Kulture Konnect Blog

Is your restaurant marketing team struggling with Instagram?

Nowadays, with social media, restaurants have access to an array of resources to reach their patrons and prospects in real time. But some times social media can be a little overwhelming.

With social media, restaurants can not only share their restaurant information, but also create a community for the restaurant and its patrons to communicate and interact. However, as any other marketing effort, your chance of success without a strategy for its execution will be slim. There is no point in just creating a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account and expect to increase your restaurant foot traffic. You'll need to spend time creating content and monitoring your social media strategy as well as your competitors'.

On average, restaurants need to change their menus twice a year to keep patrons coming back. "Diners prioritize delicious food when choosing a restaurant to visit, followed by quality of service." (Source) Contrary to restauranteur's general belief, 58% of diners choose where they will dine based on the quality of food, while only 22% of diners choose where they will dine based on the quality of service.  This goes to show how important your menu is and how it must showcase the wonderful dishes.

Below, I have outlined 8 simple tips for your next menu launch:  

1. Make Your Menu a Money-Making Machine 

Strategize your menu. Do you know which menu items are your stars, dogs and workhorses? Your menu should be designed to highlight your most lucrative items and drive guests to order meals that will get them coming back for more. For more indepth details on designing your menu, check out our free menu design guide.

If you can‘t figure out why your marketing efforts are falling flat then it's time to either take a good look in the mirror or make a new hire. You have to be brutally honest if you want to grow your business and that honesty must begin with your people. Who you surround yourself with from here on out will determine your success. Make sure your marketing manager possess these 4 qualities to catapult your business to take it to the next level.

No one likes to talk about what’s wrong because then you have to admit you screwed up. It takes guts to admit a mistake, so we all avoid it. Let’s be a little courageous today and go down the path of failure and see if we can learn something. What are the top 10 mistakes restaurant marketing directors make when they set out to conquer their local market?

1. Claiming to have a strategy when it’s really a bunch of tactics.

You know how this feels if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant and it seems like everyone is reacting to the latest emergency. No one is on the same page and there’s finger-pointing everywhere. A real plan is based on sound principles that puts the brand at the center.

Have you checked your restaurant Yelp reviews lately? If so, have you received any bad reviews from any of your patrons or an unhappy ex-employee?

Current technology allows everyone to share their thoughts and experiences in real time, this means that we can all express openly our opinions about your restaurant for everybody to see... And it doesn't matter if such opinions are true/fair or not. 

More and more, consumers tend to check reviews before they make the final decision of buying from any business, and that is not different for restaurants. According to research done by Pew Research Internet Project in 2010, 58% of Americans have researched a product or service online and 24% of American adults say they have posted comments or reviews online. Have in mind that this was done 2 years ago, numbers are certainly higher today. 

Outsourcing to a graphic design studio can reap huge rewards for your company. This is especially true if you are careful to choose the right firm. But first you have to decide! If you’re struggling with the decision, we’ve outlined ten advantages that contracting to a design firm will bring you.

 1.  You will save money. We all know how expensive employees are, especially in California. You can eliminate the burden of employment costs by hiring a graphic design studio that won’t require benefits like healthcare, unemployment insurance and retirement.

 2.  You will save time. Good design firms work fast. They are highly efficient businesses that leverage experiences on past projects to quickly arrive at solutions.

The very moment I'm in the process of brainstorming a new blog post I aim for relevance, level of interest, personal experience and what our target audience is looking for. Always analyze your ideas from all angles! What topics are going to generate views yet, empower the reader? It hasn't always come naturally! In fact, in the midst of strategizing each post I've came upon several moments where I debated whether anyone would remotely read what I had to say. I constantly questioned if blogging was a complete utter waste of time.

When you take on the chore to blog for your business you're not simply writing about anything. You are giving the public a reason to visit your website. You must deliver insight, awareness and knowledge on a subject relevant to your reader that's beneficial to their needs. Keyword, BENEFIT. But, is blogging only about the reader? What about you? How is writing about different topics even benefiting your business? Well, listen up.

If lately you've been telling yourself: "I'm spending too much on my restaurant marketing," it's time to dust off your restaurant marketing strategies and take a look at what businesses in your industry are doing. 

The key is to watch for those restaurants that are successful as well as those that are not, so you can learn, what works and what doesn’t.

I’m here to let you know about a few ways that will help you in re-vamping your marketing plan. If you're spending too much on your marketing, I can provide you with ways to cut some unnecessary efforts that can potentially increase your marketing budget for necessary efforts. 

Restaurant marketing isn’t the same as it used to be. Traditional methods continue to be the preferred way to approach a restaurant marketing plan, but since the birth of the internet, and especially social media, it has become critical that restaurants embrace Internet marketing and cultivate a presence online. But how much online and how much offline should you do? What can you cut from your online and offline strategies? 

For any business, a form of identification (like your license) are your business cards. These cards allow your contacts to be able to identify your position and what company you are representing. Thus, making something so tiny in size a great marketing tool for your company to generate clients with.

Unfortunately, these could also be the reason that you aren’t getting any business. Why is this you may ask? Well, there is sort of a “craft” so to speak when figuring out what makes a good business card versus a bad one. Some companies make the tiniest mistakes, that aren’t looked at before they send the cards to print. No worries though, we at Kulture Konnect are here to help.

Here is a list of five common business card mistakes you can avoid to ensure that your business card is up to today's standards.

Generic, one-size-fits-all emails don't cut it anymore. People expect more. They want messages that are relevant– ones that cater to their interests, consider their location, and offer them products and promotions that make sense for them.