5 Quick Wins to Improve Your Marketing and Advertising in 2025

In today’s economic climate, restaurants and bars grapple with decreased foot traffic and a more cautious consumer spending behavior. The competition in the hospitality industry has never been more intense, and the pressure to optimize every marketing dollar is crucial. Standing out in such a challenging market requires making smart, data-driven decisions and managing marketing spend with greater efficiency. As patrons hold onto their pocketbooks a bit more tightly, adopting innovative and effective marketing strategies that maximize ROI becomes essential.

Here are five immediately actionable, impactful, and effective ways to elevate your marketing and drive more traffic to your business.

1. Maximize Revenue Potential with First-Party Data

Your restaurant’s POS systems, online orders, and loyalty programs already collect valuable first-party data, but many businesses fail to unlock its potential. By analyzing how often guests visit, how much they spend, and what they prefer, you can tailor your marketing to speak directly to your audience. By treating each customer group individually, you make your marketing efforts feel more personal, which builds stronger loyalty and drives repeat visits.

Here’s how: Start by segmenting your customer database. Are some guests visiting weekly while others come only during special promotions? Use this info to create targeted offers—reward your frequent visitors with special perks and entice less frequent customers back with exclusive deals.

Pro Tip: Tools like your CRM, CDP or Loyalty program can help automate these segmented campaigns, ensuring the right message gets to the right customer without having to rely on more resources.

2. Leverage Paid Media for Instant Results and Flexibility

Why It Works: Paid media can deliver real-time results and provide the flexibility to adjust your campaigns based on performance. Many restaurant chains have seen significant growth in their digital sales channels with some major brands reporting 46-54% of their total sales coming from digital channels.

Paid media is often underutilized in the restaurant industry. Jessica Wegener-Beyer, CMO at Black Rock Coffee Bar, points out that, “Many restaurants don’t realize the full impact paid media can have when done right. Campaigns that focus on key metrics, rather than just impressions or clicks, can directly boost sales.”

When done strategically, paid media delivers measurable returns without the long wait times of traditional advertising methods.

Action: Start with geo-targeted ads and an omnichannel approach based on where your customers are coming from, not just an arbitrary radius. Promote high-margin items or limited-time offers, and monitor the results focusing on 3-5 top key performance indicators. Learn from top performing and underperforming ads to quickly tweak messaging and creatives. Look at all locations as individuals and as cohorts. Audience makeup may be different and should be treated as such. It’s all about flexibility and quick adjustments.

Pro Tip: Keep an eye on key metrics like cost-per-click (CPC) and conversion rates. Ads that generate higher engagement at a lower CPC should be prioritized and scaled.

3. Unleash the Full Potential of Your Loyalty Program

Why It Works: Many loyalty programs run in the background without much attention, but they’re a powerful tool for driving customer behavior when used strategically. A study conducted by the National Restaurant Association revealed a loyal customer’s check will be 67% higher than a first-time guest’s and 41% of consumers say loyalty programs encourage them to buy from restaurants.

By identifying which offers drive higher frequency or spend, you can optimize your loyalty program to drive the results that matter and keep your customers engaged–both of which improve your bottom line.

Action: Dive deep into your loyalty program’s data. Compare the spending habits of loyalty members vs. non-members and analyze which promotions are the most effective. Use these insights to tailor offers that encourage repeat visits and higher spend. Use AI and behavioral data to tailor loyalty campaigns to elevate your strategy even further.

Pro Tip: Use AI-based platforms like Punchh to segment customers and automate personalized offers based on their purchase history.

geolocation and geospatial data for audience intelligence

4. Optimize Paid Media With Geospatial Insights for Better ROI

Why It Works: Geospatial data can transform how you approach paid media campaigns by providing a clearer understanding of where your customers originate, their behaviors, preferences and who they are. Instead of making assumptions about your audience, this data allows you to target customers based on actual movement patterns, interests, preferences and geographic locations. This enables the creation of more effective local marketing campaigns and helps identify areas where you’re losing ground to competitors.

For instance, one of Liberty Interactive Marketing’s restaurant clients faced challenges with an outlier location that was underperforming compared to the rest of the chain. Using geospatial analysis, we identified key zip codes and persona groups that frequented the store, challenging the client’s initial assumptions about the customer base. By leveraging these geospatial insights, we used hard data to inform our paid media strategy; executing an eight-week targeted digital advertising campaign that achieved a 38% increase in traffic to the store location from the targeted zips and personas. This campaign not only turned the store revenue positive but also removed it from the client’s “watch list,” demonstrating the power of targeted advertising that truly understands its audience.

Action: Partner with a company like Liberty Interactive Marketing for a geospatial analysis to identify where your most valuable customers are coming from and other key insights for improving marketing efficiency. Focus your paid media budget on targeting these key areas to create hyper-relevant campaigns that drive foot traffic and sales in specific locations or understand your customers better regionally and nationally.

Pro Tip: Stop guessing where your customers are—let geospatial data guide your paid media strategy. By tailoring campaigns to the right zip codes and persona groups, you can maximize the return on your ad spend.

5. Close Data Gaps and Focus on Key Metrics

Why It Works: It’s easy to get overwhelmed by data, but not all metrics are equally valuable for understanding what is truly driving business outcomes. By focusing on two to three core metrics like visit frequency, total guest count, and average check value, you can gain a clear understanding of what’s working and where improvements are needed allowing you to make informed decisions that directly impact your revenue. Once you have the right data, you can optimize your marketing strategies for maximum impact.

Action: Perform a data audit across your POS, loyalty, and online ordering systems to ensure you’re capturing the most important metrics. Once your tracking is in place, use this data to make informed marketing decisions that drive real results.

Pro Tip: Regularly review your data to spot trends—like which promotions drive the highest customer retention—so you can double down on what works best.

This article was first published in Bar & Restaurant News.

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