I received several questions over the last couple weeks from connections on what their small businesses (mainly of the QSR variety) should be doing for growth strategies in 2017.

As with any business, it is always important to understand your customers, your data and your competition.

Ask yourself these questions about your competition.
1) What is your competition doing?
2) What channels are they using?
3) How do they intact with their customers?
4) How are they marketing?
5) How can you do it better?

Without getting into much detail, I would focus on a couple areas for growth – these work well for local businesses such as a small QSR business.

1) Building email and SMS databases to regularly communicate to your customers.
2) Put programs in place that target both your loyal and less frequent customers.
3) Look at local partnership/charities where you are giving back to the community while bringing in customers to your business.
4) Yelp reviews of your service.
5) Ensure your business is showing up in local searches.
6) Get constant feedback from your customers on your service, product or website and make improvements that make it better for the customer.

In the end, it is all about the customer and doing what you need to do to get 1 or 2 more orders from each of your customers each month or each quarter. Send me a message for more ideas or how to implement any of the areas above.

About Bernie
With more than 23 years of experience in marketing, Bernie is the Director of Digital Marketing at Papa John’s International, based in Louisville, KY. His current focus is building and scaling a progressive digital marketing foundation that balances the needs of both consumers and national/local stakeholders — all while delivering measurable ROI to the business.

Additionally, Bernie oversees brand representation for Papa John’s digital properties and manages direct-to-consumer channels including email, SMS and push messaging. Recent initiatives have centered around bringing together larger promotional efforts with targeted campaigns to engage the consumer at the precise moment of interest.

Follow Bernie on Twitter @B2the7 or @B7_Design & the B2The7 blog @ http://b2the7.com/b2the7

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