Elise Musumano
5 min read
Aug 22, 2018
Today’s state of restaurant marketing is this, according to our customers: 1 in 4 hospitality groups and independent venues are doing it all on their own. It’s what we learned when we polled hospitality companies that we work with across the globe. What job titles did we hear from? Over 25% of respondents are General Managers at their venue. Here’s the full breakdown:
Below are the top 9 findings from our survey.
We wanted to know what restaurant marketing was being done internally versus by freelancers or agencies. Here’s what we found: Many restaurants are hiring externally for public relations as well as website development and management. But 27% of restaurants aren’t hiring outside help for any marketing. The takeaway: While there’s a large market for PR agencies and website management companies to sell to restaurants, many venues are successfully managing things in-house.
For the restaurants that we surveyed, MailChimp is the leading email service provider (ESP). The Takeaway: Mailchimp has permeated restaurant marketing — whether it’s been through word of mouth, their sales and marketing efforts aimed at restaurants, or a familiarity that restaurant marketers have with the system from previous roles.
We asked restaurants what platforms they were using to do any of the following:
What we got back was this: only 44% of restaurants are using a platform to automate any of these things. Takeaway: Most restaurants are manually checking their reviews, updating their menus and website, and taking the temperature of their online reputation. Either they feel there isn’t a need for automation, platform costs are too high, or they don’t have resources to manage a system.
Here’s how customers answered “What platform does your website run on?” The Takeaway: Restaurants seem to favor the design flexibility of building their own site — even if it requires more money to outsource — than having to work off of a templated platform. The potential downside of this is that a website like this requires continued support from a developer in the future.
Concord, MA-based Tripleseat is the #1 software that restaurants are using right now to book private dining rooms (PDRs) at their venue. Here are the exact numbers: Answers for “Other” included Excel, SevenRooms, OpenTable, In-house, Catarese, Prosperworks, Custom, Collins, and Design My Night. The Takeaway: Restaurants that book private dining events generally prefer to use an automated system to manage private dining rather than managing it in a paper book. Out of all systems, Tripleseat is likely favored for its ability to integrate with the restaurant’s main reservations book.
We asked restaurants what three words came to mind when they thought about the phrase “marketing automation” Here’s what we got back: Interestingly, the negative connotations came from a place of protection for both a restaurant’s brand and the personalization of the guest experience. We received responses like:
The Takeaway: Platforms need to have strong personalization and templates or the flexibility to create relevant guest offers in order to win over restaurants that aren’t yet using marketing automation. Restaurants that are already using a platform value the convenience, scale, and straightforward nature of the automation they’ve chosen. That’s all for now! Feel free to tweet at us at @SevenRooms with any questions!
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