With today’s constant disruptive and highly competitive foodservice market, operators and vendors seek help understanding customer trends, local markets and economic fluctuations. All of these highly valuable insights can be provided through restaurant social media analytics platforms.
Getting started on a restaurant social media analytics program comes with many benefits, both internally and externally. Internally, managers, owners, and other industry stakeholders can maximize operations, implement cost savings initiatives, identify opportunities to grow, and other financial and operational performance goals. Externally, restaurant social media analytics platforms can provide comprehensive market insights to vendors to help inform decision making and devise improved sales and marketing strategies.
This article will provide a detailed overview of what it takes to get your social media analytics program off the ground, from identifying the appropriate analytical algorithms to making meaning from the data. It will also offer tips on how to develop the right metrics and integrate the data with other systems.
Identify the Appropriate Analytical Algorithms
The first step in implementing a restaurant social media analytics program is to identify the analytical algorithms that are best suitable to measure success. As the complexity of the program increases, so, too, does the variety of algorithms needed to measure more detailed information. Popular algorithms commonly used in restaurant social media analytics programs include sentiment analysis for understanding customer attitudes, sentiment routing metrics for suggesting the best times and topics to reply to reviews, engagement metrics for tracking customer participation levels on social media accounts, and marketing funnel analysis to track user actions throughout the customer journey.
Develop Appropriate Metrics
Once the analytical algorithms are identified, the next step is to develop the appropriate metrics to measure their success. Metrics are typically measured in one of three categories; performance, outcome, and utilization. Performance metrics measure how well the analytical algorithms are able to capture customer sentiment, engagement levels, and other key indicators they’re meant to measure. Outcome metrics measure how successful the analytics program is in helping the restaurant to improve their operations or marketing, such as customer retention, profits, or average order value. Utilization metrics measure how customers are engaging with the analytics, such as time spent in the platform, frequency of visits, and user clicks.
Integrate Data Systems
Integrating the data from the restaurant social media analytics program with other systems is an essential step in any successful implementation. By connecting the analytics platform with other systems, such as the restaurant’s POS, inventory, and order management systems, restaurant managers and vendors are able to get access to richer data and more integrated insights that provide a comprehensive view of the customer journey.
The ability to recognize patterns in customer behavior, predict future trends, and rapidly adjust marketing strategies based on analytics results can provide significant improvement to the bottom line of any restaurant or vendor.
Make Meaning of the Data
Once the systems are integrated and the metrics are in place, the final step is to make meaning of the data. Making meaning of the data is the very heart of analytics. It requires expertise in finding patterns, analyzing trends, and creating actionable insights.
Analytics experts are able to take the raw data and create compelling stories from it. These stories can help to maximize the benefit of the program by uncovering advantages that increase profits, identify potential food trends, and provide key advice.
