The recipe for a great QSR

Summary

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I aim to bring you bespoke content that will help you grow your business. This content will either reinforce or add a new dimension to your perspective. Today's edition will share my viewpoint about performance marketing and help you generate more customers and footfall. Moreover, a seasoned training professional,?Jan Jilis van Delsen , will also provide his perspective on maximizing the training impact in your industry.

Moreover, I am holding an online workshop?on December 1st at 9:30 am?Pacific Time, GMT -8, on "Stop losing customers to the competition ". So make sure you register as soon as possible as places are limited.

Performance Marketing, what, how, and for who?

The internet has completely changed the way consumers browse and purchase products. It has also transformed the way businesses market and sell their products. Today, marketers can collect instant results and analytics around the clock and measure the results as they happen. While attribution was almost impossible in the past, timely insights and data allow marketers to optimize their campaigns to improve their performance. Besides, this is precisely why it's known as performance marketing!

One of the main challenges of working in international markets with global clients was measurement data for the offline media channels. TV measurement relied on telephone interviews that captured viewership on a 15 min level, based on the respondent's memory. The industry commissioned the print readership research on an annual basis. Radio research was similar to TV, yet it was a hefty investment for agencies and clients due to the limited number of stations and low budgets to pay for it. Furthermore, there was no accurate measure for outdoor exposure and reach. Thus online advertising grew exponentially in a few years due to the measurability of delivery. Yet, in the digital revolution we are experiencing today, we need to deliver beyond impressions, clicks, or viewership. Clients are demanding a specific call for action, and they are willing to pay for it. We will discuss the different types within the article. In addition, clients are interested in having a partner that will deliver. Hence, this is the purpose of writing this article to explore everything you need to know about performance marketing, and this falls into the core deliverables of a successful agency.?

What Is Performance Marketing?

As the name suggests, performance marketing is a kind of marketing where the advertisers pay once they have attained a specified result. According to the?Performance Marketing Association , the definition of performance marketing is a general term that refers to digital marketing campaigns where advertisers, brands or services, pay marketing companies (publishers or affiliates) when a prospect takes action, like a click, register, download, or buy.?In simple terms, the marketer and publisher mutually agree to these particular terms beforehand. No matter what the call to action is, the client pays the agency according to results delivery. For example, if a food ordering app installation is required, the client pays once the prospect installs the app irrespective of impressions delivered, clicks made, or videos watched.

Unlike organic and traditional marketing, performance marketing encourages actions and tracks and measures those actions while attributing the ROI of every campaign, activity, or asset. Even though large corporations can afford to spend millions on branding, the majority of the businesses have to focus on the bottom line to stay profitable. Performance marketer gives power to the advertiser, as you pay once the agreed action, whether a click, sale or lead, is performed.?

Performance Marketing Vs. Other Types of Marketing

In many conventional types of advertising, the advertiser has to pay an upfront fee for ad space regardless of performance. Moreover, this can involve spending hundreds to thousands of dollars without ever getting a conversion. Using performance marketing, marketers only pay when there's a successful transaction.

Brand Marketing Vs. Performance Marketing

Brand awareness ?is fundamental to helping you stand out in a saturated brand market. There are several ways to increase brand awareness, like content marketing, native advertising, social media campaigns, and more. Some of these might come under the realm of performance marketing as they are measurable, and marketers only pay for particular actions.

Affiliate Marketing Vs. Performance Marketing

Affiliate marketing is part of performance marketing because goals and metrics ultimately drive it. With affiliate marketing, you earn a commission for promoting another company's goods or services. The affiliate marketer will advertise on behalf of the merchant to drive clicks, sales, and traffic to the merchant's website. The affiliate only gets payment for actions taken, like clicks, leads, or conversions.

How to Measure Performance Marketing?

A defining feature of performance marketing is?ROI ?(return on investment) – each action and activity is measured, reported, and assessed against pre-specified KPIs. Moreover, this facilitates enhancing the campaign performance against a set and agreed benchmark. Measurable ROI is vital for successful digital marketing. Thus, it is essential to track it regularly. There are plenty of performance optimization tools available these days.

