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Stop Chasing Customers. Start Keeping Them.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:05:04 GMT

Unlock smarter growth with the combined power of FreeKwent and Greta.

Stop Chasing Customers. Start Keeping Them.

As business owners, we’ve all felt the pressure to constantly find new customers — more ads, promotions, partnerships, campaigns. But what if the secret to lasting growth isn’t in always chasing… but in keeping the customers you already have?

Most companies measure success by new acquisitions. But the real revenue lies below the surface — with loyal customers who keep coming back.

The Hidden Power of Repeat Revenue

Every business has a visible layer: first-time customers.

But look deeper.

�� Repeat customers generate the majority of long-term profit
They spend more, buy more often, and cost less to retain than new customers cost to acquire.

Remember the iceberg analogy:

Tip = New customers
Base = Repeat revenue & loyal buyers

That is where sustainable business growth lives.

Loyalty Is More Than a Buzzword

Today’s consumers don’t just want a product — they want a relationship.

When customers feel valued, two things happen:
✔ They return — again and again
✔ They become advocates — spreading word-of-mouth

This is the return on investment that no ad campaign can buy.

Bridging Transactions With Long-Term Value

The key? Turning everyday purchases into opportunities for long-term engagement.

This is where the FreeKwent × Greta partnership shines.

By combining powerful POS technology with seamless loyalty systems, merchants can:

Reward customers intelligently
Drive repeat visits without discount fatigue
Capture valuable consumer insights
Convert single transactions into recurring revenue

No more throwing money at acquiring strangers —
Instead, build a base of customers who keep your business thriving.

See It in Action — Book Your Demo!

If you want to stop spinning your wheels chasing new customers — and start building a loyal revenue engine — this partnership is for you.

�� Book Your Demo today and see how you can unlock steady repeat revenue with smart loyalty and POS integration:
➡️ https://tinyurl.com/GretaxFreeKwent

7 Proven Ways Digital Loyalty Improves Repeat Visits & Revenue

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:26:55 GMT

Exploring How Digital Loyalty Tools Like FreeKwent Support Sustainable Business Growth

In today’s competitive marketplace, attracting a customer once is no longer enough. The real growth happens when customers return — again and again. Businesses that focus on retention often outperform those that only chase new customers. This is where digital loyalty programs play a powerful role.

Digital loyalty is not just about points and rewards; it’s about building relationships, encouraging engagement, and creating reasons for customers to choose you repeatedly. Below are seven proven ways digital loyalty programs help increase repeat visits and revenue, and why more businesses are exploring solutions like FreeKwent to make loyalty effortless.

1. Encourages Consistent Repeat Visits

A digital loyalty program gives customers a clear reason to return. Whether it’s earning points, unlocking discounts, or reaching the next reward tier, customers feel motivated to come back rather than try a competitor.

Unlike paper punch cards that are easily lost, digital loyalty stays on the customer’s phone — always visible and always accessible.

�� Learn how digital loyalty works in detail:

�� https://blog.mkonnekt.com/FreeKwent

2. Builds Stronger Customer Relationships

Digital loyalty is not just transactional — it’s relational. Customers appreciate brands that recognize and reward their continued support. When they feel valued, they are more likely to stay loyal.

Personalized offers, birthday rewards, and milestone benefits create emotional connections that go beyond discounts.

3. Increases Average Spend Per Visit

Customers enrolled in loyalty programs often spend more to reach reward thresholds. For example, if a customer is close to earning a benefit, they may add an extra item to their order. Over time, these small increases contribute significantly to overall revenue growth.

Digital systems also allow businesses to create smarter reward structures that encourage higher-value purchases without heavy discounting.

4. Provides Valuable Customer Insights

One of the biggest advantages of digital loyalty is data visibility. Businesses can understand:

Visit frequency
Purchase preferences
Peak engagement periods
Popular products

These insights help businesses make informed marketing and operational decisions rather than relying on guesswork.

To explore how a structured loyalty system gathers and uses insights effectively:

�� https://blog.mkonnekt.com/FreeKwent

5. Enables Targeted Promotions

With digital loyalty, promotions don’t have to be generic. Businesses can send targeted offers based on customer behavior, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

For example:

Win-back offers for inactive customers
Upsell incentives for frequent buyers
Exclusive deals for top supporters

Targeted communication tends to perform far better than mass promotions.

6. Reduces Operational Hassle

Traditional loyalty methods often involve manual tracking, card replacements, and staff involvement. Digital loyalty platforms streamline the process by automating tracking, rewards, and communication — reducing errors and saving time.

This allows teams to focus more on service and growth rather than administration.

If you’re curious how a digital-first loyalty system simplifies operations, you can explore FreeKwent’s approach here:

�� https://blog.mkonnekt.com/FreeKwent

7. Improves Brand Recall & Visibility

A digital loyalty presence — whether through SMS, app notifications, or digital wallets — keeps your brand in the customer’s daily environment. This constant visibility increases recall and strengthens brand association, making customers more likely to choose your business when deciding where to spend.

Why Businesses Are Exploring Digital Loyalty Platforms

Digital loyalty programs are not about instant miracles or guaranteed outcomes. Instead, they provide structured tools that help businesses nurture repeat engagement, understand customers better, and build long-term value.

Solutions like FreeKwent are designed to make loyalty simple to understand, easy to implement, and practical to manage — especially for growing businesses that want a modern approach without complexity.

Take the Next Step

If you’re interested in understanding how digital loyalty could fit your business model, exploring a platform like FreeKwent can be a good starting point.

�� Discover FreeKwent: https://blog.mkonnekt.com/FreeKwent

�� Email: support@mkonnektmail.com

�� Call: 1-833-717-0456

Digital loyalty isn’t about replacing your current strategy — it’s about enhancing customer relationships and creating more opportunities for repeat engagement. The sooner businesses start exploring it, the sooner they can see how structured loyalty can support sustainable growth.

How Restaurant Loyalty Programs Like FreeKwent Increase Repeat Visits & Revenue in 2026

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:08:08 GMT

Boosting repeat visits, higher spend, and lasting profits!

In a highly competitive food service landscape, restaurants can no longer rely solely on foot traffic, third-party apps, or occasional marketing campaigns to stay profitable. Today, customer retention and loyalty are the most powerful growth levers for restaurants and the brands embracing digital loyalty systems are outperforming everyone else.

That’s precisely where FreeKwent, a restaurant-focused loyalty and engagement platform, becomes a game changer. Designed for modern dining businesses, FreeKwent helps restaurants increase repeat visits, strengthen customer relationships, and drive consistent revenue using smart data and automated marketing.

Why Loyalty Programs Matter More Than Ever in 2026

Customer expectations have changed dramatically. Diners want experiences, not just transactions. They expect:

Personalized rewards
Instant recognition
Exclusive benefits
Easy enrollment
Consistent communication

Traditional punch cards, manual tracking, and outdated systems cannot deliver this. Digital loyalty programs, such as FreeKwent, give restaurants the power to understand customer behavior at a deep level and create meaningful interactions that keep customers coming back.

Top industry stats that prove the power of loyalty:

60% of customers choose restaurants that offer rewards programs.
Loyal customers spend 2–3x more than first-time customers.
Increasing retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25%–95%.
FreeKwent is built around these principles: retain, reward, and return.

Key Benefits of Using FreeKwent for Your Restaurant

1. Personalized Customer Experiences

Today’s customers want offers that feel tailored — not generic. FreeKwent uses smart data to help restaurants deliver individualized loyalty rewards, such as:

Birthday rewards
Visit-based milestones
Spend-based rewards
Special occasion offers
Re-engagement incentives for inactive customers

This personalization creates emotional loyalty, not just transactional loyalty.

2. Seamless POS & CRM Integration

A loyalty platform should enhance operations — not complicate them.

FreeKwent integrates smoothly with popular POS and CRM systems so restaurants can automatically track:

Customer visits
Order amounts
Reward history
Point accumulation
Redemption behavior

Restaurants get accurate, real-time insights without any manual effort.

3. Multiple Reward Structures to Match Your Brand

Every restaurant operates differently and FreeKwent allows your loyalty strategy to match your business goals.

Choose from:

Visit-based rewards
Spend-based rewards
Tiered loyalty levels
Frequency bonuses
Limited-time campaigns

The flexibility helps restaurants maximize customer engagement and drive higher repeat visits.

4. Build a High-Value Customer Database

One of the biggest challenges for restaurants today is not having enough customer data.

With FreeKwent, you instantly build:

A verified email list
A segmented SMS database
Customer profiles
Behavioral insights
Visit frequency patterns

This database becomes a powerful revenue engine that fuels personalized marketing.

FAQs

❓ Do loyalty programs really help restaurants increase revenue?

Yes! Loyalty programs encourage repeat visits and higher spending, which directly increase revenue.

❓ How quickly can a restaurant see results with FreeKwent?

Most businesses see improved engagement within 30–60 days.

❓ Is FreeKwent easy for staff to manage?

Absolutely. It integrates with your POS and requires almost no manual updates.

❓ Can customers enroll easily?

Yes, via QR code, SMS, or a simple registration link.

Ready to Boost Repeat Visits & Revenue? Start with FreeKwent Today

If your restaurant is ready to increase customer loyalty, improve repeat business, and grow revenue, FreeKwent is your best all-in-one solution.

�� Explore FreeKwent here:

�� https://blog.mkonnekt.com/FreeKwent

�� Email us: support@mkonnektmail.com

�� Call us: 1-833-717-0456

Start building stronger customer relationships and unlocking revenue growth with FreeKwent today!

A guide to the Do's and Don'ts in Restaurant Email Marketing

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 16:38:29 GMT

In the fast-paced world of restaurant marketing, email campaigns remain a powerful tool for engaging customers and driving conversions. However, success lies in the strategy.

Let's dive into the do's and don'ts of restaurant email marketing, backed by proven metrics.

Do's:

Segment Your Audience: Segmenting your email list based on customer preferences and behavior leads to more targeted campaigns. According to recent data, emails sent to segmented lists have a 14.31% higher open rate compared to non-segmented ones.

Personalize Your Content: Personalized emails resonate with customers. Including their names or sending tailored recommendations can result in a 10% increase in click-through rates.

Mobile Optimization: Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly. Over half of email opens occur on mobile devices. About 52.2% of email opens on mobile devices. A seamless mobile experience can significantly impact engagement.

Compelling Subject Lines: Craft compelling subject lines. Studies show a 33% improvement in open rates with subject lines that create curiosity or a sense of urgency.

Strategic Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Craft clear and compelling CTAs. Emails with strategically placed CTAs experience a 28% increase in click-through rates.

Don'ts:

Ignoring Analytics: Neglecting analytics can be detrimental. Restaurants utilizing analytics experience a 17.4% higher conversion rate. Regularly analyze metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to refine your strategy.

Overloading with Information: Long, cluttered emails lead to disengagement. Keep it concise. Data indicates a 22% decrease in engagement for emails exceeding 200 words.

Ignoring Opt-Out Requests: Respect opt-out requests promptly. Ignoring them can result in a 70% increase in unsubscribes, potentially losing valuable customers.

Inconsistent Branding: Maintain consistent branding. Emails with consistent branding elements experience a 48% increase in brand trust.

Bonus Tips:

Timing Matters: Experiment with sending emails at different times. Data suggests a 23.8% higher open rate on weekends.

