Michael Smith: All right, good morning everyone,
or afternoon for all of you East Coasters,
and welcome to today's webinar
Winning Today's Digital Diner,
presented by Justin Mink, Senior Vice-President
of Franchise Brands at Scorpion Internet Marketing,
and Matt Friedman, founder and CEO
of WZ Franchise Corporation,
better known as the franchise brand Wing Zone.
My name is Michael Smith,
and I'm on the franchise client development team
here at Scorpion,
and I'll be moderating today's presentation.
So before we begin, let's briefly review
just a couple of housekeeping items.
We did go ahead and mute your line,
to avoid any background noise,
but please, we welcome any of your questions
and we will address them after the presentation portion
of today's proceedings.
Just use the questions feature in the GoToWebinar widget,
and send your messages, and they will come directly to me.
And we will build as many questions as we can
upon the conclusion of Matt and Justin's presentation.
All right, so lets begin.
I'd like to turn the floor over to Justin and Matt,
to introduce themselves.
Justin, go ahead and take it away.
Justin: Yeah, hey everybody,
thanks so much for joining us,
we're excited about this webinar.
Our first really targeting restaurant brands
and talking about sort of the trends
and what's new, what's important in the world of digital
as it relates to restaurants,
multi-unit restaurant brands specifically,
and franchises even more specifically.
So my name's Justin Mink,
I'm senior VP of Franchise Brands here at Scorpion,
I am incredibly passionate about helping restaurant brands,
like Wing Zone,
help carve out a competitive advantage
by leveraging the power of digital
in ways that I think are under utilized today.
I've spent my career in digital marketing
for both start-ups and big Fortune 500 companies,
and I've been with Scorpion for about a year and a half.
We work with about 75 franchise brands,
and about 4,000 franchise locations,
and I'd argue restaurants,
I'm as passionate about working with restaurants
as I am with any business, so
I'm excited for this call,
and Matt, I'm going to kick things over to you
to introduce yourself,
and then we'll get rolling.
Matt: Absolutely, so my name's Matt Friedman,
I'm the founder and CEO of Wing Zone.
We are about an 85 unit franchise system
based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Marketing and brand report to me
within my company,
as well as some operations and training,
and we were actively looking for a partner
to really kind of encompass and embody
all digital marketing.
We're fairly spread out, throughout the country,
so we do not have a lot of mass media opportunities.
So we've always embraced digital,
but we really never had it all under one roof,
so I'm happy to share my experiences with Scorpion,
and why we kind of made the decisions,
and excited as we kind of just really launched
with them from that capacity.
Justin: Thanks Matt,
and as we go, Matt and I are going kind of both
give you our perspective on some things here
throughout the presentation.
By the way, just another quick reminder,
as we go, please ask questions as you have them.
We're going to leave plenty of time
to answer your questions at the end
of the presentation portion of today.
But I want to start with just a few
sort of high level philosophical stats.
Not philosophical stats, but some stats,
and then the philosophy around why these are important,
and why you should care.
And how these are going to impact your business,
and in fact how they're impacting your business today
whether you realize it or not.
80% of restaurant patrons look for a place to dine
using their mobile phone.
So people are, your customers,
and the customers that you might be missing out on,
in terms of being visible and engaging those customers,
are on the move.
And when they're hungry,
especially if they're in an area
that they're not familiar with,
traveling for work, traveling for pleasure,
or just looking for something new
to break out of the routine,
first place that customers are going
is the great oracle of Google.
And they're doing so on their mobile device.
Using your mobile device and search
is kind of implicitly tied together
in terms of customers who are looking
for local businesses.
There's a lot of stats around
regarding just about every business category
you could possibly imagine,
in terms of how there's just this incredible trend,
in terms of people using, and understanding
that your mobile device now
knows where you're physically located.
And I think that trend is probably,
I would argue it's the most remarkable in restaurants.
So in general, people who looked
for anything near me, or nearby,
whether that's restaurants, or a car dealer,
or a real estate agent, or an attorney,
or what have you,
has gone up a pretty astounding and jaw dropping
34 times in 2011 alone,
and then doubled every year since 2014.
This stat might be astounding to you,
but the number one "near me" plus anything
search term is restaurants.
And these, this is actually kind of funny,
I always chuckle when I see this slide,
because this comes straight from Google.
And Day Parts near me searches.
So Saturday morning, you know, movie theaters,
car wash, are two, three,
Saturday night hotels, liquor store,
Sunday morning Catholic Churches,
urgent care, but number one
in every single Day Part
is restaurant near me.
And that applies to really
any type of restaurant or business category, now,
or type of restaurant.
For Matt and Wing Zone,
when he and I first engaged
many many months ago,
this is one of the first things that I shared with Matt,
and his team at Wing Zone,
was the fact that starting about 18 months ago,
sort of it was the tipping point.
