Are the average of ten to fourteen marketing systems, each with their own unique, perhaps niche, function becoming too much to handle in your restaurant marketing tech stack?
While many restaurant marketing roles have become ‘all about the stack’, the truth is, your marketing stack might be hurting your customer experience.
Consolidating a marketing tech stack has many benefits including cost and time savings and improved customer experience. In this post, we’ll examine these benefits and how you can consolidate your restaurant marketing tech stack.
The Multi-Platform Dance
We’ve hit a critical mass of choice in the marketing technology space. A 2018 report showed that there are over 6800 companies offering marketing technology.
As the number of solutions has ballooned, and more restaurants have adopted new technologies to power their marketing functions, tech stacks have become a bit Frankenstein with operators plugging new platforms into the existing stack in hopes of making one system work better, find efficiencies, solve for manual systems that could be automated…the list goes on.
But are all these disparate solutions helping or hurting? The reality is, they are probably wasting time: yours as restaurant owners and marketers whose to-do lists never seem to shrink; and your customers’ – every time they have to re-communicate their preferences or needs because one or more of the systems in your stack isn’t “talking to” another one. You’ve got stats and data from all these solutions sitting in different places and none of it is connected so you have to take the time to manually mine through it all for insights. And so – what’s there to do when the world’s most coveted, non-renewable resource—time—gets compromised?
It’s a perfect time to do some tech-tidying-up.
The Business-Changing Act of Marketing Tech Consolidation
While the whole world is obsessing over Marie Kondo-ing their closets and homes, restaurant owners and marketers are experiencing sweet success in paring down the number of platforms their businesses use to wrangle their marketing needs.
Less about asking ‘how does this technology make me feel?’ and more about understanding how certain pieces of marketing tech can simplify your processes, save money and resources, and create a seamless customer experience, finding a solution to consolidate marketing tech means seeking a solution for ‘what’s going to serve our team and our customers best?’
And its ripple effects run right into the space that matters most: the customer experience.
Here’s how it makes a difference:
Single sign on. Say goodbye to all those tabs, passwords, and doing the time-consuming act of uploading content to multiple platforms. By seeking a marketing technology that offers access to multiple communication and social channels, marketing team members save time AND brain space knowing they’re only logging into and uploading content to, one site. It’s one sign on to handle all your marketing needs.
Cost consolidation. While consolidated services may seemingly have a higher price tag because of all their functionality, there’s a solid chance their singular price will save you money from letting go of the platforms you’ll no longer need.
Ease and access. Systems that are easy to use on both ends—team members and your customers—mean a higher probability of optimizing them. And, when information sharing can be managed through one access point, there won’t be any more misses that could cost you a lifelong customer.
One stop shop for guest preferences. Having a space where a customer can communicate their needs, expectations, preferences and more as they evolve and change over the customer lifetime means making their day continuously – no matter how often those preferences change. Only updating their details through one access point AND having that insight accessible by your marketing team as it changes means taking care of your guests like they’re family; a surefire means of amplifying your customer engagement.
Wrap up
The case for consolidating your marketing tech stack is a clear one – and hopefully, the insights we’ve shared here help you make informed choices about what to look for in a solution that will provide you the robust data-based insights you need, and at the same time provide a better customer experience for your guests and employees.
If you’d like to know more about the ways Thanx turns your marketing tech stack into a singular space for marketing and customer engagement success, reach out for a demo. We’d love to support you in downsizing your stack and leveling up your marketing game.