Nevertheless, whichever you choose, allow your campaigns time to collect data. The more data you collect, the more comprehensive your insights are, and you can optimize effectively and accurately. Here is a list of KPIs and critical metrics frequently used in performance marketing:

• Cost Per Impression (CPM):?It's the amount an advertiser pays a publisher for thousand impressions of a digital ad.
• Cost Per Click (CPC):??Once a viewer clicks on the ad. CPC indicates better engagement than CPM as the viewer has taken the desired action.
• Cost Per Action (CPA):?This metric measures campaign performance according to a particular action you want your target market to take, like buying a product, subscribing, signing up, downloading an app, or other.

Types of Performance Marketing

Performance marketing has revolutionised over time thanks to new technology and evolving consumer behaviours. In today's world, digital marketing is all about reaching the right people on the right platform at the right time. The targeting options and tools available have improved considerably, offering marketers more ways than ever to build high-performing campaigns for different audiences and various goals.

I will discuss different types, yet feel free to get in touch for further clarifications or collaboration.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a vital component of performance marketing and surely worth the investment and time. SEM involves placing paid ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). It is pretty effective as it exposes the user promptly to highly targeted ads related to the product or service when purchase intention is high. Thus, there's a strong chance of getting their interest and attention.

Native Ads

Native ads are more effective than display ads as they look like part of the subject matter you are reading. Thus, they don't disturb your surfing experience. Instead, they fit "natively" on the web page where they appear. And by picking a good-quality network, you can get great exposure on premium publisher sites, attaining high-quality audiences and traffic.

Driving Footfall

Performance marketing, as we discussed, is all about achieving results. Some advanced mobile advertising platforms offer complex solutions for driving in-store traffic and enabling precision measurement and targeting of customers, your target audience, to create an increase in footfall, hence transactions. Moreover, it allows an integrated marketing approach with other advertising initiatives that are taking place simultaneously, like TV or Radio campaigns, larger outdoor formats, attending an event, a conference, an exhibition, theatre, cinema, or other.?

The ultimate goal is to bring your target audience to your store for them to buy from you. Hence, this will result in a higher guest count and a better ROI. Nevertheless, this is a viable and effective marketing method for different product categories, including QSR, real estate, supermarkets, banks, shopping malls, car showrooms, sports outlets, tourist attractions.?

In addition to giving insights on which ad format/creative affected the on-ground physical visitation. Moreover, provide other valuable insights such as the gender & age of your store customers, how much time they spend in your store, and which audience segments are the most frequent visitors of your business.?

Creating a Performance Marketing Strategy

There are several kinds of performance marketing campaigns and channels. Thus, there's no single way to do it. Nevertheless, here are the key steps you need to follow to create a performance marketing strategy. Then, use them to guide you to gear your performance marketing for success.

Step #1 – Create Your Campaign Objective

Clarity is key to ensuring a successful campaign. Hence, you need to determine your campaign objectives and would be an ideal outcome of your investment. Besides, this will allow you to enhance your metrics or establish a benchmark that you can start improving during different milestones or future campaigns.?

Moreover, there are different or multiple objectives that a brand or Quick Service Restaurant might be aiming to achieve. Besides, digital platforms require you to create goals before setting up campaigns or creating ads.?

Your campaign objectives determine whom to see your ads and when to display them, depending on the selected target audience and the required actions. Therefore, the success of the investment against predefined metrics is vital for meeting the campaign objectives.

Below are some of the common digital marketing campaign objectives:

• App installation
• Attracting new customers
• Boosting sales
• Creating awareness
• Frequency of purchase
• Growing average sale value
• Increase store footfall
• Online ordering
• Promoting product trials

After you've identified your campaign objectives, you can use ad platforms to establish that target those particular goals.

Step #2 – Pick Your Digital Channels

When it comes to performance marketings, it's wise to diversify the channels you use instead of focusing solely on a single one. Besides, this allows you to spread reach and exposure, increasing the probability of success. Whether native advertising,?social media ?platforms, or affiliate marketing, search for channels specializing in your conversion type and where you're most likely to reach your target market.

For instance, by diversifying on various social media platforms or expanding from basic display ads to native advertising, you can significantly boost your potential reach and showcase your performance campaigns to a greater audience.

Step #3 – Develop and Launch the Campaign

Performance marketing encompasses creating campaigns – determining the target market, learning about their desires and pain points, and developing messaging and ads to cater to their needs and attract their attention. The more you know your target market and how the product or service can attract them, the simpler it will be to develop the right ad.

The technical component of the campaigns, like copy character limits, acceptable images, and ad sizes, also depend on the specific channel or platform you're using.