And for whatever reason, about 18 months ago
consumers in general started to understand implicitly
that your device, whether you're on a lap top,
or tablet, or an iPhone, or an android device,
knows where you are physically sitting.
And you don't have to use geo terms anymore.
You don't have to put Wings in Dallas, Texas,
or in Addison, or whatever
the zip code where I'm digitally sitting,
all I need to do is put wings near me.
And what happened was in large part because
of this incredibly fast trend,
that just happened all of the sudden,
restaurants found themselves in a really
reactive state to consumers,
so I think some of the more progressive brands
might have been a little earlier
to see where this was going,
but by and large, just about every
multi-unit restaurant brand
was caught sort of on their back foot.
Trying to respond in terms of creating a presence
that serves up what a customer is looking for
when they're using this term.
So there's a massive opportunity right now
that not a lot of brands are really
doing a good job of taking advantage of
in terms of positioning the brand to win
when a customer is doing this kind of search.
I think also, another reason that restaurant brands
have been a little bit slow
to move their real material,
kind of to go through a digital evolution,
is because of the fact that traditionally and historically,
closing the loop on ROI has been really hard.
Unlike a service business,
when someone finds you if they're,
if they need their toilet fixed
and they pick up the phone, or fill out a form,
and you can kind of attribute a lead,
in most cases, especially
if you're fast casual and QSR,
somebody finds you online
and they walk in the door,
you can't really connect the dots.
Well things are changing, because of a lot of technology,
and we'll talk about that,
but that is also a trend that
technology is solving that problem,
so that the combination of consumer trend,
meaning the ROI issue being solved,
is opening up a whole world of opportunities
for brands like Wing Zone,
and for all of you guys.
And I'm pretty bullish on the fact that
the first movers here, like Wing Zone,
are going to benefit exponentially.
Because again, there's not a lot of brands
are doing this well today.
And if you're not doing it well,
if you don't serve up an experience,
the customer is expecting and wants to see,
especially if they're not familiar with your brand,
you're going to lose that opportunity
maybe forever.
So this stat is astounding,
and I actually think it's over,
from the research I've done, it's overly optimistic.
Only 18% of restaurants have the optimal
local, branded digital experience.
Meaning that their presence online both tells
the brand story in a way that's compelling,
and differentiated,
and also is locally relevant.
Because if I'm looking for a place to eat,
and even if I think you're,
and I find your brand,
and I think you guys look amazing,
if you don't tell me, right off the bat
that you're within the area
that I'm willing to go drive from my office or home,
or we're at my hotel to get a bite to eat
or grab a beer, or some wings or a pizza,
then you lose me.
So you have to have an experience
that's both branded and local,
and very few are doing this well.
So let's get into the sort of four big buckets,
or components, of the things that
every multi-unit restaurant brand
should be thinking about,
as it relates to their efforts to win the digital diner.
And I'm gonna go through each one of these individually,
and they all kind of tie into each other,
so no, one thing I should preface this with,
none of this exists in a silo.
So each one of these components kind of impacts the next.
They all play together in harmony
as part of a holistic solution,
your presence online.
Nothing exists in a silo,
but it's easy to kind of think about this
by breaking it down into four different buckets,
and then I'll go through each of these,
and kick it to Matt,
as far as how he thinks about each
as it relates to what he's trying
to accomplish at Wing Zone.
First and foremost,
you need to engage customers with a branded
and locally relevant website.
So this, unfortunately, and I'm sure
several of you guys on the phone
will probably either laugh,
in a sad way, or knowingly,
in a sad way if you have your site set up like this.
But most multi-unit brands that I see online
are forcing the consumer down two
less than ideal paths.
If I go to Google, and I'm looking for
wings near me, burgers near me, tacos in a zip code,
hell, people today, they know
they know that they don't even have to put "near me".
You can just put in burgers,
and Google knows that's a local search
and will serve up local results.
Most multi-unit brands have a home page
that's really thoughtful.
That tells a story about the brand,
talks about what the values of the brand are,
has great looking pictures,
really enticing.
And it's just a well branded site.
If I'm a consumer, and I'm looking for a place
to get a bite to eat,
and I find your homepage, great.
If it looks phenomenal, tells a story, great.
But again, my intent is implicitly local,
so if I've already told Google
that I'm looking for a place to eat locally,
and then I find your homepage,
and have to continually dig around
to find the location,
if there is even one in my market,
you're gonna lose a lot of consumers.
A lot of people for every page they have to dig in,
you'll lose about a third of visitors.
Because peoples attention spans are,
we have fast twitch brains,
because of today's crazy multi-device world.
I know I've developed ADD over the past decade,
I used to think a lot more linearly
than I do now.
