Platform Marketing Offers: Return on Investment

Online food delivery offers massive growth opportunities for restaurant franchise owners. Despite this, operating solely in the virtual, digital sphere comes with its own challenges! 

Connecting with your online customers is a vital part of running a virtual kitchen brand. For those without a traditional “bricks and mortar” restaurant, most (if not all!) food franchise orders come from online delivery platforms. 

With this in mind, platform marketing offers are an essential way of growing your business. But how can you know if your promotions are successful? From what marketing “return on investment” actually means to how to improve your ghost kitchen brand’s marketing spend – here’s your quick guide to platform marketing offers and ROI.

What is marketing ROI?

Standing for “return on investment,” marketing ROI (whether for a restaurant franchise or any other business) is the simple practice of measuring profit and revenue growth against marketing spend.

It helps business owners gauge the success of their marketing campaigns – either through long-term analysis or short-term goals. By measuring your food delivery marketing offers ROI effectively, you’ll be better able to allocate budget and improve future efforts.

How can ghost kitchen brands measure marketing ROI?

Many online food delivery platforms allow individual food franchises to set up their own loyalty schemes and marketing offers. For instance, UberEats allow you to define your own deals (i.e. a specific reward after a certain dollar spend or number of orders) whilst Deliveroo have a digital stamp card program.

To measure the performance of these deals and marketing offers, simply use this formula:

Sales Growth (Revenue) minus Marketing Cost (Spend)

Divided by

Marketing Cost (Spend)

Your total will be your marketing ROI! 

The tricky part can be figuring out what sales are linked to your marketing efforts. Luckily however, large food delivery platforms make this easy to track. With everything online, customer journeys and promotional codes can be tracked and analysed in your overall metrics.

Do make sure to measure this over time – always thinking about ways to experiment with and improve your platform marketing offers.

How to improve your ghost kitchen’s marketing ROI

With a firm grasp on what exactly marketing ROI is (and how to measure it) – the next step is improving the efficiency of your food delivery platform marketing offers.

Keep the following tips in mind when getting started:

• Establish clear goals – and do this for every marketing offer! For example, are you aiming for short-term sales or long term brand awareness?
• Create a budget in advance – marketing should be a year-round endeavour, so do allocate an ongoing budget.
• Consider your audience – what dishes are most popular with your customers, and which marketing offers do you think will most appeal, on what days and what times of the year?
• Use analytics – food delivery platforms want to help you increase your sales (it’s a win, win for all involved) – so take full advantage of any metrics available for tracking and analysing your marketing activities. 

Peckwater Brands help virtual kitchen brands increase their sales, improve their marketing and grow their business. Get in touch today to find out how we can help your food franchise. You run the kitchen, we do the rest.