Interactive Content: Incorporate interactive elements like polls or quizzes. Emails with interactive content see a 32% higher click-through rate.

Industry Insights:

Emails Sent Daily: On average, restaurants send around 2-3 promotional emails per week.

Spam Rate: The restaurant industry experiences a spam rate of approximately 8%, emphasizing the need for targeted and relevant content.

Industry Standards: Industry benchmarks suggest an open rate of 20-25%, a click-through rate of 2-3%, and an unsubscribe rate below 0.5%.

In conclusion, mastering the art of restaurant email marketing requires a careful balance of creativity and data-driven decision-making. By incorporating these do's and avoiding the don'ts, you can create compelling campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive measurable results.

Remember, the key lies not just in sending emails but in sending the right emails to the right audience at the right time.

Stay tuned with mKonnekt for more insights into the dynamic world of restaurant marketing!

Top 5 Marketing Hacks for Restaurants with a Limited Budget

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:46:13 GMT

In the competitive world of the restaurant industry, marketing plays a pivotal role in attracting customers and staying ahead of the competition. However, not every restaurant has a substantial marketing budget to work with.

In this article, we will explore the top 5 marketing hacks for restaurants with limited budgets, and we'll provide you with some valuable insights to boost your restaurant's visibility without breaking the bank.

➡️What is a Good Marketing Budget for a Restaurant?

Before diving into marketing strategies, let's address a few questions: What is a good marketing budget for a restaurant? According to industry standards, a restaurant should allocate around 3-6% of its gross revenue to marketing efforts. For example, if your restaurant generates $100,000 in annual revenue, you should aim to spend between $3,000 and $6,000 on marketing.

➡️How Do I Market My Business on a Tight Budget?

Marketing your business on a tight budget requires creativity and resourcefulness. Here are additional tips to consider:

DIY Photography: High-quality images of your dishes are essential for attracting customers. You don't need an expensive camera – use your smartphone and learn some food photography hacks to capture irresistible photos.

Content Marketing: Start a blog on your restaurant's website and share engaging content related to your cuisine, chef's stories, or cooking tips. This can help establish your restaurant as an authority in your niche.

➡️The 5 Ps of Marketing for Restaurants

In marketing, the 5 Ps refer to Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People. For restaurants, these elements are crucial:

Product: Ensure your menu is unique and offers something special to customers. Highlight your signature dishes and any special features.

Price: Price your dishes competitively and consider offering special promotions or discounts during off-peak hours to attract more customers.

Place: Choose the right location or online delivery platforms to make it easy for customers to access your food.

Promotion: Use the marketing hacks mentioned earlier to promote your restaurant effectively.

People: Train your staff to provide excellent customer service. Happy customers are more likely to become repeat visitors and recommend your restaurant to others.

Marketing Hacks for Restaurants with a Limited Budget

Now that we've covered the fundamentals let's dive into the five marketing hacks tailored specifically for restaurants operating with a limited budget:

Hack 1: Harness the Power of Social Media

In today's digital age, social media platforms are invaluable for promoting your restaurant. Here's how to make the most of them:

Content Calendar: Create a content calendar to plan and schedule your posts in advance. Consistency in posting is key to maintaining an active presence.

User-Generated Content: Encourage customers to share their dining experiences by using a unique hashtag. Repost user-generated content to showcase authentic endorsements.

Facebook Advertising: If you have a little extra budget to spare, consider running targeted Facebook ads to reach a broader local audience.

Hack 2: Email Marketing for Customer Retention

Email marketing is a cost-effective method to keep your loyal customers informed and engaged:

Segmentation: Divide your email list into segments based on demographics, purchase history, or engagement level. Send tailored content and offers to each group.

Compelling Subject Lines: Craft attention-grabbing subject lines to increase open rates. Personalize emails with the recipient's name or add content based on previous purchase patterns etc. .

Track and Analyze: Use email marketing analytics to track the success of your campaigns. Adjust your strategy based on open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Hack 3: Collaborate with Local Influencers

Local food bloggers and social media influencers can help spread the word about your restaurant:

Research and Outreach: Identify local influencers who resonate with your restaurant's theme and target audience. Reach out to them through direct messages or email.

Agree on Terms: Clearly define the terms of your collaboration, including what you expect from them and what they can expect from you.

Measure Impact: Monitor the influencer's posts and track the increase in engagement, followers, and reservations. Evaluate the ROI of the collaboration.

Hack 4: Online Listings and Reviews Optimization

Enhance your online presence by optimizing your restaurant's listings:

Complete Profiles: Ensure that your profiles on platforms like Google My Business are complete with accurate information, including hours of operation and contact details.

Review Management: Respond to all reviews promptly and professionally. Address any negative feedback with a courteous and constructive tone.

Visual Content: Upload high-quality photos of your restaurant's interior, exterior, and dishes to entice potential diners.

Hack 5: Hosting Special Events and Promotions

Create excitement around your restaurant with special events and promotions:

Themed Night Planning: Plan themed nights that cater to your target audience's preferences. Promote these events well in advance on your website and social media.

Happy Hour Promotions: Experiment with different happy hour time slots to determine when you attract the most customers. Rotate drink and appetizer specials regularly.

Loyalty Programs: Implement a digital loyalty program that allows customers to earn points for each visit. Offer enticing rewards like a free meal or a discount for accumulating points

But we understand that being a restaurateur, it's not always possible to handle all these marketing tasks on your own. That's where mKonnekt comes in. We're here to support you every step of the way. However, we encourage you to give these marketing hacks a try first. If you find that you could use some expert assistance, don't hesitate to contact us.

We're offering a one-month free demo service, with no commitment required. We understand the value of every single penny, and we're confident that once you experience the results, you won't want to go anywhere else. Let us help you elevate your restaurant's marketing efforts and boost your success.

10 Menu Hacks To Boost Restaurant Profits Without Raising Prices

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 16:15:21 GMT

In the competitive world of restaurants, boosting profits while maintaining affordability is a constant challenge. Fortunately, there are creative menu hacks that savvy restaurateurs use to increase revenue without resorting to price hikes.

In this article, we'll explore ten proven strategies to enhance your restaurant's profitability, along with recent data to support their effectiveness.

1. Highlight Profitable Menu Items

One common strategy for restaurants to boost their profits is to strategically highlight high-margin menu items. According to recent industry data, menu engineering can increase sales of these items by up to 15% . Identify your top-performing dishes and promote them prominently on your menu. Utilize eye-catching descriptions and visuals to tempt diners.

2. Embrace Seasonal Specials

Maximizing your restaurant revenue requires adaptability. Offering seasonal specials can boost profits significantly. In fact, data shows that seasonal menu items can lead to a 26% increase in sales . Keep your menu fresh by featuring dishes that celebrate the flavors of each season. Highlight these specials on your website and social media to attract seasonal food enthusiasts.

3. Upselling Through Storytelling

Small restaurants often wonder how they can increase revenue without expanding their footprint. The answer lies in maximizing each guest's spend. Recent studies suggest that using storytelling in menu descriptions can increase upsell success by 30% . Craft compelling narratives around your dishes, emphasizing the ingredients, techniques, and origins that make them special.

4. Optimize for Online Orders

In the digital age, optimizing for online orders, including tableside orders, has become crucial to tap into a significant revenue stream. Recent data indicates that up to 60% of customers order takeout or delivery at least once a week . To leverage this trend, ensure your website is user-friendly, and consider partnering with food delivery platforms. Additionally, integrating online ordering platforms like FoodKonnekt can provide another convenient option for customers, ultimately enhancing the overall online ordering experience and potentially leading to increased revenue.

5. Value-Driven Combos

How can a small restaurant increase revenue without compromising on value? The answer is creating enticing combo deals. Recent research indicates that value-driven combos can increase sales by 17% . Design combo options that pair well-loved items at a slightly discounted price, encouraging customers to order more.

6. Leverage Local Ingredients

Emphasizing locally sourced ingredients can be a powerful revenue booster. Reports show that 75% of diners are willing to pay more for locally sourced menu items . Showcase your commitment to the community and the freshness of your dishes by highlighting local ingredients on your menu.

7. Tantalizing Food Photography

Visual appeal matters, especially in the age of social media. Recent data reveals that posts with images or videos receive up to 94% more views . Invest in captivating food photography to showcase your menu items. High-quality, drool-worthy images can entice potential customers and drive more orders.

8. Offline Marketing Strategies

While digital marketing is vital, don't overlook offline strategies. Recent findings indicate that effective offline marketing can increase customer retention by up to 37% . Explore tactics like community events, partnerships, and direct mail to connect with local diners.

9. Collaborate with Food Bloggers

In the era of influencer marketing, leveraging the influence of food bloggers can be a game-changer. Recent studies show that collaborating with food bloggers can increase brand engagement by 60% . Partner with local food influencers to showcase your restaurant's unique offerings and create a buzz in the culinary community.

10. Create a Winning Restaurant Marketing Plan

Last but not least, a comprehensive restaurant marketing plan is essential for sustained profitability. Recent data suggests that businesses with a well-structured marketing plan achieve 30% higher revenue growth . Develop a marketing strategy that combines online and offline efforts, social media promotions, email marketing, and customer engagement initiatives to keep diners coming back for more.

Incorporating these menu hacks and strategies can help boost your restaurant's profitability without raising prices. Remember that each restaurant is unique, so tailor these hacks to suit your brand and target audience. By embracing creativity, embracing change, and staying attentive to industry trends, you can create a menu that not only delights diners but also maximizes revenue.

For more insights into restaurant success and marketing, be sure to check out these related articles:

How to create a winning restaurant marketing plan: Step-by-Step guide (mkonnekt.com)

The Rise of Food Bloggers: How to Leverage their Influence for Your Restaurant (mkonnekt.com)

Dine-in Discoveries: 8 Effective Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Restaurant (mkonnekt.com)

Food Photography Hacks For Restaurateurs: Capturing Irresistible Dishes With Just A Smartphone

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:19:54 GMT

In today's digital age, visuals play a pivotal role in attracting customers. This has led to food photography becoming an essential skill for restaurateurs.

The power of visually appealing food images should never be underestimated – they can tantalize taste buds, ignite cravings, and ultimately attract more customers through your restaurant's doors. The best part? You don't need a professional camera to capture these alluring shots. With just a smartphone and some clever techniques, you can elevate your food photography game. Let's explore some food photography hacks tailored for restaurateurs like you.

1. Mastering Lighting -The Foundation of Great Shots

When it comes to food photography, lighting is the linchpin. In specific, natural light is your best friend. It's soft, flattering, and brings out the colors and textures of your dishes.. If you're shooting indoors, experiment with different angles to find the best source of natural light, and ensure that you select a well-lit spot, potentially near a window. For evening shots, use warm indoor lighting to create an inviting ambiance.

2. Composition - Telling a Mouthwatering Story

The compositi on of your shot can make or break its appeal. Start by choosing a simple, clean background that complements your dish. Remember, less is often more. Arrange your elements thoughtfully – use the rule of thirds to guide your placement. Showcase the hero of the dish and add a few complementary props for visual interest. Crisp white plates, wooden boards, and textured napkins can enhance the overall presentation.

