As diners face increased costs across categories, a recent report by InMarket found many are trading down—shifting from their casual and fast-casual food joints to quick-service restaurants to cut back on spending. 

Now more than ever, it’s essential for fast casuals and quick-serves alike to double down on their value proposition and ensure it bleeds through every digital touchpoint with target audiences. 

Leading brands like Taco Bell, Dunkin’, Arby’s, Pizza Hut, among others are clearly catching on and upleveling their value menus and promotions to meet these needs. 

However, launching a new value menu or dining deal alone isn’t enough because of intense market saturation—you need to ensure that your deals stand out among endless competition. 

To effectively break through the clutter, marketers must reach the right customer at the right moment in their dining journey with the perfectly crafted message. It’s something we’ve all heard before, but figuring out this combo and actually making it happen can feel like the ultimate challenge.

Here’s how you can get started with three simple steps, focused on empowering your brand to meaningfully connect with audiences, attract new customers, increase visit frequency and drive loyalty:

Start With What You Know: Building Upon Your Success to Grow Market Share

Every marketer knows you need to understand who your target customer is. But, many fall short when it comes to uncovering when and where you can best reach them and—most importantly—why they’re making their dining decisions.  

Any quick-service brand can have an attractive deal or an alluring ad, but if it’s not reaching the right customer in the precise moment of need, it winds up being a meaningless and significant waste of ad dollars. Thoroughly understanding your customers’ behaviors and their “why” uncovers the insights that can fuel a true customer-first and data-driven approach, empowering your brand to attract and retain customers during a time of increased competition. 

The easiest place to start is with what you know. Consider the ways you can tap insights to better understand the motivating factors behind your customers’ purchase decisions. Dig deep into previous results like engagement, visitation and sales to uncover new opportunities based on both successes and shortcomings. 

Not only is it about knowing your customer, you should expand your knowledge of the competitive landscape and local markets. Understanding key insights like customer loyalty usage or purchase history can further refine your value messaging, fueling more efficient and effective promotions. 

Create the Ultimate Combo: Tapping Creativity & Value to Drive Visits, Sales & Loyalty

The secret sauce to creating buzz and driving diner loyalty is giving your customers something to talk about, while keeping value at the heart of your campaigns and promotions. 

Many quick-service restaurants have tapped a variety of tactics to engage the value-focused customer. Whether it’s more traditional tactics like launching a new breakfast combo, or experimenting with value-driven experiences like Taco Bell’s Nacho Fries Lover’s Pass or Denny’s All-You-Can-Eat Breakfast, enhancing your value proposition across your messaging and deals is essential for staying top of mind for diners.

New developments in technology also provide an opportunity to enhance ads with immersive elements, allowing chains of all sizes to create more engaging experiences that drive exceptional results. 

As one example, if a fast casual chain like IHOP conducts a lapsed/lost analysis and finds they’re most susceptible to breakfast at McDonald’s, they can strategize an immersive ad unit that allows viewers to swipe through various combos from its IHOPPY Hour or its Rooty-Tooty Breakfast Combo deal, highlighting value offerings alongside their traditional dining experience to attract and retain their value-focused diner. 

Get creative—think of the ways you can uplevel your ads with engaging tactics that can more effectively remind diners of both your value as well as your unique offerings or aspects of your dining experience that make your brand shine. 

Uplevel Your Measurement Strategies: Fueling Enhanced Success With Robust Insights

A recent InMarket report revealed that measurement is a top investment priority in 2024 for over a third of marketers. In an unpredictable dining landscape, enhanced measurement is increasingly critical for both understanding the impact of your marketing efforts as well as gaining rich first-party insights to fuel future campaigns. 

Expanding your key KPIs beyond clicks to more actionable insights like brand, visit and sales lift, you’ll better understand a campaign’s true impact on getting closer towards your goals. 

As we say goodbye to third-party cookies, implementing a robust measurement program will also alleviate the added stress and uncertainty of navigating a post-cookies landscape in which many established tactics and targeting strategies no longer apply. 

It’s undeniable that 2024 will once again present new challenges for restaurant marketers. To overcome them, let the customer and competitive landscape guide your strategy and experiment with new tactics that have proven to significantly increase engagement. From there, you’ll be well on your way to building long-lasting relationships with your diners.

Alicia DiStefano is InMarket’s VP, Practice Leader for the QSR and Dining verticals. Alicia has worked in media and advertising for over 15 years, with experience in location marketing, data as a service (DaaS), programmatic, and self-service media. She previously worked in the restaurant vertical for 10 years, and has shared conference stages with brands like Panera, Subway, KFC, McDonald’s, DoorDash, and more. In 2018, Alicia oversaw the team, campaign, and submission to win the I-COM Data Creativity Award for a cost per visit campaign for Outback Steakhouse. Alicia is based in Atlanta.