And we all are sort of victim to this.
So you have to, that's a bad path to go.
The other extreme is consumers find a local page,
but that page is super thin.
It doesn't tell the story about why I should choose you,
relative to the other myriad of eateries
that I can choose,
especially ones that I might be more familiar with,
if you're new to a market.
And it is just hours of operation,
maybe a map, and that's it.
There's nothing brand,
there's nothing compelling about the brand.
So again, if I don't know who you are,
I might choose a safer route,
if you don't tell the story.
So I want to kick it to Matt,
because we're working on, as Matt mentioned,
Scorpion and Wing Zone are partners,
and Scorpion is helping Matt and his team
sort of spearhead a digital evolution of Wing Zone,
and that starts with the site.
And Matt, I'll let you sort of cover
how you think about your website.
Matt: Yeah, well prior to signing on with Scorpion,
we had actually invested probably
close to 40,000 dollars in a new site.
And it was done by our creative agency
here in Atlanta.
I think that it's important that
everyone on the call understands
that there are designers that create websites
because they look good,
but there's a whole back end
that really is the key functionality
of what SEO is all about.
You know, we created a new site,
but yet our SEO, search engine optimization
rankings within Google and Bing, and Yahoo,
and other ones were
sometimes first page, sometimes second page.
So one of the things that I learned
closely with working with Scorpion
is that the site really needs to
even if it's a similar look and feel to what you want,
and we've had the opportunity
to work with their designers,
to make sure that it's what we want to put out
to the consumer,
but you really got to look at it from,
like a car, and the engine that it runs on.
Because if your not top of mind
in search engine, like page one, top three,
and I'm not talking about sponsored stuff,
or paid stuff,
I'm just talking organic,
then your site's really not working well.
It did give us an opportunity
to work with some talented people there,
to kind of create a kind of a new look and feel
in what we're doing.
And Justin you could move to the next slide,
to just show a little bit about what was done.
So it does give you an opportunity
to kind of start fresh if you wanted.
If you love your current design,
then they'll work with it.
One of the things that we,
that our franchisees are loving,
is the fact that it's really about their local page.
Okay, so there's WingZone.com,
and that's fine,
but it's really about the individual store,
and what is important there.
And if you look at our previous site,
it really was, there was a menu,
there were store hours, there was maybe a map,
and that was it.
And I think one of the things
that helps SEO,
as well as just creating more content
for the consumer, is you know we've got,
we can add some specials on here,
for that particular store.
We can do a link between Facebook and Instagram,
we can tell a little story about the franchisee.
All of this is really handled by Scorpion,
as far as kind of the set up,
the design, and then the editing of it,
from that side.
Simple for us to do as well,
but it's one of the resources that they provided us.
You know, we're not a large company,
so I really run the marketing team,
but there's only two other people on that side.
So we were dealing with sometimes a lack of resources.
So from our side, love how we've gone through this.
We went through several renditions with them.
You know, we were very honest and open about,
we really like this, we don't like that.
And they were very open and eager
to create something dynamic,
but something that we really liked.
Justin: Thanks Matt, appreciate that.
And a few other points to add,
Matt mentioned SEO.
So there's a benefit, kind of the benefit is
multi-fold here.
When you create a website that is both well branded,
for not only the brand or the homepage,
for example WingZone.com.
And by the way this site is in progress,
so if you go check out Wing Zone right now,
you'll see their legacy site.
This is the site we're transitioning to,
so where this is kind of a sneak preview,
but encompassing each one of your stores
with its own unique page.
It kind of acts and feels like it's own website,
but it's all anchored to the authority
of the main brand website.
So for example this might be WingZone.com/Stockton.
So there's two things that are beneficial here,
number one, if I am in Stockton,
or any of the zip codes where these guys deliver,
I can order online, or come in and dine at the restaurant,
or take out.
I am seeing both, this is a really well branded page,
the photography looks delicious,
it's selling me on Wing Zone,
and it also, makes it really clear
and obvious that this is the location
that's relevant to me.
So it both is engaging
from a brand perspective, and locally relevant.
Now the second benefit is from an SEO perspective,
Google loves to see all these unique pages,
and unique content and link,
and all these different photos
and stories about each owner,
that's a really SEO rich,
really, I thought kind of a juicy website.
And now Wing Zone's got this really well optimized site,
where the rising tide raises all the ships.
And each location has a powerful advantage
in terms of ranking from an SEO perspective.
But because the site as a whole
is built and architected
so that each page gets wrung up individually,
for a local consumer.
So what mean, what I say by that,
and here's one more item,
and I won't belabor this point any longer, but
one more important note to make
is the fact that the biggest mistake,
or one of the biggest mistakes,
I see a lot of multi-unit brands,
restaurant or otherwise make,
is that they copy and paste the same content
over, and over, and over,
on all of their unit or location pages.