3. Angles - Playful Perspectives

Experim enting with angles can also yield captivating results. The classic top-down shot, also known as the flat lay, is perfect for displaying beautifully plated dishes. Capture the intricate details and layers by shooting from different angles – a slight tilt can make a dish look more dynamic. Don't hesitate to get close and personal for shots that highlight textures and ingredients.

4. Focus and Depth of Field - Emphasize What Matters

Smartphone cameras offer the magic of creating a shallow depth of field, which allows you to focus on the main subject while gently blurring the background. Tap on the screen to set the focus on your dish, and let the background fade away. This technique draws attention to the star of the show and adds an artistic touch to your photographs.

5. Editing Magic - Elevating Your Images

Once you've captured your shot, the magic of editing can take it to the next level. There are numerous user-friendly apps available that allow you to adjust exposure, contrast, saturation, and more. Don't go overboard – aim for enhancements that bring out the true essence of your dish. Remember, consistency in editing style across your social media platforms can create a cohesive brand identity.

6. Showcase Your Culinary Tale

As a restaurateur, your dishes tell a unique story – share that narrative through your food photography. Whether it's the love that goes into crafting each recipe or the seasonal ingredients sourced from local farms, every image should convey the passion behind your menu. Let your images entice diners not just with their visual appeal, but also with the story they tell.

7. Inspiration from the Pros - Learn, Adapt, Innovate

Explore the world of food photography by following established food bloggers, chefs, and fellow restaurateurs. Take note of their styles, compositions, and lighting techniques. Adapt and incorporate these learnings into your own photography while adding your personal touch. Don't hesitate to innovate – experiment with unique angles or color palettes that align with your restaurant's theme.

Conclusion -

Food photography is a powerful tool that can elevate your restaurant's online presence and captivate the hearts of potential diners. By mastering lighting, composition, angles, focus, and editing, you can capture dishes that are truly irresistible. Remember, it's not just about showcasing the food – it's about sharing the passion, artistry, and stories that make your restaurant special. And with the convenience of a smartphone, these food photography hacks are at your fingertips. So, get behind the lens, and let your culinary creations shine!

For mor e insights into the world of restaurant marketing and enhancing your dining experience, explore our blog posts:

Dine-in Discoveries: 8 Effective Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Restaurant (mkonnekt.com)

The Rise of Food Bloggers: How to Leverage their Influence for Your Restaurant (mkonnekt.com)

How to create a winning restaurant marketing plan: Step-by-Step guide (mkonnekt.com)

Dine-in Discoveries: 8 Effective Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Restaurant

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:45:33 GMT

Have you ever imagined a world without the internet?

We live in an entirely digital world where online marketing channels are the optimal sources of increasing business growth.

However, this doesn't mean that offline channels are out of style. Despite the advent of technology, various offline marketing ideas have stood the test of time and are still relevant to every business worldwide.

Your ideal marketing strategy depends on your customers; a business must be marketed well to stand out. Although online marketing ideas appear to be the most effective, often, you must embrace traditional, offline marketing to succeed. Reading further into today’s blog will enable you to do just that!

➡️ 8 Best Offline Marketing Ideas for Restaurants:

1. Host and participate in events

Customers are always looking for a memorable experience, and in-person events provide them with this. Restaurants can organize live band shows, food-tasting events, stand-up comedy shows, karaoke nights and theme parties to attract more customers and grow their brand.

Restaurants that sponsor events experience a 20% rise in brand awareness and a 12% boost in customer loyalty.

These events give you a perfect chance to showcase your food, hospitality, ambience and customer service. Participating in food festivals is another way to make the most of a mass audience. You get reach, visibility, brand awareness and of course, more customers!

2. Invest in print advertising

Print advertising is a tried and tested method of offline restaurant promotion. Newspaper ads, billboards and pamphlets are common examples of print advertising. However, the price can be daunting. Getting an ad out in the newspaper, or even on billboards demands a high price for a specific size.

So, what can you do? Well, you can categorize your most important campaigns and run limited printed ads for them. In this way, you invest your hard-earned money only in ads that give you the maximum ROI.

Studies showed that outdoor advertising in 2023 resulted in a 25% increase in new customer acquisitions.

3. Invite food bloggers and influencers to your restaurant

You will find thousands of food influencers reviewing famous food places on their social media accounts. These influencers help your restaurant reach wider audiences, as a positive review by an influencer act as a recommendation to their viewers. Inviting these food bloggers to your restaurant can help you grab eyeballs and boost brand awareness.

https://blog.mkonnekt.com/the-rise-of-food-bloggers-how-to-leverage-their-influence-for-your-restaurant

4. Collaborate with local businesses

Partnering with other local businesses is another excellent way for offline restaurant marketing. Restaurants can partner with their local stores, or even other restaurants to host an event.

For instance, your restaurant can partner with a local beverage brand to add a few products to each other's menus. Another example is that, if you sell healthy food, you could team up with a gym and offer a membership discount if customers sign up at your restaurant.

Restaurants involved in community partnerships experience a 18% boost in positive online reviews.

5. Start advertising on local radio and TV

In earlier days, radio and TV were the primary sources of information.These channels still function as a reliable source of offline marketing.

You could get in touch with your local radio station to market your restaurant. Both short audio messages or TV ads enable your business to get a wider reach.

ALSO READ: https://blog.mkonnekt.com/how-to-create-a-winning-restaurant-marketing-plan-step-by-step-guide

6. Create in-house marketing and branding elements

Self-promotion is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. You can create an impressive brand position by curating a customized logo, theme, napkins, tissues and delivery order packages. This way, you create elements that stand out and stay memorable in your customers' minds.

Restaurants with well-designed collaterals observe a 15% increase in customer engagement and a 10% rise in cross-selling opportunities.

7. Place promotional table tent cards on every table

You got customers in your restaurant, now it's time to impress them with your promotional offers. And where better than the tables to run such promotions?

These tables are the perfect place to grab customers' attention through targeted offers. Placing cards printed with promotional offers on restaurant tables ensures that customers check these offers right after they sit down.

8. Build a customized loyalty program

Customer loyalty programs urge your customers to visit you time and time again. Thus, these programs are a great offline marketing strategy to get you more repeat business.

Restaurants with successful loyalty programs in 2023 saw a 30% increase in customer retention and a 10% rise in average spending per visit.

If you are a restaurant owner looking to build a loyalty program, Try mKonnekt’s loyalty feature. Our experts will help you create a customized loyalty program to take your business to the next level.

https://blog.mkonnekt.com/contact

➡️Summing Up

Without a doubt, these creative offline marketing ideas will help any restaurant business get an edge. While every marketing strategy, channel, or idea should always be chosen after thorough customer and market research, some basic strategies never go out of fashion.

We definitely recommend incorporating the above strategies, as they’ve worked for many years and will continue to work for years to come!!

The Rise of Food Bloggers: How to Leverage their Influence for Your Restaurant

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 09:22:33 GMT

In today's digital age, the rise of food bloggers has transformed the way we discover and experience restaurants. Their unique ability to captivate audiences with tantalizing food imagery and engaging content presents a remarkable opportunity for small to large restaurant owners in Dallas, Texas & all over the world.

In this blog, we delve into the world of food bloggers and share actionable insights on how you can leverage their influence to drive success for your own culinary haven.

But before we proceed, it's crucial to master the art of tracking them down. So, let's take a thrilling detour and unveil the unconventional ways!

Step 1: Define your criteria

Determine the specific characteristics and niche you are looking for in food bloggers. Consider factors like cuisine, location, target audience, engagement, and follower count.

Step 2: Use search engines

Start by searching for relevant keywords on search engines like Google. For example, search for terms like "top food bloggers," "best food blogs," or "food influencers." Explore the search results to discover popular food bloggers in the industry.

Step 3:Explore social media platforms

Visit popular social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Look for food-related hashtags, such as #foodblogger, #foodie, #foodblog, or cuisine-specific hashtags. Browse through posts, profiles, and engagement to identify influential food bloggers.

Step 4: Utilize blog directories

Explore blog directories and platforms dedicated to listing and categorizing blogs. Websites like Bloglovin' and AllTop have categories for food blogs, making it easier to find relevant bloggers in your desired niche.

Step 5: Engage on social media

Follow and engage with food-related accounts on social media platforms. Leave comments, share their content, and build relationships with bloggers who align with your brand or program.

Step 6: Join food-related communities and forums

Participate in food-related online communities, forums, or Facebook groups. Network with other members and ask for recommendations or suggestions for food bloggers.

Step 7: Attend food events and conferences

Attend food-related events, conferences, or trade shows where bloggers and influencers gather. Networking at such events can help you connect with bloggers and gather their contact information.

Step 8: Use influencer marketing platforms

Consider using influencer marketing platforms like Upfluence, Influenex, or BuzzStream. These platforms provide access to a database of influencers and bloggers, allowing you to search and connect with relevant food bloggers.

So, you've got the essential steps to find those incredible food bloggers. Now, let's dive into the captivating realm of leveraging their influential impact.

Embrace the Culinary Story:

One of the key aspects that sets food bloggers apart is their talent for storytelling. To make your restaurant stand out, craft a compelling narrative that showcases the heart and soul behind your culinary creations. Highlight the local flavors, cultural inspirations, and the unique experience your small restaurant offers to create a strong emotional connection with your audience.

Collaboration is the Key:

Forge meaningful partnerships with food bloggers who resonate with your brand and target audience. Engage in mutually beneficial collaborations such as hosting exclusive tastings, inviting bloggers to behind-the-scenes experiences, or sponsoring events. These collaborations can significantly expand your reach and expose your restaurant to a wider audience of potential customers.

Visual Feast: Mouthwatering Food Photography:

A picture is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to food blogging, this adage holds true. Invest in professional food photography that beautifully captures your delectable dishes. Engage food bloggers to feature your visually stunning creations on their platforms, enticing their followers and inspiring them to visit your restaurant.

Authentic Reviews that Build Trust:

The authenticity of food bloggers' reviews is a major factor in influencing diners' decisions. Encourage bloggers to visit your restaurant anonymously, allowing them to experience the genuine atmosphere, flavors, and service. Their honest feedback can strengthen your credibility and attract diners who value genuine dining experiences

Nurturing the Digital Community:

Create an engaging online community by actively participating in conversations on social media platforms. Respond to comments, engage with food bloggers and their followers, and share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your restaurant. By fostering an authentic digital community, you cultivate loyal brand advocates who will amplify your restaurant's message.

Unique Experiences Worth Sharing:

Think beyond the plate and craft memorable dining experiences that go beyond just great food. Develop innovative concepts like chef collaborations, themed events, or curated tasting menus that offer something extraordinary. These experiences will not only create a buzz among food bloggers but also encourage them to share their unforgettable moments with

their followers.

Conclusion :

As food blogging continues to thrive, restaurant owners have a golden opportunity to harness the power of these influencers. By embracing their storytelling prowess, forging partnerships, and creating visually appealing experiences, you can propel your restaurant's success to new heights.

Remember, the key lies in authenticity, creativity, and building meaningful connections with both food bloggers and their passionate followers. Get ready to embark on a journey that showcases your restaurant's unique charm and delights food enthusiasts across the digital landscape.

How to create a winning restaurant marketing plan: Step-by-Step guide

Wed, 10 May 2023 09:53:23 GMT

Have you heard about these 10 awesome steps that can totally crush it for your restaurant marketing plan?

