For those of you that enjoy exploring the various culinary creations that your town or city may have to offer, you undoubtedly know what it’s like to read a rave review about a restaurant, only to find dead ends when trying to call or locate their establishment. If you’re a restaurateur, you perhaps know how important a mobile marketing strategy can be in enticing new cuisine enthusiasts.
A new study by xAd and Telmetrics, reports that the restaurant is the fastest growing mobile search category among smartphone owners. It is more local and urgent than categories such as auto and has a nearly 90% conversion rate. This Path-to-Purchase study found that smartphone restaurant searchers have the most urgent opportunities, with 64% converting immediately or within an hour of their mobile search.
Make your restaurant the “local’s spot”.
For those neighborhood consumers looking to grab some grub, there is every indication that mobility, proximity and communication lead to high engagement and conversion rates for local searches. Given the nature of a mobile handheld device and the immediate results it’s capable of producing, it’s reported that 65% of users who search for local restaurants using a smartphone are looking for locations that are within walking or driving distance, while 70% are looking for a business location and just over 50% are looking for a local phone number. From this, perhaps the most important piece of information restaurateurs need to focus on is how easily a smartphone user can call your restaurant, thereby increasing the chance of securing their business.
“Ensuring that consumers have easy access to restaurant phone numbers – whether individually-operated or the local franchise – is key to not only securing the mobile consumer’s business in the last phase of their purchase path but also for advertisers to be able to measure mobile traffic and monetize the leads generated.”
– Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics
The point is, you don’t want to spend time crafting a meaningful mobile message and website just to have the consumer give up when they can’t find a number, make a call or reach a live person through the telephone. It’s important to maintain your smartphone marketing practices, but realize that consumer habits change across devices.
The purpose of reaching out through mobile.
Underscoring the great opportunity in mobile to acquire new customers by way of effective marketing, the report found that 75% of smartphone users notice mobile ads. These are the customers that are most likely to engage with ads that are related to something they have recently searched for, or with establishments that are within walking or driving distance of their current location. When advertising for mobile, it is important to keep in mind which consumer habits favor the more effective smartphone.
Smartphone owners tend to utilize 3 main functions when deciding where to eat—calling the restaurant, getting directions and looking up locations. A desktop or tablet computer’s large size and lack of data connectivity for example, can interfere with your site’s accessibility. On the other hand, an easy to find phone number or directions on a mobile optimized website can help a potential customer find your restaurant immediately.
Full tables, full stomachs, & full registers.
Whatever your goals may be for drawing in that new appetizer aficionado, 3 course connoisseur or desert disciple, make sure that your mobile web presence is just that—a mobile presence and not a desktop formatted site—and you will see an increase in visitors at your restaurant. At almost a 90% conversion rate among hungry smartphone owners, it confirms that restaurants need to go mobile to maintain full tables, full stomachs, and most importantly, full registers.