Step #4 – Measure and Optimize the Campaign

Use performing marketing campaigns to grow sales and determine your best audiences, channels, and campaign goals to boost your ROI:

1. It is essential to start gathering data once the campaign is up and running.
2. Testing and measuring across different channels used is critical and needs continuous analysis and enhancement.
3. It involves defining the metrics and tracking traffic sources and actions taken to optimize the marketing funds accordingly.

Step #5 – Manage Possible Risks and Dangers

Like any marketing campaign, there are some possible pitfalls and challenges that can come from performance marketing. Here are some of the elements that you need to be mindful of:

1. Compliance-related problems
2. Brand safety
3. Bot traffic and click frauds
4. Privacy regulations
5. Placement transparency/publisher fraud.

One method to minimize possible problems at the outset is to channel your resources on high-quality ad platforms and networks and manage reliably and responsibly issues like data privacy and brand safety.?

Summary

Performance marketing focuses on attribution and tracking, which gives advertisers increased control over their ROI and budget. Through the help of several data analytics tools designed particularly for performance marketers, keeping track of performance campaigns and adapting to get better results is relatively easy.

Finally, it is vital to set SMART, Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals to ensure you achieve your KPIs continuously.

Next; Maximise Training Impact and Improve your Margins

Maximize Training Impact and Improve your Margins, by Jan Jilis van Delsen , CEO of Associated Learning, a specialist learning solutions company.

Staff training in quick service restaurants is a challenge.?

The requirements in this sector are particular and unique compared" to other industries. In this three-part series on improving training in the industry, I hope to give you some food for thought on improving the impact on your overall business by providing the proper training.

Some of the main characteristics:

• The learners are not in one location or even one country
• Restaurants typically do not have a “training room” on-site
• Most staff members are young of age
• High turnover of employees
• Pressure from the business to lower its costs

Moreover, this concludes that most QSR training is done via e-learning, shadowing colleagues, and the general manager. My experience, however, shows that the training impact in restaurants is poor.

What is the impact on your business?

The purpose of adequately trained staff is to improve further:

• Productivity. Your investment in people is not making enough return.
• Customer friendliness. In addition, this directly impacts how many customers return regularly and your reputation.
• Motivation. Trained staff is more motivated to do their tasks properly.
• Staff turnover. It is a known fact that people stay longer in their job when they feel invested in it. The restaurant sector has turnover rates of 60% or more.
• Compliance. Even with the mandatory food safety training, your staff has not changed behaviour. However, this will cost you your reputation and money, e.g., Chipotle's $25M fine for food safety violations in 2020.

Three key elements to improve your training?

1. Accessibility: the training has to be available for the learner at the point of need. Yet, this is dependent on the topic and can take many forms. Some examples: Information on the till, respective staff phones, a tablet (responsibility of the store manager) and classroom sessions. In addition, this is another form of learning, social learning, available through an online environment. It facilitates training engagement, interaction, knowledge sharing and uniformity among peers to ensure best practices and systematisation of the different processes.
2. Relevancy: This relates to several elements in your training. The content must be didactically sound. The quality of the learning experience is vital. The training content must be relevant for the learner. The learner must be engaged or not take in the content, and no behavioural change will occur. Location and modality also play a role in the quality of content. A restaurant manager who does not know how to train people adequately will not be very impactful. An online food safety course, designed to be played from a computer (screen size 12' or larger) but is accessed from a mobile phone, will also be a waste of your money.
3. Personalisation: A human trainer can see the question mark in your eyes and personalise the training. Learning technology can also help personalise learning. There are many ways that an online course can adapt to each learner's needs.?

How does this lower my costs?

Providing regular and impactful training will give Chipotle's following benefits:

• Lower staff turnover. Have you estimated how much it costs to hire and train new staff from scratch and achieve the level of productivity you want? The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell calculated the cost at?$5,864 per staff member.
• Lower your risk of compliance fines. I already mentioned Chipotle’s $25M penalty. You can also consider Pret a Manger in the UK, who spent ￡20M to overhaul its food safety after the death of a teenager.
• Improving the rate of returning customers will increase your revenue and enhance the return of investment of your marketing budget.
• Lowers your recruitment cost. Companies that train their staff well enjoy a better reputation. Check the glassdoor website for proof. Also, your recruitment advertisements will have a higher response rate.

Next time we’ll look at other relevant modalities of business training.

Well done

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