Want to influence customers? Listen up, say marketing experts

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Oct. 23, 2014 | by Brenda Rick Smith

Want to influence customer behavior?

The best start may actually be letting customers influence your brand's behavior.

Restaurant marketers should spend time listening to customers, according to experts on the "Can You Really Influence a Customer?" panel at last week's Fast Casual Executive Summit in Denver.

Listening to customers can yield key insights into what customers like, what they don't like, what's working and what's not. Those insights yield actionable intelligence that can be used to shape messages and strategy.

Know thy customer

Customer research doesn't have to be expensive to be effective.

Boston Market makes frequent dives into its own customer database to mine for insights, tapping customers for surveys and focus groups.

"People are more than willing to give their opinion," said Boston Market Chief Brand Officer Sara Bittorf. "It used to be very difficult in the 'olden days' when you had a researcher call you during dinner and you would hang up on them and hate them. But now people self select into surveys, or they will join a panel group for very little incentive and sometimes no incentive."

Lisken Kastalanych, vice president of marketing for la Madeleine Country French Café, agrees.

"You can find insights in a lot of ways regardless of your budget and resources," said Kastalanych.

While la Madeleine invests in strategic studies every few years, the brand gains a lot of insights simply from talking to guests, associates and managers.

Brands should also pay attention to online review services such as Yelp and Google, advised Bittorf. Customers will bypass brand-sponsored feedback channels and take directly to social media.

"If you don't have a lot of stars" next to your profile when it pops up on a search, that can be the end of the search interaction, she said. Boston Market tracks, responds and measures such postings.

Millennial insights

Brands can also turn to consultants and marketing firms for broad insights into audiences.

Alissa Blate, executive vice president and global practice director for MWW, shared several broad insights into millennials, one of the key audiences for fast casual brands:

• Millennials watch video on an average of 7 devices per day
• 80 percent of millennials expect to be able to customize their meals, and they want to know where their ingredients come from.
• Millennials expect brands to reflect their values. They demand that employees are treated well, and brands practice fair trade. "Shared values open wallets," said Blate.
• Millennials enthusiastically advocate for brands and causes they care about on social media.

Converting insights into action

Boston Market used survey insights to shape marketing messaging.

"We did some research last year that helped us understand how people think about the holidays and we found that a very high percentage – over 50 percent of the people --  are really open to or are already using prepared foods for the holidays," said Bittorf. "We have trended it over three years, and those numbers are growing. People are becoming more accepting of the trade-off of prepared foods in order to give them back moments with family in order to give them back maybe some sanity, and we're seeing that grow. As a result, our sales last year were up 27 percent because we listened."

Through in-store research, La Madeleine learned that its customers like to feel special, "in the know," said Kastalanych.

La Madeleine answered that need by hosting several special brand-centric events during the year – Bastille Day, free croissant day – and spreading the word through social media channels. The result was double digit sales increases on those days.

Who is getting it right?

As with many things, industry leader Chipotle seems to be getting it right when it comes to influencing customers, said Blate.

Blate cited the fast casual giant's much-ballyhooed "Scarecrow" campaign as an example.

Chipotle is very in tune with its customer and what their customer thinks about food, and understood their customers' needs for entertainment and branded content, said Blate, but what really made the pricey campaign successful was its ubiquity.

"I think what made it award winning and effective was that it was really a 360 marketing campaign, so it wasn't just an in-store campaign, or an experiential campaign, it wasn't just advertising, print media or broadcast media," said Blate. "I think it was about looking at the total picture and that's when programs are most effective. It included a social campaign, it included gamification (which is huge right now), it included offering optimization on all screens."

The results were impressive. Around 65,000 users downloaded the campaign's agrigaming app, landing it in the #1 adventure game in the app store. The "Scarecrow" video snagged 12 million YouTube views, and the campaign was the subject of 18.4 million conversations across 17 social channels.

In light of Chipotle's impressive Q3 2014 showing a same store sales increase of nearly 20 percent, and recent industry-wide surveys indicating strong consumer preference – particularly among millennials - for high-quality, ethically and sustainably grown food at a value price, Chipotle's customer influence seems significant.

But even as brands review the successes of cohorts and competitors like Chipotle, they should be aware that "one size doesn't fit all," cautioned Bittorf. Pay attention to your own customers' needs and preferences, and keep those central to shaping offerings and messaging.