Genuine Concepts’ ads attract too many customers

Genuine Concepts is a restaurant company that creates distinctive neighborhood venues with exciting menus. They have 7 different brands and 12 locations in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tucson and Flagstaff. Each offers the kind of unique experiences that make people excited to get out for the night.

For example, the VIGs offer outdoor patio dining, and some locations have bocce courts and live music. Cobra Arcade Bar is a radical spot for drinks and vintage video games. Their other properties include The Womack, The Little Woody, The McMillan and Ladera Taverna y Cocina. Their aim is to run enjoyable establishments that create community.

The challenge

Genuine Concepts puts an enormous amount of effort into their menus, decor and entertainment. But if no one shows up, all that work is for naught. Marketing director Julia Thorn and her two-person team (social media coordinator and a marketing manager) are responsible for putting butts in seats. 

Julia’s team used a variety of methods to attract customers including print, social media and geofencing campaigns aimed at people in a specified mile radius surrounding the locations. However, proximity doesn’t always mean immediate interest. For example, the ads are often served to people who are patronizing other businesses in the area. These ads essentially become digital billboards keeping the VIG top of mind.

Overall, Julia and her team found limited options to target audiences precisely. And because measuring in-store results can be difficult, they weren’t able to focus spending on programs with proven results.

Julia says, “Previously we didn’t have a consistent structure for evaluating promotions.” Return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) can be difficult to measure if there is no tracking mechanism or offer. This prevented Julia from knowing where marketing resources could be used most effectively. 

The solution

Genuine Concepts marketing team wanted to focus on new customer acquisition. They wanted to put budget against programs that performed based on in-store results. 

Julia had been using Adentro to collect customer contacts via their guest WiFi network in their physical locations to build an email list. Adentro Attract then made it possible to use those contacts to build audiences for digital ads that are based on real customers, not the kind of digital approximations typically used for online targeting.

Success would be measured using the Walk-Through Rate, the number of people who walk in after seeing an ad. Results would be explicit and allow Julia’s team to calculate campaign ROI to know if they had made a successful investment. Because the team is small, they needed a full-service solution that would give them control and visibility into the process without eating up their valuable time.

“We’ve actually had to turn some ads off because we’ve run out of reservations and seats at events.”

Julia Thorn, Marketing Director, Genuine Concepts

The results

Since they’ve been running ads with Adentro, Genuine Concepts has seen over 9,000 Walk-Throughs which are directly attributable to marketing. Julia says, “We’ve actually had to turn some ads off early because of the overwhelming response for reservations on holiday events.” 

Julia has precise information about what her ads are doing. On average, across all their campaigns, they have managed to reduce the cost of a new customer visit to just $2.46. Assuming an average per person ticket price of $20, that means they are achieving an 8.14 return on their ad spend with just the first visit! 

Adentro provides a way to measure the in-store success of campaigns. Julia is able to optimize results for visits, not clicks. She says, “We can assess the creative with real data so we can take a proactive approach vs. reactive.”