And to no fault of their own,
because how else do you do it?
How else do you create location pages
without saying the same thing?
What happens is Google, two things that are detrimental,
Google can get confused
because if you have 100 locations
and they all say the same thing,
Google doesn't know which one to rank.
And what can end up happening is that
if I'm sitting on one market,
Google might mistakenly rank a location page
across the country.
And I see that, and I'm gone, right.
You lose that opportunity,
because I don't think you're near me.
Number two, Google can actually, potentially flag you.
Because every webpage, and every website
should have it's own unique reason for being.
Otherwise why does it exist?
It's why do you copy and paste,
unless you're trying to cheat.
So even if you have the best of intentions,
Google could interpret that negatively,
and flag the site,
and essentially hurt your rankings.
So the way to do it, is to ensure that each location page
had 100% unique content,
I love the way we're doing this for Wing Zone,
where each individual owner talks about
their own unique perspective on the brand.
It's a great way to scale unique content,
and really give that location
an authentic voice of the brand.
And the last piece I'll say on the site,
before we move to the next bucket
is call to action.
Create a user experience that drives outcomes
that are desirable and measurable.
It can't just look phenomenal,
and that be the end of it.
So for Matt and Wing Zone,
they drive a lot of revenue through online ordering,
and it's becoming more and more important,
as far as the goal of the website
and the marketing campaigns that we're executing,
and we'll talk more about that,
but the site really needs to drive an experience
that ultimately, as someone who's visiting that site,
and someone who's hungry,
encourages me, and makes it easy for me
to understand how to convert.
So you have to think not just about look and feel,
and SEO, but about what do you want people to do
when they're on the site,
and how do you drive that experience
that ultimately produces this outcome.
And then this just shows the scale that's required.
As you grow, your site will become more and more powerful.
Because you just layer in additional
forward slash Stockton,
Wing Zone forward slash Dallas, forward slash Gainesville,
and that just adds to that SEO power of the site.
So the next bucket,
now you've got a great site,
it's optimized for local search,
it looks great as a brand at the local level,
it drives an experience from the consumer perspective
that produces outcomes that you want to produce,
that you want to measure and compel.
Now you have to compete to be visible,
and I'm sure most of you guys are familiar
with the term SEO, search engine optimization,
and we've mentioned it now a couple times.
SEO now extends far beyond just the site
in and of itself,
an SEO really is now all those different fires
you need to have your irons in,
to be visible online.
And really it's ultimately it's about managing
all the places that you can be discovered,
and engaged in a way that's proactive,
that differentiates the brand,
that helps you dominate as much real estate
on a Google page as you can,
and control the message.
If you, if someone searches,
I'm searching for wings in Stockton,
and I see Wing Zone represented in the Google map,
I see a site for Stockton,
that's really differentiated and that appears high,
I see it Yelp, and Facebook, with great reviews.
I, there's an exponential chance that I am going
to click on one or two of those links, and convert.
Because it's clear to me,
based upon the authority of Google,
that Wing Zone is the premier player
in this space, in this market,
and that people think great things about Wing Zone,
to eat at, you know, patronize them.
So that' really the goal,
is to manage all of those different outlets.
The one I want to talk about most,
sort of spend the most time focusing on today,
and I think it's part of the basic blocking and tackling
for a multi-unit brand,
is to optimize your local data,
your local business information.
Some of you might have heard it referred to as the NAT,
name, address, phone number.
So when you do a search for any
really local business today,
especially restaurants,
and I can talk about why, but especially restaurants,
more so than a lot of business categories.
You will most typically see
if not the very first quarter or third
of the top of the page,
sometimes half, you'll see that map section.
With the icons of restaurants,
that fit the category.
You have to manage this,
most times can't leave it up to your franchisees to do it,
because they don't understand how to do it,
and it just confuses them, it's intimidating,
and there's never gonna happen.
So there has to be consistency
in terms of all the places your local business
information can be cited.
And that includes Google, Yelp, FacebooK,
and a lot of other,
probably a hundred different places
that are a little smaller.
Citysearch, Yellowpages.com, all the places,
Bing, Yahoo, it has to be consistent,
it has to be comprehensive,
meaning you have to be in all those places,
and it has to be fresh,
meaning your data needs to be pushed
on a regular basis.
This is something a lot of people don't think about,
but if you think about why,
there's so much turn over in small business communities,
businesses open their doors, and close their doors everyday.
That if that data about your business information is stale,
if Google and their algorithm sees
that that data has not been refreshed recently,
it's not as valid as a competitor with fresh data.
So, I tell those, and it has to be controlled.
