this media. The ability to obtain a true Return on Ad Dollars spent is a new phenomenon that even large corporate institutions have yet to catch on. According to Mark Jeffrey of the Kellogg School of Management, 80% of organizations do not use data-driven marketing. He also states that 61% of firms do not have a documented process to screen, evaluate, and prioritize marketing campaigns.

That last statistic portrays the true issue at stake; media has changed so rapidly that marketing professionals have had difficulty keeping up. Would you allow your Chef to run the kitchen without keeping track of food cost percent? In a 2009 study of internet traffic, it was estimated that Google alone controls 6-10% of global internet traffic; can your organization afford not to have a Google presence? Social media has the ability to become your online maitre de, are you prepared to capitalize on this potential?