It's true, by following these steps you can easily dominate the competition and attract more customers to your eatery.

So why not give it a shot and see the results for yourself?

And every restaurant, regardless of size, can benefit from a given restaurant marketing plan.

Let's break this down step-by-step to make sure we don't miss a beat. We definitely don't want to risk losing out on the chance to win big with our restaurant marketing plan!

So, let's take it one step at a time and make sure we co ver all our bases.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

The first step in creating a winning restaurant marketing plan is to define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your marketing efforts? Are you targeting millennials, families, or business professionals? Understanding your target audience will help you tailor your marketing messages and strategies to their specific needs and preferences.

Step 2: Develop Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What makes your restaurant stand out from the rest? Your USP is what sets you apart and makes you unique. It could be your signature dish, your exceptional service, or your welcoming atmosphere. Whatever it is, make sure you highlight it in your marketing efforts.

Step 3: Set Your Marketing Goals

Once you have defined your target audience & USP, the next step is to set your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing efforts? Do you want to increase foot traffic to your restaurant, boost online orders, or promote a new menu item? Setting clear and specific marketing goals will help you measure the success of your marketing campaigns and make adjustments as needed.

Step 4: Conduct a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is a great way to evaluate your restaurant's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By conducting a SWOT analysis, you can identify areas where your restaurant is excelling and areas where you need to improve. This information will help you develop a marketing plan that takes advantage of your strengths and addresses your weaknesses.

Step 5: Develop Your Marketing Strategy

With your target audience, USP, marketing goals, and SWOT analysis in mind, it's time to develop your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy should include a mix of online and offline tactics, such as social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, local advertising, and community outreach. You should also consider leveraging US restaurant technology solutions to streamline your marketing efforts and reach a wider audience.

Step 6: Create a Marketing Budget

Creating a marketing budget is an essential part of any restaurant marketing plan. Your budget should be based on your marketing goals and strategies and should include costs such as advertising fees, marketing software subscriptions, and graphic design services. Keep in mind that investing in US restaurant technology solutions can help you reduce marketing costs in the long run.

Step 7: Choose Your Marketing Channels

Now that you have a budget in place, it's time to choose your marketing channels. Social media is a great place to start, as it allows you to reach a wide audience for free. You can also consider paid advertising on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Email marketing is another effective way to reach your target audience, and it's relatively inexpensive. Finally, SEO can help your restaurant appear at the top of search engine results pages when people search for keywords related to your restaurant.

Step 8: Create a Content Calendar

Consistency is key when it comes to marketing your restaurant. Create a content calendar to help you plan out your marketing efforts and ensure that you're consistently posting and engaging with your audience. Your content calendar should include a mix of promotional posts, educational content, and engaging visuals.

Step 9: Partner with local businesses

Collaborating with other local businesses, such as hotels, theaters, or event venues, can help increase visibility and attract new customers. Offer special promotions for their customers or create a partnership that mutually benefits both businesses.

Step 10: Monitor and Analyze Your Results

Finally, it's important to monitor and analyze your marketing efforts to see what's working and what's not. Use analytics tools to track your website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates. Use this data to refine your marketing efforts and make sure you're getting the best return on your investment.

So, don't waste any more time!!

Follow these 10 killer steps to rev up your restaurant marketing game and watch the magic unfold.

You'll see a significant difference in the number of customers flocking to your eatery in no time.

Social media ROI- How to measure your social media ROI?

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 06:42:26 GMT

What is Social Media ROI?

With social media getting used as a great device in enterprises to grow, it's been more and more vital to track the effects of your social media efforts.

The most pressing question now is how to comprehend the consequences of your social media strategy.

Are you on the right track when it comes to your content strategy? To understand this you would want to see what is called as “Return on investment”, or ROI.It is nothing more than the returns a company would expect from the time, resources, and minds invested in the company's entire social media strategy.

In terms of math, it boils down to: Revenue-Costs/Costs*100.

Now imagine you were running a grocery store and you purchased the groceries for $100 and sold them for $150, then you'd get: 150-100/100*100= 50% by plugging these numbers into the formula.

Isn't it easy enough? But, in terms of social media marketing, how do you apply this concept?

The return on investment (ROI) on your social media campaign is the amount of money you've made.But not all social media efforts are directly attributable to monetary benefits. As a result, all marketers must be able to extract and apply relevant data, as and when required.

Why is it important to measure social media ROI?

It's crazy how many marketers have no idea what kind of ROI they're getting from which channel or how their social media practices are impacting their enterprise. Since every step, every effort you put into your business has repercussions, this underestimation of social media can cause havoc for your business. As a result, it's past time for you to start treating your social media sites with the respect they deserve.

If you've figured out which social media activities are yielding the best results, you can start planning strategies in that direction. For example, you will discover that posting stories on Instagram or running competitions on Facebook generates more momentum on specific days, resulting in increased monetary benefits to your company; as a result, you'll know what you need to do in the future. That’s the power of studying ROI.

How to measure social media ROI?

Step-1

Identify your goals:

Always determine the goals you want to achieve from your activities before calculating returns or even thinking about analyzing the consequences of your social media efforts. Do you want to increase your following? Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want to increase your sales? Following that, you should consider calculating the ROI.

Step-2

Understanding marketing funnel:

After you've figured out your marketing objectives, you should move on to understanding your marketing funnel. Understanding how social media metrics connect to the customer journey is a crucial first step.

Engagement with the consumer, which translates to reach in social media terms, is the first step in the customer journey, as it is in the early phases.

Similarly, while learning about your audience in the middle stage, it translates to CPC, or cost per click , and CTR, or click through rate . Finally, at the last stage, encouraging your audience to purchase equates to conversions like sales, subscriptions, downloads, etc.

Step-3:

Calculate!

Now that you have targeted your KPIs and understood what to calculate, now comes the tricky part, calculating them. In order to determine your ROI, you'll need the correct tools. Many built-in technologies, such as Facebook insights, Instagram insights, and LinkedIn insights, provide granular information on how people interact with your material. With these, you can keep track of all of your engagement. You can observe when your audience is active, where they are from, what demographics they have, so on and so forth. You can check how your audience reacted to your ad using Facebook Ads Manager. Another significant tool is Google Analytics. To find out how much traffic and conversions your social media marketing efforts are producing, add Google Analytics UTM parameters to the URL of your social media ads.

Why is measuring social media marketing ROI difficult?

Due to a variety of factors, social media managers and executives are finding it increasingly challenging to measure social media marketing ROI. Executives are unsure about what to measure. Many people believe that if their content gets a lot of likes and shares, their strategy is good enough; however, this is not always the case. We need to see if our efforts are yielding any quantitative results.

Is your product being purchased? Is the quality of your online orders improving? Is your ebook gaining popularity? Always measure all the relevant KPIs and do analysis accordingly.

Wrap up:

Social media marketing ROI is a parameter that should never be overlooked, if you are putting in genuine efforts in it, and want good results out of it, keep measuring and keep analyzing!

Top Restaurant Technology Trends 2023

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 07:11:44 GMT

The year 2022 has been nothing less than a rollercoaster ride! We've been through a lo of things, experimented, struggled and got through them all. Is safe to say that we at least tried to go through all of these, whether it was inflation, supply chain challenges, or labor shortages , and guess what was constant in all of them that helped us get through? Guess what was common in all that helped us get through? It's tech! Technology has always been by our side for us to improve and get through the difficult times that we faced.

And let's face it, all these issues are not going away anytime soon, hence it is important, not only for the restauranteurs, but people in every industry to be familiar with the tech trends before planning out their strategies for the next year. Here, we have talked about the top 5 tech trends to watch out for in 2023.

#1 Online Ordering-

Not only because of the pandemic, which forced numerous restaurants to discontinue dine-in service, but also because of the convenience of online ordering, it is expected that online ordering and delivery will grow even more. People nowadays want their favorite foods delivered right to their door. To begin, a decent website and app provide a firm foundation to build. Allowing customers to pay for online purchases directly on your website would simplify the process even more. Customers will love the convenience of ordering and paying for food from their computer or mobile device.

According to a report by Statista , the revenue of online food delivery is estimated to expand at a 13.68% annual rate (CAGR 2022-2027), resulting in a market volume of US$1.45 trillion by 2027.

Restauranteurs should focus on taking help from in-house online ordering platforms, such as Foodkonnekt, which minimize the high margins charged by the third party delivery platforms and also enhance the customer experience.

#2 Ghost/Virtual Kitchens-

According to current data, meal delivery orders increased by more than 150 percent from 2019 to 2020, and UBS predicts the food delivery company to rise more than tenfold in ten years, from $35 billion to $365 billion. More restaurant operators and food entrepreneurs are turning to cloud kitchens as a feasible business solution as the demand for meal delivery develops.

Restaurants rent space in virtual or "ghost kitchens," which are centrally located, licensed commercial food production facilities, to create menu items that are best for delivery.

They are essentially kitchens without a dining area; food is only prepared for delivery. Under one roof, a single restaurant may manage multiple brands or virtual eateries, or the kitchen may serve as an incubator for other suppliers.

As the demand for meal delivery grows every day, many restaurateurs have turned it into full-fledged businesses, and this trend appears to be continuing into the next year. The market for ghost kitchens is anticipated to reach $1.05 billion in value by 2023.

#3- Loyalty programs-

The next trend that we'd like to discuss is the technology that goes into establishing and implementing loyalty programs. We are all aware that the oncoming recession will make life more difficult in the following year. Consumers are spending less and less on products they don't necessarily use in their daily lives as costs rise. As a result, as a restaurant owner, you must choose how to optimize revenues despite the possibility of a recession.

And here is when a loyalty program comes into play. In monetary terms, it is a well-known fact, and all marketers emphasize it, that new clients are more difficult to target than regulars. The cost of acquiring new consumers is significantly more than the cost of retaining existing customers. As a result, now is the ideal time to target your loyal customers.

And that can be easily done with a proper loyalty program in place.

Freekwent is a digital loyalty program that we at mKonnekt operate for our clients across several locations. It is an excellent approach to treat your regulars to fresh deals and discounts that you may choose to run.

In these difficult times, it will help you retain those extra dollars.

#4- Automated Inventory Software Management System-

The marketplace is getting more competitive. Those who identify present demands and react accordingly will thrive in the long run. The world is becoming more frantic and digitally dependent. Customers want better efficiency, prompt service, and high-quality products. An automated inventory system is a modern solution to the myriad challenges associated with human inventory systems. Because inventory systems are automated, they are more efficient and straightforward to administer, allowing management to manage activities more effectively and at a faster pace.

It helps restaurants manage their ingredient purchase orders, stock levels, menu, and recipes expenses. The best inventory management software systems for restaurants integrate with or are built into point-of-sale (POS) systems, minimizing administrative time. These services cost between $99 and $129 per month. Some tools, on the other hand, are free and have limited functionality.

Furthermore, to enhance restaurant operations, says Dirk Izzo, President and General Manager of NCR Hospitality, they are using data for more accurate forecasts.

#5- Restaurant Marketing Automation and Smart Tech-

Customers and restaurant businesses are embracing AI, from robots that flip hamburgers and make salads to those that handle order taking. McDonald's acquired AI company Dynamic Yield in 2019 with the goal of enhancing the customer experience at drive-thrus with the help of the business' automated personalization offering. The menu choices are shown according to the time of day, the weather, the volume of customers dining now, and what's trending on the website. Additionally, it makes meal suggestions based on the decisions each customer makes.