But Matt, I want to hear your perspective
on your local business data and maps.
Matt: Well listen, I really believe that it takes
almost a full time job to be keeping up with everything.
We found that we were incredibly inconsistent,
even among the big sites,
you know, if you take Google, Yahoo, Bing,
but there's hundreds of directory listings,
just making sure that the phone number's correct,
that the pictures are updated.
The other thing that Scorpion's really helped us with
is really getting ownership and access
to our Google My Business pages,
and that's important.
We want our franchisees to have access to it,
but we wanted to really own it,
to make sure that we're managing the correct
images and information, you know.
We had a few locations that
had a picture of the back of a restaurant,
or a dumpster or something.
Like how did it get on there?
I have no idea how it got on there,
but cleaning that stuff up is very very important.
And I just think that it's a nice tool
that they're able to kind of manage, or outsource
for us, from that side.
It's not something a franchisee's ever going to want to do,
they probably don't always see the value of it,
but for us it was important from a consistency standpoint.
I was unaware as to the amount
of listings that are out there.
I thought it was maybe five in a market, you know,
but there's actually, there can be a hundred,
there can be over a hundred.
And all of those listings that you have
help your search,
and allow you to kind of be top of mind from that side.
Remember all of the things that I'm mentioning
are really, other than the sign up cost,
and the monthly cost,
there's really no cost to it.
So this is not direct display advertising,
this is really just managing what's out there.
And for us it was really about consistency,
and we were not doing a very good job
of really managing that consistency
store to store, market to market, of what was online.
Justin: Yeah Matt, I'm glad that you,
that was a really good point,
the fact that you mentioned that
this is not about kind of feeding the beast,
and paying incrementally for advertising.
This is really about, super good point,
this is about creating an asset
that ultimately is an annuity.
You know, you create an infrastructure
and you manage your presence in such a way
that it doesn't require this ongoing media cost.
But you're doing so in a way
that creates long term value,
because now that you, when you manage this,
you've got an asset online
that positions each and every one of your franchisees
to compete locally,
it actually is part of a selling point.
Hey if you become a Wing Zone franchise owner,
we plug you in from day one
with a site that's engaging,
it's optimized for local search,
we manage your local listings,
and I'm going to get to reviews here in a minute,
but all of those things are, like Matt said,
just things you have to manage,
but do not require ongoing costs
from a media perspective.
It's a good point.
Let's go to the next topic here,
and again, I call it the basic blocking and tackling
of your online presence.
Website, manage your local data and listings,
and you guys all know how important customer reviews are.
And reviews are something you have to actively manage,
and I'm going to shut up here pretty soon,
because this is something I know Matt
is really passionate about.
But reviews, there's a lot
of different ways to manage reviews.
If you have a loyalty club,
you know that those folks are predisposed
to be really big fans of the brand.
So you want to nudge those customers
to leave you good reviews,
compel them to go out to the public web,
reduce the friction that's required for them
to go out and leave you a review
on Google, or Yelp, or Facebook.
To the degree that you can
collect customer data, you want to,
even if they're a first time customer.
If they're converting an offer,
only for first time customers, collect that data.
Ask how their experience was.
If it's great, compel them to sign up
for the loyalty club,
ask them then to leave you a great review online.
If it's not good, listen,
and be responsive to folks who are not happy.
I know from speaking from a consumer perspective,
if I voice a complaint to a restaurant,
and they are responsive,
I'm heard, and they rectify it,
I go from being a detractor
to being an evangelist,
because a lot of times,
if I just had a pretty good experience,
eh, I come and go, that's great, but if I have a bad one,
and the manager shows that he cares, he or she cares,
and makes it right, that really sticks out in my mind.
You could turn those folks into your biggest champions.
So I want to kick this to Matt again,
because I know he's really passionate about this topic,
and how he thinks about reviews for Wing Zone.
Matt: So by the way, I don't think we've lost it,
no ones logged off yet,
so I don't think we're boring people too much.
Not too bad so far.
So here are the facts, okay,
whether you agree with online reviews or not,
they're real, people believe what they read,
or a large percentage of people do.
At Wing Zone we really lacked a system
of knowing when reviews came out.
Were franchisees responding
to both positive and negative reviews?
So we kind of really swept it under the rug,
you know, there are other systems out there
that can do this as well,
but that's kind of a one off thing.
This is to me an extra perk
that Scorpion really brings to the table.
I want to be clear though,
that their model in this is about data, okay.
It's about you got a review in real time on Google.
How many reviews did you get last month?
How many had responses?
Did your reviews increase in stars,
so to speak.
So for us, when we get a review,
in real time we're notified,
the FBC's notified, the franchisees notified,
but it is up to the franchisee
individually to respond.
Now we keep a close eye on
well how quickly did they respond?
