Viral Instagram photos. Thousands of social ad impressions. An email newsletter with promising open rates. How are these actually driving impact for your business?
Restaurants have a digital marketing problem. They’re hungry for results, so they can’t resist the appeal of “trackable data” from their digital marketing efforts, but when the time comes to tie that data back to actual revenue and guest visits — they can’t. They can only make educated guesses about what impact their digital advertising efforts have on guest foot traffic and purchases in-store.
Like so many restaurants, Ruth’s Chris franchise group Big Steaks Management was keenly aware of this very issue. As they continued to invest in both digital and print advertising, both considered tried-and-true tactics, they struggled to directly tie their marketing efforts back to in-store results. The franchise ultimately needed a way to measure the number of in-store guest visits being driven from their marketing efforts.
“It has become common practice for restaurants to spend their marketing budgets on digital platforms and track online metrics such as impressions, clicks, and follows. But these are vanity metrics that are not true indicators of driving customers into your restaurant locations to make purchases, so you should not rely on them for driving in-store sales.” – Nitin Duggal, CEO of Adentro
The Solution: Visit-Based Marketing
Ruth’s Chris began searching for a solution to their marketing problem, and that’s where they discovered visit-based marketing. Visit-based marketing is the next evolution of marketing for businesses with physical locations, allowing restaurants to connect their digital marketing and advertising efforts with actual in-store outcomes. As a result, they can build more effective marketing campaigns and truly understand the impact of their efforts on their bottom line.
To fuel their visit-based marketing, Ruth’s Chris needed to start collecting the right data, and that’s when they began utilizing Adentro. Adentro is a marketing platform that pairs with the in-store WiFi network to monitor guest behavior and attribute guest visits to marketing exposure. This platform allowed Ruth’s Chris to collect customer emails as well as information like visit frequency, visit recency, visit time, dwell time, and more.
With this data, the Adentro solution tied guest visits to a specific guest profile, so Ruth’s Chris not only knew that someone visited — they knew WHO visited. As a result, they could track valuable details like how frequently a person came into their restaurant, what time of day, which promotions they’ve engaged with, and through which channels. By combining online behavior with in-store visit data, they had a complete profile of their customers, helping them create the ultimate CRM.
The Results: A Huge Return on Ad Spend
After applying the power of visit-based marketing to their digital advertising campaigns, Ruth’s Chris immediately noticed an uptick in their performance. Their newfound visibility into marketing effectiveness allowed them to segment, personalize, and tailor campaigns for the best results possible. They knew which campaigns weren’t as effective, helping them pivot mid-campaign if needed.
“Even throughout the pandemic, it’s continued to be effective,” explains Deanna Faid, Manager of Creative Design at Ruth’s Chris, Big Steaks Management. When many restaurants faced overwhelming challenges, these Ruth’s Chris locations were able to drive as high as a $9:1 return on ad spend. In addition to that, since starting with Adentro, this Ruth’s Chris franchise has collected more than 10k contacts per year.
“[Visit-based marketing] helped us quantify what is actually driving more sales and identify what is making that impact, driving measurable lift in our stores that have historically struggled,” Faid said. “Marketing is about butts in seats, and Adentro actually made that happen and helped us measure it.”
Adentro has become Big Steaks Management’s primary advertising partner, outperforming the other channels and services they’ve invested in and helping them grow into one of the top-performing Ruth’s Chris franchise groups across the entire country.
Discover how hundreds of restaurants are tracking guest visit behavior and fueling their marketing efforts through Adentro by visiting their website.