The need for third-party delivery services increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced individuals to remain at home. Although companies like UberEATS and DoorDash have adapted to the challenge, restaurants still have a chance to enhance delivery even further.

So this is the food part of AI. There is a much more pressing need, and we are already seeing the increasing likeability on the marketing front of the restaurant industry as well.

Everything is now digital. And there are numerous ways for customers to interact with a business. Everything from social media to chatbots to websites. And all of these contacts are a direct source of what we refer to as "first party customer data."

This data is a gold mine, if you ask us. An astute marketer can do so much with this information. And this is where technology and analytics come into play, which will be a clear and prominent trend in the coming year.

For example, in order to conduct a successful email campaign, order data can be segmented so that targeted messages can be sent to consumers who haven't ordered in a specified length of time, say three months, and another section can be developed for people who are regulars.

We have a team of incredibly smart marketers here at mKonnekt ; contact us if you want to see the mKonnekt magic!

Wrap up-

Those who are in tune with changing conditions are the clear winners in any industry. Here, we addressed the biggest restaurant innovations that will come to power in the following year, so get ready!

Instagram Reels- Top 5 Questions Answered

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 10:34:36 GMT

Guess what any social media manager or content creator would say if you asked them today, for the key to growing your Instagram?

You guessed it right! Instagram Reels.

Creating and posting reels on Instagram is the secret sauce to increase your reach and engagement massively. If your social media and content strategy doesn't have reels in it, you are missing something very important.

For one of our pizza franchise clients, we at mKonnekt started making and posting reels four times per week, and one of the restaurants witnessed an of increase of 1100% in IG reach and 1300% increase in engagement. Therefore, we will wish to preach what we do!

Now, many people who want to boost their Instagram handle as novices find it quite challenging. Small business owners, personal brands, and everyone else may have difficulty developing an Instagram content strategy. Because, trust us, growing Instagram is no stroll in the park.

We are here to save the day. We have come up with what you might refer to as a comprehensive guide or solutions to the top and most often asked questions about Instagram reels.

Without further ado, let's go!

Q.1 What are Instagram reels?

Q.2 How to make and post an Instagram reel?

Q.3 What are some tips to make my reel viral?

Q.4 What is the best time to post an Instagram reel?

Q.5 How to track the top most important metrics?

What Are Instagram Reels?

Reels are brief, video-style pieces of content that may be produced to engage with your audience, grab their attention while educating them about your company story, and also be used to draw in potential customers.

You can leverage reels to make entertaining videos to share on Instagram with your 15-second multi-clip films can be recorded and edited using new artistic tools, audio, and effects. Reels can be shared on Feed with your followers, and if your account is public, a new section under Explore will allow users from all around Instagram to access them.

This wonderful video feature is accessible in the US and 50 other nations.

On August 5, 2020, Instagram unveiled this fantastic feature. You can read the official announcement here .

Instagram Reels have been a fantastic tool for brands and companies to exercise their creative muscles and provide a visual experience beyond a grid post ever since they were first introduced.

How To Make And Post An Instagram Reel?

Step 1-

Open your IG profile’s homepage or what we also call as feed, and navigate to the top right hand corner. You will find a “plus” icon, beside the messages/DMs’ button.

Another option is to click on the “Reels” icon, situated in the middle of the five buttons at the very end of the page. Both options will take you to the same interface.

Step 2-

Next step is to select the “Reel” option out of the four options, “Post,” “Story”, “Reel” and “Live”. This is the third option out of the four.

Step 3-

Now is the time to create your reel. If you have a pre-recorded video that you want to upload, click on the “plus” icon at the bottom left corner.

You can also use multiple pictures from your to create a reel by selecting them one by one from your device.

To create a reel, tap on the circular button at the bottom in the center of the interface, and hold until you are done. You can also preview to check how you did.

You can add stickers, download reels, write something on it etc. at this stage.

Step 4-

You can now edit your video with the reels editor which is the very interface that Instagram takes you to. There are multiple things that you can do with your video, let’s touch each of the options given here-

Audio -

Allows you to add audio to your video by choosing it from the Instagram music library or by importing it from your device. You can even decide to only include your preferred portion.

Effects-

Allows you to apply different effects like Hollywood cinematic, BlueSky etc. You may choose from trending, reels, and appearance options.

Length-

Allows you to adjust the video's length. Your video can be 15, 30, 60, or 90 seconds long.

Speed-

Allows you to adjust the video's speed. Choose to slow it down. 3x or . 5x, or accelerate it by selecting 2x, 3x etc.

Video Layout-

Allows you to change the layout and include multiple recordings in the frame.

Timer-

Allows you to specify a time limit for the following clip as well as a timer that will sound before you begin recording. If you want to record hands-free, this is helpful.

Dual (newly added feature)-

Allows you to simultaneously capture videos with your front and back cameras.

Gesture control-

Allows you to set the recording of the reel such that Instagram identifies a particular gesture before starting the recording. For example, Raising your hand to start the recording.

Step 5-

Now, you can make the edits that you would want to do before the reel going live. This includes changing the reel cover, adding a suitable caption, tagging people, adding location etc. This interface is pretty user friendly and you can choose and edit things one by one. Now click on next.

Step 6-

Tap the Share option at the bottom of the screen after making your configuration adjustments.

Congrats! Your first reel was posted.

What Are Some Tips To Make My Reel Viral?

Always remember, the hack to the Instagram algorithm is to try and use as many features as it has to offer. If you are successful in doing that consistently, the algorithm is yours. Here are our four top tips to make viral reels-

Use trending music and follow ongoing trends-

Trends emerge because people find them appealing and want to examine and engage with them repeatedly. The same is true of "trending" music. Choose what people will like. Pick a style of music that appeals to the general public at that moment. Please don't be lazy; give up the “I can save it and use it later” attitude. No, now is the time since the social media game, and particularly the trends for reels, are quite fleeting. You won't gain any traction if you create a video about an outdated trend. Therefore, keep a close eye on current events and create reels when they are hot enough to gain popularity.

Use appropriate hashtags-

On Instagram, hashtags are an essential component of all posts. This is so that users who could be interested in your video can be shown it by Instagram's algorithm, which they aid in understanding.

Utilizing hashtags improves searchability and expands the audience for your material on the platform.

Care must be used when selecting hashtags. Because there is more competition, the most well-liked ones are not usually the finest. To create a unique hashtag approach, mix things up.

Use a custom reel cover for each of your reel-

Always put a cover over your reel, which should be related to what you are trying to show in the reel. It does two things, firstly it looks visually appealing on your feed, secondly, it helps the audience to understand what the reel is about and interests them to click and view your reel.

Post consistently-

The secret is consistency. Consistently posting reels increases your chances of having one go viral. Though you shouldn't feel obligated to make one every day, do your best to do so as frequently as you can.

Give it some time, and in the meantime, keep adding new Reels.

What Is The Best Time To Post An Instagram Reel?

According to the stats from earthweb.com, users spend 30 minutes a day looking on Instagram, therefore you only have a limited amount of time to engage your audience. The ideal times to publish Reels are 9 AM and 12 PM, Monday through Thursday, according to Hootsuite .

See how they arrived to this conclusion here .

Analytics- How To Track The Topmost Important Metrics?

Everything you do in marketing is for naught if you are not monitoring the crucial metrics. There are 3 ways by which you can track these metrics.

Individual reels-

Simply go to the posted reel, click on the three dots at the very end (bottom right corner) and tap on “View insights”. Here you’ll be able to see all the important numbers like reach, engagement, and interactions- Likes, Comments, Shares and Saves.

Insights tab on Instagram-

Go to your Instagram profile and choose "Insights" to view the Reels' overall performance.

You may look through the various reels to check how they're doing in terms of boosting your account's growth and extending your reach.

Reels insights provide you with a detailed analysis of:

· Comments

· Likes

· Saves

· Reach

· Plays

· Shares

· Reels Interactions

Through Meta Business Suite-

Step 1-

Open your Facebook profile and open “Meta Business Suite” from the menu on the left.

Step 2-

Click on “Insights” from the menu on the left.

Step 3-

Click on the last option- “Content” from the menu on the left. Here you will get options to select a particular date range for analysis, and filters to apply for Facebook and Instagram posts and stories.

Step 4-

Select a particular date range and select “Instagram Posts” from the filters on the top right hand corner.

Step 5-

Click on export and you will find the complete breakup of the data for your reels (can be identified under “type”).

Wrap-up

Reels can make a big contribution to the growth of your company or personal brand. As a result, it is critical to take advantage of this functionality. And the best part is that it isn't all that difficult.

Maintain consistency in your approach and your specialization at all times. There is no way you will fail.

We hope we were able to answer your top Instagram reels questions.

How To Prepare For The Holiday Season As a Restaurant Owner?

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 04:28:30 GMT

'Tis the holiday season y'all! It is that time of the year- crispy breeze, misty evenings, family and great food.

What does it mean for you as a restaurant owner? Here we are, with a detailed list of things that you can do to keep those orders coming in.

Seasonal Menu

Holidays are the best time to roll out a seasonal menu.

Why should you do it?

Guests feel festive during this time, and want to try exotic dishes, seeing a seasonal menu automatically attracts them as they want to have something exotic and something that goes with the theme and atmosphere.

What should you think about before-hand?

Do you have the ingredients with you? Are they easy to get hold of?
Do your cooks/chefs know how to prepare the special dishes?
Can the items on the menu be changed while maintaining quality for both large and small orders?
In addition, think about how you'll package seasonal specials for pick-up and delivery. Consider your options carefully before providing these options for a dish if it can't be delivered to the customer in the same condition.

Take a look at a few examples below-

During the holiday season, customers are quite fond of flavors like peppermint, eggnog, gingerbread, cranberry, turkey, pumpkin spice, and chestnut. Make sure to highlight a variety of meals using these items.
Coffee shops can come up with Pumpkin spiced lattes, other options are comforting soups and stews, spiced beverages, and peppermint-flavored desserts.
You can serve soups from huge cauldrons to create a spooky vibe in the store.
You can try with drinks and pastries. Remember how Christmas is always about candy canes and hot chocolate? Ingredients such as caramel, marshmallow, berries, and many others can be used.
Instead of coming up with entirely new dishes, you can just simply tweak existing dishes and coming up with interesting and eye-catching names of the items- like spooky burger, chopped fingers, etc.
Similarly, play with Turkey, cranberry etc. for Thanksgiving.

Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is one of the most important steps to undertake while prepping for the holidays.

You should be aware of what kind of traffic awaits you during these special days.
Analyzing the historical data from the sales report from the previous year is one method for doing this.
Calculate the table turnover and the number of customers you anticipate on a busy night.

Take A Look At Your Inventory

Be ready for a higher foot-fall, ready by having what you need, inventory!
The easiest method to plan ahead is to save kitchen notes and inventory analytics reports from past years while getting ready for the following year.
In order to avoid having to apologize to your clients for running out of food to serve them, arm yourself with the greatest and freshest products and keep plenty of them on hand.

Do You Have Enough Staff During The Holidays?

Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and other holidays imply that you should prepare for a significant rush at your restaurant. You might need to hire more personnel to handle the extra consumers because there will likely be more guests than on any of the normal days.
If your restaurant's service slacks off because of your wait staff inefficiency during the rush, it can destroy the overall client experience and damage the reputation of your business. So, if you want to help you manage the Christmas rush in eateries, think about hiring seasonal workers.
Will you have enough workers to handle extra business and big holiday parties? Plan ahead for your seasonal hiring today, before your rivals hire the most dependable candidates.
Speak to your staff regarding what their aspirations are, what kind of shifts do they want? Do they need offs to go back home? Spread the cheer!
Will you have enough workers to handle extra business and big holiday parties? Plan ahead for your seasonal hiring today, before your rivals hire the most dependable candidates. A successful customer experience is mostly dependent on having a sufficient personnel.
Talk to your team members about your requirements and their expectations for the holiday season during one of your staff meetings.
Others might want more time off, while some will probably want to work more shifts to make more money.
Make sure to properly explain any changes to your holiday hours during the meeting so that everyone on staff, including management, is aware of when the restaurant will be closed and when hours will be extended.
As soon as you've confirmed the availability of your staff, make sure the timetable is prepared and distributed to everyone.
Even though unexpected absences are common over the holidays, be sure your expectations about shift changes and swapping are very clear.
To prevent misunderstanding, establish a protocol and be explicit about the consequences of call-offs.

Decorations Make It Worth It!

Creating a Holiday mood is a fantastic way to encourage consumers to make purchases.
People want to enjoy the season, not merely eat meals with a festive theme.
Customers may feel more festive if your dining area, foyer, and restaurant outside are all decked out in Holiday décor. Make sure any modifications you want to make, however, complement the style of your dining room and your overall brand before you start decking the halls.
Some workers enjoy decorating, and they show it. Make it an after-hours activity and invite their kids and family to assist.
Plan to ask a volunteer to lead the decorating committee for each key holiday season. Decide on a transition date as well; no one wants to see Halloween decorations right before Christmas.
Beyond how they appear, keep in mind that decorations and other interior design components should never obstruct the dining experience or the productivity of your staff.
Think about whether the tinsel you wish to hang could go into your customers' meals or whether a festive snowman statue might get in the way of the servers going to the kitchen, for instance. When choosing decorations, be thoughtful and functional.

Holiday Catering

Catering enables restaurants to connect with customers who are attending social gatherings and holiday festivities at home or another location with friends and family.
You might want to think about increasing your catering services if the Holiday season is slow for business at your restaurant.
Why not invite customers to your restaurant? Catering can be employed for both casual backyard holiday gatherings and the formal family Christmas dinner as a fast service or fine dining institution.
Along with these, make sure your marketing is effective by knowing your target audience. For instance, gatherings will be more focused on things like Christmas, Halloween, New year and game day parties if you live in a community with young professionals (when in season).
Email, SMS with first-party data, and social media platforms for awareness and discovery where your target demographic is already active online should all be included in your marketing strategy.
Never forget that running a catering company and a restaurant demand completely different business philosophies. Always prepare your team and inventory for it.

Gift Cards And Promos

For holidays like Christmas, not every outlet will be open. Use social media, emails, or direct mail to inform clients in advance of your holiday hours and schedule.
It's also a fantastic opportunity to provide a discount in appreciation for their loyalty.
During the holiday gift-giving season, costs and budgets are on people's minds; your customers will value any loyalty discounts you provide.
Everyone enjoys getting gifts that are free. Giving your customers a Christmas cake at the time of invoicing or providing complimentary wine with their meal is similar to giving them a Christmas gift.
When you have a special deal, people purchase gift cards for both themselves and other people.
They can then be invited to your loyalty program at that point. Try out these tactics and prepare your institution for the influx to make the holiday season your restaurant's most profitable period of the year!

Take A Cue Here-

Halloween offer- 2 medium Pizza + Small Salad (house/ Caesar) + Small Cheese Bread @ $30
Thanksgiving Combo - 2 large pizzas,1 Caesar salad & a cheese bread $32
Christmas Offer- Kids Eat free on purchases of $30.

Community Relations

The holidays are an excellent time of year to demonstrate to the community that you care. That you wish to repay them by spreading happiness. Here are some tactics to consider implementing as part of your community relationship development efforts.

Coupon Partnerships

Collaborate with nearby schools, churches, and apartments, for example. You can give participating youngsters (on Halloween or Christmas events) vouchers for a free lunch or a free menu item, or you can provide move-in coupons to new members of the apartment complex. This encourages the entire family to go to the restaurant to utilize the coupon. When they are pleased with your services, they will recommend you to others, and they will quickly become your regulars!

To increase online ordering, it is always best to provide coupons connected to a minimum purchase like BOGO Deals. You can also issue coupons with codes that are exclusively valid for online orders.

Social Media

Use social media to your advantage over here! Give your supporters a reason to spread the word! Give them coupons in exchange for bringing in new likes or followers to your page. Provide customers free gift certificates for generating user-generated content for your page, such as tagging your company page and posting photos from your restaurant. It may appear as a lot, but trust us when we say that it would be quite beneficial to your restaurant.

Conducting contests is another way to generate a joyful atmosphere on your social media. For instance, mKonnekt held a Halloween photo contest for one of its clients. We requested that schools post images of their grade-specific Halloween decorations. After that, we instructed them to distribute the images and garner as many likes as they could. The contestant who received the most likes won, and our client's restaurant provided them with a pizza party.

This particular trial was successful in generating a significant quantity of traffic, and our metrics increased dramatically.

Toys For Tots

Toys for Tots is a 71-year national charitable program run by the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. The mission of “Toys for Tots” is to provide happiness and hope to the disadvantaged kids with toys, books, gifts etc. The vision is to put a smile on the faces of the kids who are not able to have the simple joys in life.

Setting Up Angel Trees

Angel tree programs are a great way of helping out the less fortunate and giving back to the community. Angel trees are more or less like the Christmas trees, the main difference being that the tree is decorated with gift requests and tags by the sponsored families. Not only would this program spread holiday cheer and bring smiles on the faces of the needy, but also make people remember your name as a brand who cares!

Wrap-Up

Good luck! We hope you’ll use these tips to market your restaurant in an effective way during this holiday season. If you have some more tips to add, feel free to join our restaurant marketing group- Restaurant Marketers Hub and have a discussion there!

How Can Restaurants Leverage Micro-Influencer Marketing?

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 12:02:15 GMT

Do you own a restaurant? Have you exhausted all marketing options and are still unable to establish a strong social media presence, increase foot traffic, or generate online orders? Then we have a strategy for you that you might not have executed yet! That is what influencer marketing is all about! Though it is not a new term for any industry, it is having a huge impact in the restaurant industry at this point in time. Read along to understand what exactly is micro-influencer marketing, how and where to start and get results that you've been looking for, for a long time!

What Is Influencer Marketing And Who Are Micro-Influencers?

Brands no longer spend large sums of money on high-profile personalities and billboards. Today, influencer marketing is all the rage. Influencer marketing is simply collaborating with people who have "influence" on your target market, hence the name.

A micro-influencer is defined as someone with 1,000 to 100,000 followers. Micro-influencers are industry experts or topic specialists who focus on a narrow niche or area.

Influencers in the restaurant arena are basically food bloggers, vloggers and social media personalities with a reasonable amount of followers.

Consider the following statistics-

For every dollar invested on influencer marketing efforts, businesses earn $5.20 : According to PPC statistics, influencer marketing outperforms paid search, which has a 200% ROI. It is also the fastest-growing channel for brands, surpassing organic search. Businesses earn $5.20 on average for every dollar spent on influencers, with the top 13% earning up to $20 on average. The most successful platforms for influencer channels are blogs and Facebook. Email marketing, on the other hand, remains unrivaled, with a ROI of $38 for every dollar spent.

Why Is Influencer Marketing Necessary For Restaurants?

Restaurants shouldn't be left out of this marketing approach at all since they operate in a sector where word-of-mouth advertising is crucial to boosting foot traffic. How can restaurants incorporate influencer outreach as part of their marketing strategy.

Meaningful Reach And Credibility

Some may argue that these micro influencers do not have a very large reach or following, but given that the consumers you want to reach pay attention to what these influencers have to say and are heavily influenced by the opinions of their close-knit communities, a small reach is much more significant than a super large reach that may or may not reach your target market.

Easy On Your Wallet

If you are just beginning to use this method of marketing, you will discover that it is one of the most economical methods with the highest ROIs ever!

Better Presence

If your restaurant has a little off-beat concept, a distinctive menu, some historical significance, a compelling narrative, or perhaps only serves vegan or gluten-free food, for an example, these influencers can help you build a stronger online presence and then watch your sales soar!

How To Go About Starting Influencer Marketing? (on a no-small budget)

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to launch influencer marketing on a shoestring or no budget.

Step 1- Search

Look for the appropriate influencer. To find influencers who would be perfect for your restaurant, one way is to use hashtags on Instagram. The hashtags you can use, for instance, if you own a pizzeria in Frisco, Texas, are #FriscoFoodies #FriscoFoodie #FriscoInfluencer #FriscoPizzaLover, and so forth. You don't have to follow food bloggers that frequently highlight Chinese cuisine on their pages; simply look through their feeds to see if they have any interest in pizza joints.

Check their location as well; in the example above, they must be locals of Frisco or the surrounding areas and not residents of another state.

Step 2- Approach

Approaching the influencer is the next step after finishing the first stage. There are numerous ways to do this. Typically, they leave their contact details, such as email addresses, in their bio. If not, you may always direct message them, and if that choice is also unavailable, simply post a comment expressing your interest in a collaboration with them.

Step 3- Appropriate Messaging And Offer

Depending on your budget, curate an offer for the gourmand using the right messaging. Indicate to them in explicit terms if you have a budget. If not, simply inform them that you are prepared to pay for their dinner in exchange for a feature. The majority of influencers would agree because it has been tried and tested! You can thank us later!

Step 4- Arrange And Communicate

It is the social media manager's/communicator's duty to let the store know about this offer. They should be well informed of the services you have committed to provide, as well as their scheduled arrival time and other details. To ensure a smooth visit, it is also your job to remind both parties. Since they are an influencer, you could always go over and beyond by setting up a lavish table for them.

Step 5- Measure

The impact of every marketing activity must be measured. You can check the Key KPI’s to be measured here .

Wrap-up

It goes without saying that your restaurant needs to use micro-influencer marketing. It will assist you to attract more clients, which will enhance your restaurant's revenue in addition to expanding your reach to all possible customers.

Inflation and the Restaurant Industry

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 11:26:13 GMT

Groceries, clothing, gas. All of which have had significant price increases in the last 6 months. These are just a few of the necessities which now cost double, and in some places, triple, of what they had cost prior to the wave of inflation. What about discretionary spending? As the prices surge, consumers are spending less and less on items that they don’t necessarily utilize in their daily lives. That puts you, as a restaurant owner, in a situation where you must determine how to maximize your profits despite a potential recession being right around the corner. Here at mKonnekt , we have developed strategies that will put you in the position to do just that.