And what was their response?
So for us that was very positive.
The other thing is for some reason
we don't get a lot of Yelp reviews.
We get a lot of Google, we get a lot of Facebook,
but Scorpion has a pretty cool system
where it really helps drive some of the reviews up,
and it's legit, it's not bogus.
So post an order, within about 48 hours,
the customers gonna get either a text or an email
saying hey, just want to ask you
a couple simple questions about your experience.
If they give us four or five stars,
there's a follow up of hey,
would you review us on one of these sites, great.
If it's a one or two star,
then it's another opportunity
for us to at least acknowledge what happened,
maybe reach out to the customer,
or at least use it as a training opportunity.
So to us, this is an awesome tool,
I also think that it puts the onus
on franchisees to respond,
which I happen to believe is the right strategy
ultimately it's their business.
If it was a corporate store,
then one of my managers would respond.
Currently, the way that we know about a review
is we randomly hit Google, like when we Google the store
and, oh they got a review last week.
And I just think that some brands
do a great job of this,
and others, like us, had done a poor job of it.
So the goal is to utilize this
whether it's kind of legit or not,
to utilize positive reviews to drive additional orders.
And that's exactly what our focus is right now.
Justin: Thanks Matt,
and by the way, just one more section
and then were gonna get into your questions,
and again, encourage you to,
if anything comes up,
fire away in the question section here.
Here's, probably for me,
as kind of an internet marketing geek,
I always, there's a Wayne Gretzky quote I like,
and it's "Always skate where the puck is headed,
"Not where it is."
And that's kind of a philosophy that excites me,
it's always what's next,
and being in digital marketing,
it's always about what's next.
It changes almost daily,
There's something new and emerging.
So I alluded to this at the beginning of the call,
and that's the fact that I think,
in large part because marketing attribution
has been really a challenge for QSRs,
and fast casual restaurants,
a primary reason why, as an industry
there's been a slow sort of, slower move to adopt
digital as a means of customer acquisition.
I know that restaurants primarily think
about digital in terms of visibility,
social media, apps,
but again, as it relates to acquiring customers,
it's really been a challenge
to close the loop.
So there's things today that are making
this challenge now an opportunity.
So what was before a fantasy now is becoming a reality,
and that's true marketing attribution.
There is some cool technology
that I'm still learning about frankly,
as it relates to using technology to tie in
people who walk specifically into your door,
with visibility and engagement online.
Scorpion is one of Googles largest partners in the world,
they're doing some pretty cool stuff.
And in some cases we're looking
about piloting with customers,
with what's called beacons,
where you put a physical device on a wall,
and we use that for all kinds of
if somebody walks into your door,
we can actually tie that back to having seen you online
over the past many weeks.
Really exciting stuff.
But ultimately, you need as a franchisor
line of sight, and you need to consolidate
all of your marketing data into one place
so that you can see whether or not your franchisees
are engaging, ensuring that messaging is on point,
it's on brand across the enterprise,
whether it's regional, whether it's brand level,
whether it's hyper local.
Identifying what's working and what's not digitally,
so that you can get rid of the things that don't work,
and quickly scale the successes that happen
in one market across the enterprise.
And digital advertising is also making
attribution something that's more exciting
and real, a reality more so than ever before.
You know a lot of the bigger brands that we talk to
have these co-ops, and regional buying funds
where they're still going analog,
they're essentially quote unquote
plus upping the brand dollars,
and spending more on local TV, local radio,
and not moving those dollars into
the much more targeted, much more measurable
digital channels.
There's a ton of opportunity here,
but where I want to get Matt, pick Matt's brain,
is as it relates to online ordering.
And this to me, when Wing Zone and Scorpion
first kind of got together,
the thing that excited me,
in addition to Matt being a really progressive thinker,
was the fact that they drive so much business
via online ordering and delivery, over the phone,
so we can measure those things.
And you know a decade ago, 15 years ago,
when you would talk to a company about the website,
usually it was their chief technology officer,
chief information officer, making those decisions.
The website was looked at as a piece of technology asset.
Now today it's commonly regarded as a marketing tool.
So that's where online ordering is today.
Online ordering is typically looked at
as an operational tool, or asset,
not as a marketing tool, and it really needs to be because
arguably the most exciting part
of the whole Wing Zone project
is the fact that we are tying in the website
and all of the digital engagement
with online ordering,
so that we can show every single transaction,
the revenue, the customer data about who bought
that order of a dozen wings and a two liter bottle of Pepsi.
We could tie those transactions back
to the marketing channel,
and referring source that drove that,
to help us learn about what works and what doesn't.
And we can show franchisees the return on their investment,
and actual revenue generated.
So Matt, again, I know this is something
you're passionate about,
so I'd love your take on this.
