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How Can QSR Marketers Tap Into The Possibilities of Location Data

The Possibilities of Location for QSR Brands

Tougher competition, increasing labor and rental costs, and the ongoing demand for better quality of products are some of the main challenges facing fast-food retailers today. Struggling with changing consumer trends on top of all the other profit-related factors leaves quick-service-restaurant (QSR) owners with only one option – to implement a completely consumer-centric approach based on deep offline and online insights about their customers. Location data is becoming an invaluable marketing asset helping them not only to understand what happens in the real-world, but also to attribute effectively offline events to digital activities ensuring maximum optimization of their budgets. According to eMarketer, citing a 451 Research, around eight in 10 of the marketers surveyed plan on increasing use of location data within the next two years and they mention other studies from BIA/Kelsey, citing another forecast that US mobile location-targeted ad spending will more than double between 2017 and 2022. When done right, personalization and targeted communications that are relevant and useful can create lasting customer loyalty, reducing acquisition costs as much as 50% and drive revenue growth of 10-30 %.

Location Intelligence Insights for Innovative Targeting

The right location is especially crucial for QSR marketers trying to drive footfall traffic to their restaurant locations. The success of any physical venue – regardless whether it is a restaurant, coffee shop or a cinema place, depends on its location. In fact, location data intelligence can draw a comprehensive picture of where consumers are in the real-world, what are they doing, where are they going enabling marketers to even predict what would they likely do or go next. With the increased use of mobile technologies such as mobile apps, online ordering, mobile wallet payments and point-of-sale systems, QSR marketers can do much more than just using location data only for sending out someone to a specific location. Location data can also give you essential insights about who visits your stores and give you a better overview of your audience based on behavioral and demographic data. Big brand names in the dine-out quick service restaurants industry such as McDonald’s, Subway and Burger King are already leveraging mobile-drive location-based targeting. Using personalized campaigns based on precise behavioral data helps retail marketers reach their campaign goals easily, triggering impulse decisions at specific locations or catchment areas or hijacking footfall traffic from competitors’ stores.

Going Beyond Location

While location information is a critical element when trying to understand how current and potential customers interact with a brand, it can also provide an important way to differentiate and establish competitive advantage in an environment where companies tend to compete less on product and price and more on the customer value they can provide. QSR marketers have already tapped on location using innovative strategies and campaigns to go beyond just using location for their targeting but also to use location intelligence to identify patterns in behavior and audiences. Location intelligence can predict marketing trends, inform strategic business decisions and provide insights to brand strengths and opportunities. In a recent drive-to-store campaign, a global QSR restaurant chain launched an innovative data-driven mobile campaign combining different data sources with the goal of boosting foot traffic to their restaurants across key locations in Germany. To evaluate the effectiveness and performance of their mobile campaign, the brand’s agency trusted adsquare to analyze offline behavior, determine footfall uplift and attribute store visits. In addition to this, the client received an extensive analysis of consumer profiles and competitors. The QSR brand attributed the results of their targeting to actual store visitations resulting in a 97% uplift across key restaurant locations.


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