How Behavioural Segmentation Works For Restaurants

Restaurant & Hospitality, Marketing

Blog Customer Segmentation Blog Customer Segmentation

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Of the hundreds of thousands of restaurants in the world, there are only a handful that have an online presence.

Do you know why?

It is because many of them do not understand the digital marketing landscape. Indeed, some even think that brick n’ mortar stores cannot benefit from it.

For instance, a lot of restaurant owners believe that concepts like traffic patterns and behavioural segmentation are beyond their reach.

Well, 10 to 15 years ago, they had a point.

Back then it was impossible for restaurants to run behavioural segmentation or measure traffic patterns. But in present time, it is not just possible, it is practical.

Using Wi-Fi marketing and analytics software like SpotOn Wi-Fi, behavioural segmentation is a reality. Many smart brick n’ mortal businesses are now using Wi-Fi technology to apply behavioural segmentation to their marketing efforts.

First…

What Is Behavioural Segmentation?

Behavioural segmentation is a type of marketing segmentation that separates and groups customers using their behavioural patterns.

And do you know why you should care about it?

Because it gives steam to your marketing efforts, helping you target specific groups based on their buying behaviour.

Behavioural segmentation tracks customers’ knowledge of the product or service, including:

how they use the product/service,
when they use the product/service,
how often they use the product/service,
what benefits the customers seek in the product/service,
And their loyalty to the product/service.

Before we talk about how you can benefit from behavioural segmentation, we should mention one way you can leverage it.

Let say, you have had a few customers come on board through different channels. Using behavioural segmentation, you can group those customer based on the channel they came through. And the products they viewed or bought as well.

Hence, you can then be sure of the best channels to market a particular product/service.

So let’s look at…

Ways Your Restaurant Can Benefit From Behavioural Segmentation

Now that you know what behavioural segmentation is, you should know how it can benefit your restaurant.

In a nutshell, you can integrate it into your marketing efforts and product development plans.

Here are a few ideas:

Dietary Choices:

Your restaurant obviously receives all kinds of diners with different food preferences.

Without behavioural segmentation you cannot tell what portion of your customers want gluten-free meals or who are on low-cab diets.

To put segmentation to work, you can take short online or table-side survey (or your Wi-Fi login page).
The surveys will collect data on what type of meals your customers prefer the most.

Ensure you collect their email addresses with an incentive like a special offer in exchange for that detail. This way, when you market gluten-free items you could use a ‘GF’ symbol on the packaging.

You could also send marketing messages targeting specific segments announcing new menus.
Take-Out Orders:

It is one thing to know what type of meals your diners prefer. It’s another thing to know how they like to have it. Marketing segmentation would help you separate the dine-ins from the take-outs.

This way, if you have more dine-in customers, you may want to make more room in your dining area. Or create a Grab n’ Go section if you have a significant portion of your customers ordering take-out.

You could consider creating a different production line for your take-out diners from your dine-in customers.
Kid-friendly meals:

You may, using behavioural segmentation, discover that you have more customers who buy more kid-friendly meals.

With that information you would need to prepare a different marketing message and effort for this segment. This may include campaigns for family treats. New children play area in the restaurant. Fun environment. Friendly staff. Kiddies’ menu booklet. Animal cookies, and many more.

You get the picture?

Behavioural segmentation makes your marketing efforts more effective. When applied correctly it can yield massive results and improve sales.

In conclusion…

You can incorporate behavioural segmentation into your marketing by creating different marketing communications for each of your market segment. As a result, your message will resonate with the needs of your customers.

But there is a problem…

It is difficult to carry out behavioural segmentation without the proper tools.

Online and tableside surveys may not give you enough information to work with. And with limited information, you will end up having segments that aren’t clearly defined.

This will ultimately lead to mixed communications in your marketing campaign and ultimately loss of customers. You do not want that.

We have the solution…

SpotOn Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi marketing and analytics platform that makes collecting, analysing, and interpreting customer information easy as pie.

Using our software you can track visitor movement within your restaurant. With that information you can tell what part of your restaurant receives the highest traffic.

You can also collect information of all sections and collate the number of visitor each section has on a daily basis. This way you can easily separate your diners based on their behaviour and market to them accordingly.

Our platform collects all these information into one place where it is easy to access.

The information is displayed on an intuitive dashboard represented as charts, graphs, and lists that are easy to interpret.

Go ahead and request a free demo just to see how it all comes together. For more information contact us, we’d love to answer your questions about how our tool can help your restaurant.