Kulture Konnect Blog

The holiday season is among us and you know what that means for your restaurant... less and less seats are filled due to the fact that people are focusing their money on gifts and decorations rather than dining out. Blue Sky Local reports that 61 percent of restaurants notice about a 20 percent drop in their business during the holidays.

But what customers don't realize is how many holiday deals restaurants have to offer! They need to know they can still indulge in great food without breaking their bank.

The game-changer? SMS text message marketing. Everyone will know about the delicious turkey dinner you are bringing to the table. 

Today, children are asking for tablets instead of bicycles when they turn five, and a two-year-old knowing how to take a selfie before speaking a complete sentence is considered completely normal. This is the age of millennials, the generation that is all about using digital outlets. And it is no secret to businesses, as they have turned to digital marketing as their primary source of advertisement and that's because of how inexpensive digital marketing is to gain brand awareness.

This is telling of our society and the way we have allowed the internet to play everyday roles in our lives. Statista shows that 77 percent of the US population has an existing profile on a social media platform in 2018. The American Press Institute reported that 88 percent of millennials get their news from Facebook alone. Does this tell us that we are no longer relying on print?

Is print truly dead? Believe it or not, people are still using print for their advertising needs. One example, it was found that billboard ads still reap benefits. MediaLease found that 56 percent of people will share an ad they have looked at by talking about it. Word of mouth, folks.

There was one point several years ago the Kulture Konnect Blog went dark for a few months. This is a classic example of "Do as I say and not as I do!"... Please, don't ever let your blog go dark for three long months as we have done. Of course, there are a bazillion reasons why we put a tragic halt to our content marketing machine like getting too busy to manage the content, prioritizing our client work over our own marketing, scrambling to get everything done before the holidays, etc. As they say though, hindsight is 20/20 and looking back today, those excuses seem to be small potatoes. After looking at our website analytics (comparing/contrasting, before and after), we learned some lessons the hard way and we want to share these lessons with all of you in the hopes of inspiring you to keep chugging along the content marketing train. Here is what we noticed when looking at our metrics over our dark period.

Kulture Konnect's co-founder, Jorge Pacheco, is on a roll. We praised and cheered him on as he presented for the second time at the Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo in early August. He made us proud after conducting Kulture Konnect's first live social media webinar in late August.  This month, Jorge Pacheco was asked to be a presenter at this year's Dine GPS Restaurant Bootcamp in Coachella Valley. As a team as a whole, we are extremely excited to be a part of Dine GPS. Jorge has done a great job over the years sharing his knowledge and insight regarding restaurant marketing. He has shown his strong skills and ability to help restaurants execute successful marketing and promotional work.

If you are a restaurant in the Palm Springs or Coachella Valley area and would like to gain more knowledge about social media, marketing and promotions please do feel free to attend the Dine GPS Restaurant Bootcamp. Here are the event details.

In a world of digital comfort and online networking, social media marketing has become one of the best and most convenient avenues to bring in more business to a growing or already established company. Wineries are no exception, as they are able to dazzle old and new guests by creating charming online content filled with irresistible images of its finest wines and beautiful scenery. To be the best in the business, it is best to utilize the always evolving wine marketing styles.

A new business has the ability to become successful not only through hard work, but also by following trends and reaching out to new and current customers on social media outlets.

Here are some cool and modern strategies that most successful wineries follow on social media.

photo courtesy of Arlene Garcia

Look around right now.  

Just stop and take a look at your desk or your chair or the cup you are drinking out of.  Someone designed that; someone with a focused desire to reach out to you through a structured idea.  They made that thing you are looking at right now.  Does it inspire you or make you feel flat?  Does it brighten your day or darken it? Have you really thought about why you chose that dress or those glasses or that phone? 

Designers have their prints on everything we see and touch.

With social media being utilized as a marketing tool to build and grow brands, engage with consumers and reach a specific target audience, you want to be able to measure and review your monthly analytics effectively. Each platform whether it might be Facebook, Instagram or Twitter includes an analytics page designed to help you understand the behavior of your fans and consumers.  Depending upon the results from your analytics page, you should be able to glean from your data in order to make better marketing decisions. The problem is with an overwhelming amount of social media analytic data to process, it is fairly easy to leave out the most vital metrics and determine which metrics really matter. We can help.

We designed a Social Media Reporting Toolkit for business owners and professionals that will help you focus on the most important metrics and setting the right goals. In result, proving ROI. 

Conventional wisdom may have told you that writing is a good habit. In today’s digital world, however, and especially in case of restaurant businesses, this statement holds true to a greater extent. Blogging is one of the most efficient ways to improve your search engine ranking.

One of the biggest challenges most restaurant owners and managers face is deciding on what to write on. The possibilities are endless. Here’s a look at 5 great blog post ideas that help improve a restaurant’s marketing:

When was the last time you took a look at your restaurant branding and marketing?

Normally, branding & marketing are topics that take priority before and during the launch of a restaurant. During this initial stage of our restaurant launch, a lot of issues come up and are addressed. Things like the restaurant environment, the personality of the brand, the tone of voice for the restaurant, the restaurant logo and all that comes with it (color palette, philosophy, mission, vision, etc.), typography selection and treatment, restaurant collateral (menus, t-stands, table tents, etc.), photography and more put under the microscope. Unfortunately, branding and marketing tends to lose importance as the day-to-day operations take place.

The Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo in Downtown Los Angeles was nothing less than amazing. Kulture Konnect had the pleasure of attending both Sunday events and Tuesday events. A BIG shout out to The Reef Restaurant for their Culinary Clash win! It was wonderful to see all of our collegues from the California Restaurant Association! They do a spectacular job of hosting all of their members and making them feel like VIP. From coffee companies to beverage companies to chefs to restaurant owners. You name it, anyone in the food and beverage industry was in sight. The expo offered a variety of special events and featured education areas to help businesses in the food industry become more educated and more profitable.