Matt: Well, listen, we are primarily
in the take out, delivery business.
We do dine in as well, but about 35% of our revenue
comes via online ordering,
and probably one of the biggest challenges for us
is trying to figure out
well how did that, how did we get that order?
You know, did they Google something?
Did they get an ad?
Did they do this?
Some of the hardest things for us to grasp
with our move to Scorpion
was how do we determine
how we got that order.
And I know t's a little bit high level stuff,
but they work closely with our point of sale provider.
And there's what's called a session ID that's created
when someone clicks on an ad,
or how they got to WingZone.com in order to place an order.
The cool thing about it is that most,
that's not that abnormal that that can be done,
but a lot of times it ends there.
So an ad is placed, someone clicks on it,
and it takes you to a certain website.
And so to the business owner,
they don't know if they got the sale.
How much did they spend?
Did they call, did they,
what did they do once they got there?
Well we're able to take it all the way through order.
And to me, just driving people to the sight
is not really credible, it's did we get the sale?
And how much did they spend?
Now a few things that we had
to get our arms around a little bit,
is that you had to set up distinguished things like
a different phone number.
Now we still have our phone numbers in our stores,
and it's still on our print material, but
when we're doing advertising,
and it says click to order, or call to order,
it was a unique phone number that's tracked to our store,
to know that it went that way.
So they've got some talented people there,
I'm not telling you that I'm an expert
in technology on that side,
but they were very helpful in trying
to figure out how to get there.
Because every single one of us wants
to be able to determine what was the ROI
on a particular investment or marketing spend.
And I think that we've all gotten caught up in,
especially in social media,
by saying oh I spent 200 dollars on this sponsored post,
and I got 3,000 likes.
That's wonderful, how much business did you get out of it?
Well I have no idea.
So it's very interesting, as your able
to kind of dissect it down to an actual order.
Justin: Yeah, and Matt, the one thing I'll add,
before we get into the Q+A portion of today's webinar,
and again, something I know
you're particularly passionate about,
is understanding who your customer is,
and how to message to them.
So one of the other sort of side benefits of,
or additional benefits of the tracking at that
user level, as it relates to what they ordered online,
is capturing that data,
and then every time they come back,
we're able to sort of continually
quantify the lifetime value of the customer,
and kind of continually bringing up that ROI
to show your franchisees,
as hey, this is not a cost to you,
but actually producing material value.
Dollars and cents is the best way to communicate
to a franchisee.
Clicks and impressions, it's just a bunch
of vanity technobabble.
But secondly, leveraging that data
in a meaningful way, so
just like I talked about SEO,
be the old paradigm is it's just your website,
now it's all the places you can be online.
Email marketing, the old way of thinking
is sending your customers email.
Today it's capturing email addresses,
and then using that data,
matching it up with the recency
and frequency of your customer, and their buying habits,
and getting customized ad campaigns.
So that if Michael Smith was a regular customer,
and hasn't come in in 60 days,
putting together a custom, a segment,
and advertising on Facebook, so that Michael Smith says
we love you, we miss you,
here's a 25% order off on your next order.
Because we have that data.
It's pretty sophisticated stuff,
but it's becoming more and more of a reality,
it's the new email marketing.
Matt, is there anything you want to add about that?
Matt: Listen, that's pretty technical stuff,
as to how to market to people post order.
I will tell you that we still haven't solved
all the pieces of it,
but I think that, what I think is important just to mention
is that there is, there's a few things to look at.
Obviously there's acquisition, or getting new customers in,
and there's retention of customers.
And I think as people in marketing
and all kind of in a competitive environment,
is we got to balance both of them.
And I think that a lot of what we're, our attention,
is about the retention marketing.
How do we market to those people
post an order, or post 30 days, or 60 days.
And I think the data is key on that.
I think there's, Scorpion's got a pretty
good system on marketing to people upon first order.
We're working with them on some possible
opportunities down the road,
of kind of retention post that.
But we're currently using a third party,
outside of Scorpion,
to market to people for more of retention,
lets say 30, 60, 90 days away.
Justin: Awesome.
So the four big buckets, the four components,
and by the way everyone on the call
this recording is going to be available post conference,
we'll send it all to you,
so if there's anyone on your team,
or anyone you know of who you think might be interested
in this content,
absolutely feel free to share.
I also want to encourage folks to contact myself,
or Michael, if anything comes up,
we still have some time for you guys
to input your questions,
but we've got a few here we want to hit.
But again, website, the four big buckets,
the blocking and tackling,
a great site that's locally relevant,
and optimized for visibility.
Managing all the ways that you can drive exposure,
that you don't have to pay for, in terms of media.
Proactively being responsive to,
and managing reviews,
and encouraging happy customers to go out there
and tell the world about their experience with you.
