Are You Targeting The Right Audience For Your Cayman Restaurant?

“If you have good food, people will come to your restaurant,” goes the conventional belief.

How true does it stand in today’s era where the paradigm has shifted from business-centric to consumer-centric?

According to the Restaurant Marketing Specialist at Netclues, if the only thing a restaurant is focusing on is food, it is likely to fall, given the myriad options consumers have to dine in the Cayman Islands.

Today, a restaurant needs good food, great ambiance, fast service, and a strategic marketing approach. One of the many essentials for your restaurant to succeed or the marketing campaign to yield results is to target the right audience.

This brings us to our original question - Are you targeting the right audience for your restaurant in the Cayman Islands?

Why must a Restaurant Define its Target Audience?

60% of restaurants close within the first year of the opening, according to CNBC.

The primary reason behind this failure - ‘LOCATION.’

This indirectly insinuates the lack of analysis and understanding of their target audience’s preference. Of course, that’s not the only reason, but in this article, let’s focus on this.

For a business, especially a restaurant business, the target customers should be at the core of every step - from planning to implementing the strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes any restaurant makes is believing that its target audience includes everyone. If you are one of those, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Never try to appeal to everyone.

You must concentrate your efforts towards a group of people who is likely to buy your service, i.e., your target audience. This increases your chances of generating more leads, more conversion, and in turn, more revenue.

Still not convinced? Here are some more advantages of defining your target market:

• Understand the demographics, psychographics, and behavioral pattern of those you want to attract and those who will organically show interest.
• Identify your competitors and business differentiators.
• Determine where to access, how to talk, and which channels to use for engaging and marketing to your customers.

Food For Thought

Have you ever wondered why franchise restaurants are often successful?

One of the fundamental reasons is that they have identified the specific target customer in the market, even before launching their business. They conduct meticulous market research and surveys to determine if their target market is sufficient to give them a promising start.

The research is based on demographics (geographic location, population age/gender, income, etc.), psychographics (interests, attitude, etc.), and behavior.

On the contrary, many local restaurant owners start materializing the concept without verifying if there’s the right audience to make their idea successful.

How to Discover your Target Customer?

#1 Gather initial data

Before creating the buyer persona, you need to observe and understand who’s visiting similar restaurants.

The Cayman Islands have over 250 restaurants. This means that you have got cut-throat competition, but there’s a silver lining - you don’t have to start from the ground up to understand your target audience.

Related Blog: Introducing Netclues QR Code System for Restaurants in the Cayman Islands

Visit at least three competitors during lunch, breakfast, and dinner, or research them online to draw a concrete picture.

What should you observe?

• Menu: See the price range for their offerings.
• Dining area: Examine the ambiance and observe people (general age, group dynamics, gender, what they order more frequently, etc.).
• Location: Examine the surrounding of the restaurant. Where is it located - commercial or residential area?

Next, look for a pattern. Are consumers of a similar age group at all three restaurants during lunch? Is the menu’s tonality the same everywhere? Is the music genre or ambiance consistent?

These trends will help you define your target market.

Related Blog: Introducing Cayman Islands Restaurant Online Ordering System HotSauce by Netclues

#2 Create a basic consumer profile

Drill down your initial data into three categories for every restaurant’s customer type - Demographics, psychographics, and behavior.

Don’t forget to research each social media platform’s dynamics to see where your audience will be found.

For example:

This will help you streamline your data and sketch a basic profile typical of your target audience.

#3 Dig deeper

Depending on your convenience, some ways to gather data is through hosting a focus group or creating an online survey.

Remember, the survey must answer - their concerns, motivation, values, what they do in their spare time, how often they dine out, what draws them to a particular place, etc.

#4 Create and revisit your buyer’s persona

After following every step diligently, you should be able to draw out your buyer’s persona based on your collected data, just like a novelist does when working on his story’s characters.

Now that you have a general sense of your buyer’s persona, create a marketing campaign. No one gets it right the first time. So you will most likely end up making some adjustments before your ad garners attention and conversion.

Final Words

Now that you know who to target and where to find them, you can further your marketing campaign and get your ad(s) live on the platform where your audience is. A strong foundation will prevent your chances of failure.

If you are micromanaging your restaurant, the digital marketing team at Netclues can help take off the burden of marketing from your shoulders. Leveraging our decade of experience in Cayman’s restaurant marketing scene, we can help you generate quality leads and stay in front of your target audience.