Cost Cutting measures

Purchases

For any business owner, the capitalization of profit margin is what indicates their success, and in the restaurant industry, it is no different, and it starts from the very foundation ; buying ingredients. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to buy the right ingredients at lower prices to build up a loyal customer base. After all, the better the ingredients, the better the food, which leads to returning consumers. With prices rising however, sourcing partners are also raising prices, with items such as chicken rising by nearly 20 percent. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to search for sourcing partners who will still provide your restaurant with required ingredients for optimal prices. Another option that is becoming more common is to participate in a co-op, where numerous restaurants buy ingredients from the same supplier, and it is still considered a bulk purchase, and prices are reduced significantly. One must determine, as a restaurant owner, if there are others in the area open to this idea, as it could potentially benefit everyone.

Menu optimization

Menu optimization is a frequently overlooked aspect of running a restaurant that can actually prove to cut costs significantly. Essentially, menu optimization is doing more with less. It starts with removing or rebranding items from your restaurant’s menu that tend to not sell in high units. Next, focalize items that DO sell, and ensure that when one thinks about your restaurant, they think of that particular food. For example, the minute anyone thinks of Popeyes , they think of the chicken sandwich, as they have advertised it extremely well, and have diverted their funds towards the sales of this sandwich, thereby increasing profit. Lastly, always ensure that you have the right ingredients to make the dishes which are the face of your brand, so that it continues to be that way.

Revenue Improvement Measures

Capitalizing on total sales is what any business’s goal is, but during harsh times, it becomes all the more important to do just this. The focal point of any business’s revenue is customer loyalty, and it is no different in the restaurant industry. mKonnekt details an A2A approach which essentially starts with a potential customer’s journey to becoming an advocate for your brand. We highlight the importance of having loyalty programs, rewards and much more. Having a loyal customer base attracts more customers, generates more profit, and builds up your restaurant immensely.

Wrap-up

Inflation is hitting each and every industry, let alone the restaurant industry. As restaurant owners, you should be well prepared for this. Contact us today for a tailor- made marketing strategy and take data-driven decisions in this competitive industry.

How To Franchise Your Restaurant? Part 2

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 05:48:41 GMT

As of June 2021, Subway had 37,540 locations in more than 100 countries and territories.

When asked in an interview with the QSR magazine about Subway’s international success with respect to their franchise numbers, their director of development said- “The secrets to our success are probably not secrets. I think they’re really obvious and it has to do with the fact that people want something that tastes good, that’s a good value, and is something that is hopefully good.”

But, what is the real deal here? One of the most important things here is the right marketing strategy.

Does your franchise have what it takes to become the next Subway?

Well you are in great luck today because we are here with the second part of our Franchise blog. We are going to take you through the basics and the most important aspects of franchise marketing- what it is, types and how you can market your franchise effectively.

Types Of Franchise Marketing

Before you even consider marketing your restaurant franchise, you must first understand what franchise marketing is and the numerous sorts of it.

Franchise marketing is basically all those activities that you do to grow as a brand. Franchise marketing might involve pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, SEO, trade exhibitions, content marketing, commercials, and other activities that a franchise engages in to expand.

Franchise marketing can be broadly divided into 2 categories, Operational marketing and Franchise development marketing . Operational franchise marketing is used by both franchisors and franchisees. It entails attracting new clients, keeping them engaged so that they become loyal patrons, and raising brand awareness. Franchise development, on the other hand, refers to all of the activities that you, as a franchisor, engage in in order to sell more franchise locations. If you're a franchisee, you don't have to worry about the latter, and we've concentrated on the former in this post.

Now that the types are sorted, let's quickly hop on to the marketing strategies required to marketing your restaurant franchise.

How Do You Market Your Franchise Restaurant?

Marketing your restaurant franchise might seem like a lot of work, but trust us, with careful planning and implementation, it’s not that hard. Here, we'll walk you through some best practices for a smooth and effective approach.

The first stage in planning any marketing strategy, let alone franchise marketing, is to conduct thorough research on your customers, their interests, geography, demographics, and other factors, as well as to define the personas you will be targeting. Following that, you'll need to choose the channels through which you'll put your message out.

Franchise Marketing Channels

Website

77% of the diners visit a restaurant’s website before placing an order. 88% of online website visitors are less likely to return to a website after a poor experience [Gomez], losing you a wealth of potential customers. Numbers speak for themselves, hence you need to consider creating a quality website, that is fast, easy to navigate through, and the most important thing, it should be mobile friendly.

Also have a properly optimized and easy to understand menu, with proper descriptions for your customers to easily place orders. Make sure that you have proper contact information and popping CTAs (order online) for you to not lose a single customer to the fact that they didn’t know where to place an order on your website!

Social Media Marketing

One of the most effective ways to raise awareness has been through social media. People spend an average of 1.4 hours every day on social media sites, sharing their thoughts and opinions and conversing with others.

This is the time to make a good first impression and position yourself as a thought leader in your field. The goal of the plan is to present your brand to customers by producing material that catches their attention. The benefit of incorporating social media into your marketing strategy is that it allows you to reach a much larger audience without requiring a significant marketing spend.

Optimizing the customer experience at each of these touchpoints is critical to converting a cold lead into a profit-generating customer. Developing a social media funnel attitude may assist you in fine-tuning your approach, increasing audience engagement, and, most crucially, increasing conversions at each stage of the buyer's journey.

Online Reputation Management

Restaurant franchises have long relied on word of mouth to reach out to their consumers and establish their brand, in addition to traditional marketing techniques and paid advertising. While the internet's expansion provided chances to promote your company to a larger audience, it also brought a number of obstacles.

Maintaining an online presence isn't enough; you need to monitor and update your listings on a regular basis. Customers are attracted to a restaurant based on online ratings and reviews. A negative review is no longer limited to a disgruntled customer's personal circle of friends; instead, it can reach millions of potential customers. As a result, managing your restaurant's online reputation is critical.

SEO

According to research based on more than 80 million keywords and billions of results, 28.5 percent of searchers click on the first Google result, 15.7 percent on the second, 11% on the third, and 24.8 percent on the fourth to tenth. Many people rely on Google to discover the appropriate answers to their questions, with little over 3.5 billion searches per day. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play in your franchise marketing plan. The difference between a continuous flow of leads and no visitors can be determined by optimizing and ranking for the right keyword.

Local Marketing

Local restaurant marketing is more than just handing out flyers. Contributing to causes that are important to your customers and match your company's beliefs is, in fact, the best approach to generate goodwill with your customers. Collaborating with local companies can provide your restaurant with a number of advantages, including increased brand recognition and revenue.

In fact, most well-known restaurants, such as Chipotle and Pizza Hut, have regular fundraisers with public schools, sports organizations, libraries, and youth community groups.

Working with local groups such as animal shelters and non-profits, you can organize charity events, fundraisers, and Spirit Nights for your franchise businesses. The collaborating organization receives a percentage of the traceable sales revenues.

Email Marketing

According to Marketing Sherpa , 72 percent of consumers prefer to communicate with businesses via email.
Every day, at least 91 percent of consumers check their email.

Sending emails to promote your business is known as email marketing. Restaurant Email marketing has been around for a long time and is still being used by businesses to send out brand updates, promotions, coupons, and to stay in touch with new and existing customers.

Emails are an excellent way to communicate with your consumers and stay in touch with them on a regular basis. In fact, there are a plethora of inventive methods to use emails to communicate the proper marketing message to your restaurant's patrons.

Birthday Clubs And Loyalty Programs

Restaurants had been successfully using punch cards to create a regular client base long before the switch to mobile platforms. The entire landscape of loyalty programs is undergoing a revolution as a result of the introduction of simple mobile platforms.

With nearly 30% of restaurants offering a customer loyalty program and 69 percent of consumers reporting that where they may earn rewards influences their restaurant decision, it's clear that a loyalty program is a great way to market your franchise restaurant.

Birthday clubs can be a fun way to interact with your clients.

Customers who had not planned to visit your restaurant may decide to do so after hearing about the deal.

Wrap Up

Now that you know how to promote a franchise, you can pick and choose which strategies to employ and get to work.

We can be of great assistance to you if you're wanting to market your franchise restaurant. Know more and request a demonstration of our marketing platform today!

7 Strategies To Boost Your Restaurants Sales With Data-Driven Marketing

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 08:08:08 GMT

Data is no longer an option; it is a requirement. Data is used in almost every industry, and the restaurant industry is no exception. The days of restaurant proprietors seeing this as a day-to-day business are long gone. Considering sales based on the number of feet that landed today, with no notion if they will return. Gone are the days when we couldn't predict restaurant sales and had to rely on what we sold at the time. Gone are the days when we didn't know how much inventory we'd need in the future and had to rely on how much we utilised today.

GONE ARE THOSE DAYS.

Enter- Data.

Consider this- Organizations that are data-driven are 23 times more likely to acquire than their less agile counterparts. That means data is something, right?

Let's be clear: only those restaurants will survive who are able to collect and, more crucially, exploit critical consumer data.

After you've gathered vital customer information, it's time to devise strategies for increasing restaurant sales with this information. Here in this article, we have come up with 7 strategies to boost your restaurant sales with data-driven marketing.

Understand And Segment Your Audience

With so much data at your disposal, you can figure out the characteristics of a typical restaurant patron and learn about their background, style, and personal preferences, among other things. Interaction with your visitors on social media, online ordering habits, phone conversations, and customer feedback, among other things, provides you with a lot of data on client behavior. Begin segmenting your audience and developing marketing initiatives that will specifically target them.

For example, if you notice a customer who does not order tacos on Tuesday, send them an email or a text message reminding them that you have a taco Tuesday at your establishment. Alternatively, if a customer never gets wings with their pizzas, inform them that you have a lunch special where they may have pizzas, wings, and a beverage for a cheap price.

Manage Your Restaurant Inventory

Inventory management is a critical component of every restaurant, and it becomes increasingly difficult to manage without effective tracking and reporting.

You can better adapt your ordering cycles and ensure you have the proper amount of inventory at the right time by using data to better understand cooking and ordering behaviors. You really don’t want to overstock and run out of stock because either can cost you a lot of money.

Boost Customer Loyalty

Do you aware that attracting a new customer costs five times as much as keeping an existing one? As a result, rather than chasing after newer clients, concentrate on your existing customers. It's all about loyalty in the restaurant industry!

Manage Labor Costs

You need to know how much you're paying your employees. When you combine sales data from your POS with scheduling software, you can determine when you have too many cooks in the kitchen. However, delving a bit deeper can reveal missed profits. Are your tables turning too slowly because you're short-staffed during a particularly busy time of week? As a result, you should take use of the platform to objectively monitor employee performance and determine who is meeting your professional expectations.

Menu Management

It's not always the case that the most popular dish is also the most profitable. There may be times when a large number of customers order a particular item on your menu, but none of them return for more. Big data may help you find the worst and best products on your menu, as well as dishes that need to be promoted or discounted on a regular basis. Aside from that, you can compare visitors' preferences based on time of day or week to create a highly tailored menu.

Improve Upon Guest Experience

It's a lot easier to improve the visitor experience when you have a lot of data on your customers on hand. When visitors enter a restaurant, they are anticipating more than just the food; they are anticipating the entire experience in order to return. As a result, depending on your experiences with and research into your clients, strive to give the finest experience possible.