And then attribution, marketing reporting.
By the way one thing to add to that,
today's reporting allows you to make
some pretty cool correlations,
even if it's not totally black and white,
if you know that for example
30% spike in people who are clicking
on your menus or directions,
has resulted in a, and you get store level revenue data,
you can overlay those two metrics,
to start making correlations.
So even without a perfect, one to one
closing of the loop,
there are still ways to start matching up
online engagement with actual spikes in revenue.
But let's get into some questions.
Michael, I'll kick it over to you,
you're fielding the questions here.
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Huge thanks to Matt and Justin,
that was a great presentation,
full of a lot of great information,
and just some really valuable stuff.
So thanks to both of you guys for that.
So getting into the Q+A portion of the webinar,
it is not too late to enter a question,
if you have one.
Just please enter them in the questions field
on the GoToWebinar widget,
and then we'll try to field as many of these as we can,
with the time that we've got left.
So first question we have right now,
it looks like it comes from Andy, and Matt,
I think that Andy's directing his question to you.
Andy asks "How are you funding
"Wing Zones digital projects?"
Matt: We are, we made a decision that we were
going to use our ad fund for this.
So we worked with our franchise advisory counsel,
the up front was funded on that,
and then the monthly fees that the stores,
that is a per store fee, is funded on that.
Now additionally, depending on a launch,
let's say in February we're gonna do some big promotion,
we may a lot a certain amount of money
into a system wide digital spend,
but in general, there are account reps,
call them sales people, at Scorpion,
that will work with franchisees on their budget.
Okay, so let's say, and it's totally an opt in deal.
You have a franchisee that says listen,
I want to spend 500 a month digitally,
or 1,000 a month digitally.
Okay they work directly with Scorpion on how to spend that.
If we have franchisees that want to spend none, it's okay.
But the monthlys are something that we funded
out of the marketing fund.
Michael: Okay, great answer.
So we've got another question here, from Catherine.
Catherine's asking "My brand just launched a new app,
"How do you see apps getting into all of this?"
Justin, why don't you,
why don't you take a stab at this one.
Justin: Good question, and I think, I don't know,
some of my opinions about apps,
I think depends on how you leverage the app.
Here's the thing that,
and I hope this isn't too provocative here,
but the thing that I always kind of glanced sideways at,
is when people talk about how folks who use an app
come a lot more frequently,
spend a lot more average ticket,
you know, X% more than the typical customer.
So my question is always, is that because of the app,
or is that more a correlation.
Are they using the app?
Did they download the app in the first place
because of the fact they are a power customer.
I know for me, there have been a handful,
I could probably count them on one hand,
of restaurant brands that I have patronized so regularly
that I've downloaded an app.
Because the real estate on my phone is valuable,
I'm almost out of memory,
I have to constantly remove things to keep up.
And I have to be a really big fan,
and I will say that some of those brands,
who shall remain unnamed,
are cannibalizing revenue,
because I would have still gone to them
just as frequently,
but now they're throwing discounts my way.
So they're actually costing themselves money,
because I'm an app user.
So really it all depends on how you leverage an app.
If you add value to my experience,
maybe special items, menu items that I get a preview for,
or certain things that make my experience
with you more of a premium one,
and more unique and special,
I think that's an interesting way to engage a customer,
rather than throwing a discount.
I don't know, Matt, do you have an opinion about apps?
Matt: Listen, I do, but it's specific to our brand,
okay, our frequency of order
is maybe once every three weeks, once a month
for a customer.
So they're not going to download an app for us,
we've realized that quickly.
We have an app, but truly it's not really an app,
it's just a wrap around, or a place holder,
for the mobile site.
I believe that in our business
our mobile presence is the most important thing
versus an app, or versus a desk top presence.
60% of our searches,
as well as our orders,
are via a mobile app, meaning from a phone.
Listen, I think if you're a brand that has frequency,
and you're tying in loyalty or payment,
I like it.
You would be surprised, as you survey people,
just random people, whoever you think your consumer is,
and saying what restaurant apps do you have on your phone?
A lot of people would say none.
Maybe they have one,
it's probably a Starbucks, or a Dunkin,
or something like that.
But maybe it's a Grubhub, or an Uber Eats these days,
but in general, we are not investing in an app.
We have one but it is a holder
for the actual mobile site,
so that's kind of just our opinion on it.
I'm not saying that for some other brands
it doesn't make tremendous sense.
The other thing is there can be some sticker shock
on what a true app costs, you know.
And we were not prepared to spend 50 grand, a 100 grand,
on some amazing app experience.
So I think we're gonna kind of end it now,
and I'm sure you can send Justin
or myself an email, or anyone else.
So appreciate the time today,
Happy Holidays to everyone.