Sales Forecasting

When you keep a constant watch on your audience (through social media, feedback mechanisms, etc. ), which is the essence of marketing, you learn about what's new in the marketing world. That is to say, eating habits, what's "in" these days, and so on. This aids in the forecasting of sales. Using big data to forecast business will assist you with all aspects of organization and planning, ensuring that no unpleasant surprises arise.

Wrap Up

Finding the perfect marketing strategy for your restaurant can be challenging, but having the right facts and stats to help you along the way can make it a lot easier. Tracking and utilizing these crucial data points will help you better adjust and prepare, giving you more control over your strategic growth.

Customer Journey As a Marketing Tool

Sat, 14 May 2022 05:32:15 GMT

What Is Customer Journey And Why Is It Important To Marketing Professionals?

The series of encounters a consumer has with a brand while procuring a service or good is known as the customer journey. Imagine entering a restaurant, selecting a table, instructing the server to bring your food, waiting for it to arrive, eating it, paying at the counter, and then leaving. Alternately, consider visiting your preferred Mexican restaurant's website, browsing the menu, adding your favorite tacos to the cart, checking out, and then waiting for them to be delivered as you savor the goodness. Additionally, the restaurant customer journey does not end with eating. Applications for ordering meals on-demand or for food delivery on-demand have completely changed how businesses serve food. In today's customer journey maps, after-sale services are so important that they may even lead to services reviews.

All of these actions—from entering your favorite restaurant or accessing its website to leaving the establishment or eating your preferred tacos in your pajamas—are essentially journeys.

Journey of you as a customer, trying to avail of a service of your favorite restaurant.

But why should we even be concerned? You see, even though you design your business, create a product, aggressively market it, attract clients, and deliver sales pitches, at the end of the day, the customer is going to use your product. It is not you, not your team, not anyone else, it's the customer. Therefore as marketing professionals, it is crucial for us to observe how our customers behave when they visit our website or walk through the door (incase of an offline business). Your prospect will definitely return to you if their path is easy, if they can readily access your product, and if they feel comfortable using it.

Consider The Following Statistics-

Seven out of ten American customers today claim to have paid more money to do business with a firm that provides excellent service. (American Express)
Over the course of three years, a company with $1 billion in yearly revenues has an average revenue growth of $823 million due to a moderate improvement in the customer experience. ( Temkin Group )

In the US, there are over a million restaurants that employ 15.6 million people (According to the US Census bureau, 2021 )

And, to be really honest, every restaurant is attempting to attract as many patrons as they can. Everyone is using their very best marketing skills to outshine one another. Knowing your consumer, their behavior, and the data points you can track will help you understand how to keep them coming back to you in the face of such fierce competition.

The customer journey should therefore be used as a marketing tool by all restaurant marketers.

What Are The Stages Of Customer Journey?

It is crucial to segment the entire client journey into several stages. Understanding consumer behavior at various stages of the process and transaction is really helpful for keeping track of it.

Different marketers and organizations call the various stages by different names, but here at mKonnekt , our analysis of the customer journey is divided into 5 phases - beginning with awareness, progressing to engagement, acquisition, and loyalty, and concluding with advocacy, also known as the A2A model .

The customer journey analysis provides clear insights into the consumer's purchasing and decision-making mindset. It allows you to plan, execute, and optimize your marketing strategies by supplying accurate and timely customer data and insights.

Let us go over each stage of the customer journey in detail.

The Awareness Stage

Is your restaurant within the customer’s preferences when it comes to a dining decision? To be considered you need to make sure that you reach out to the customers through different channels with a message that resonates with them. Your actions determine the quantity and quality of leads you generate at this level. The goal at this point is to expose your brand to the customer by posting content that piques their interest. For a restaurant, organic and paid social media play a very important role at this stage as well as being part of the community member.

The Engagement Stage

Customers have identified their solution channels at this point, but are in the comparison stage. Understand that you are one of many options available to them. At this stage, you must put your best foot forward by providing as many content channels as possible for them to interact and engage with your brand, so that they can understand what you can offer them better than the competition. Chatbots, specials and contact page on a website, and social media channels are vital for engaging customers in a restaurant’s case scenario.

The Acquisition Stage

At this point, the customer is convinced that they will purchase the product or service from you. For a restaurant, this would be when a customer comes in to eat or when they order food online.

The Loyalty Stage

Customers who return are more likely to tell others about their experience. This is the stage of loyalty. During the retention phase, businesses can implement a loyalty program to communicate company or product advancements to customers on a regular basis. For a restaurant, using these platforms, you can offer your customers personalized weekly deals, birthday specials, and a variety of other freebies. When a customer joins your program, it's a sure sign that they've reached the marketing funnel's loyalty stage!

The Advocacy Stage

Referral programs are a very effective way to turn your most devoted customers into brand ambassadors and gather customer information. They essentially work in the same way that targeted promotions do, drawing clients who are intensely interested in the menu items at your restaurant.

The success and sales of a restaurant depend on gathering consumer information at every stage of the marketing funnel. To succeed in our technologically advanced culture, you must learn how to use this data. Every marketer should consider the customer journey since it enables them to put themselves in the customer's shoes and provides an answer to the question of what the consumer would choose given the options.

How Do You Get Customer Data To Boost Your Restaurants Sales With Data-Driven Marketing?- The A2A Approach

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 07:59:09 GMT

Understanding the customer's journey as they learn about your organization, develop an affection for your products and services, and eventually become an advocate for your brand is an important part of expanding your business.

The process isn't easy, but once you grasp the customer's perspective, you'll be able to guide them through the many stages of the journey.

The customer life cycle boils down to this. You carry out marketing operations that move customers through the stages of the customer life cycle. This allows you to expand your company.

One of the key problems that arises when talking about data-driven marketing is where do you get your consumer data and how do you collect it in order to analyze and use it afterwards?

You see, data is all around you; it's just a matter of understanding marketing to see how you can turn small platforms into data-producing machines.

Here in this article, we've gone over the foundations of how and where you may collect customer data in each buyer stage of the A2A funnel to use data-driven marketing methods to increase restaurant sales.

The Awareness Stage

Organic And Paid Social Media

One of the most effective ways to raise awareness and collect customer data has been through social media. People spend an average of 1.4 hours every day on social media sites, sharing their thoughts and opinions and conversing with others.

This is the time to make a good first impression and position yourself as a thought leader in your field. The quantity and quality of leads you generate at this level are determined by your actions. At this point, the aim is to expose your brand to the customer by posting material that catches their attention. The benefit of incorporating social media into your marketing strategy is that it allows you to reach a much larger audience without requiring a significant marketing spend.

The Engagement Stage

Specials And Contact Page On Your Website

Create a specials page on your website and invite people to sign up for your restaurant’s specials. It's a really straightforward method of obtaining client information.

You may also run Facebook and Instagram ads and give a CTA for the same, when your aim is to collect customer data.

Social Media

Determine the types of posts that drew the most attention and write content that engages your customers and distinguishes your product while answering the question of why they should buy from you.

You might also plan activities such as live Q&As, webinars, tournaments, or live events, as well as host contests or giveaways.

Spend some time responding to reviews, comments, and mentions of your brand.

Chatbots

Chatbots are an excellent method to connect with your visitors, interact with them in real time, solve their queries, make the ordering process seamless, and send promotional offers directly to your consumers' inboxes. They deliver an interactive experience that is completely automated. When you communicate with a chatbot, it's as if you're conversing with a real person.

According to Statista, 11% of the world’s population uses Facebook Messenger every month. Facebook Messenger and other live chat services can gather a wealth of information about each individual customer.

The Acquisition Stage

POS systems

You have complete control over your POS systems. You'll be able to manage your delivery and takeaway orders. You'll also be able to collect and manage all of the information your customers give you, as well as track their progress from casual user to committed customer. You may contact your consumers directly, send them excellent offers, retarget them, and fully automate the process—your restaurant, your customers—using the power of data and information. From beginning to end, the service is completely branded.

Integrated Feedback Softwares

At mkonnekt, we have developed a software called Kritiq , which is incorporated into our online ordering platform foodkonnekt and sends a feedback email with each order. This allows you to learn a lot about your customers' experiences and how you can use to manipulate your strategies.

You can do something similar by sending out feedback email campaigns and online surveys and get hold of your customer experiences.

The Loyalty Stage

Loyalty clubs and birthday programs - On multiple media, promote your birthday clubs and loyalty programs. These are some of the most effective methods for gathering vital client information. You may give your consumers personalized weekly deals, birthday specials, and many more freebies using these platforms. When a customer joins your program, it's a sure sign that they've reached the loyalty stage of the marketing funnel!

The Advocacy Stage

The ultimate goal of your marketing funnel should be to convert loyal consumers into proactive advocates for your company. People are more likely to trust a brand that their friends have recommended than any other sort of advertising. Referral programs are a great method to transform your most loyal customers into brand advocates and collect customer data as well. Referral programs are similar to targeted promotions in that they encourage customers to refer friends who might be interested in your products.

Wrap Up

Customer data can be collected at each stage of the marketing funnel to help you find the best marketing approach and increase your restaurant's sales.

How To Franchise Your Restaurant?

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 05:34:30 GMT

Do you operate a restaurant and wish to expand? Do you want to grow your restaurant business and have a distinct brand? Then franchising is definitely the way to go! Starting a franchise restaurant is a means to extend your business by allowing independent owners (franchisees) to sell or provide services under your brand name using your trademark, business strategy, and processes.

Franchises accounted for almost 54 percent of fast food and fast-casual restaurants in America, according to the most recent data from the United States Census Bureau . And predictions are, that these numbers are only going to increase in the coming years.

Franchising may appear to be complex due to the extensive planning and paperwork required, but it is not. We've simplified everything for you; simply read this article and you'll be good to go.

Step 1- Asses Your Situation- Are You Ready?

Before you become too excited about anything and go right into franchising, there are a few things you should consider. When you were running a restaurant, your role was really different, and now that you're going to be a franchisor, your role will be very different as well, so prepare yourself before growing your business. Always start with asking yourself a few questions-

Is Your Business Scalable?

This is where the concept of your restaurant comes into play. Is your restaurant concept different? What different are you doing than the other pizza places? Why would people choose your pizza place over the other mom and pop right across the street? And your business should be easy to execute. If you are planning to open ten similar restaurants, then the replication part should be easy to execute, if not, then work on making the execution easier.

Are Your Finances In Place?

Once you have decided about franchising your restaurant business, you need a robust financial plan with you. There are tons of expenses that you’ll have to bear, so plan strategically. Divide the early setup fees according to your restaurant's business plan.

Do You Know Your Competition?

Yes, optimism is a nice thing, but at the end of the day, it's all a numbers game. Always conduct market research to determine who you will be competing against, who is selling a similar product near you, how you are superior to them, and how you may outgrow them. This is one of the most crucial things to think about before franchising your company.

Step 2- Legal Requirements

Below are the legal documents you’d need to keep in place before being able to franchise your restaurant.

FDD- Franchise Disclosure Document

The Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) is designed to inform potential franchisees about the franchisor, the franchise system, and the agreements they will be required to sign so that they may make an informed decision. The FDD is divided into 23 sections, each of which the prospective franchisee must read before signing.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, franchisors must present the franchisee with the FDD at least 14 days before it is due to be signed or any money is exchanged. After the franchisor has received the application and agreed to consider it, the franchisee has the right to a copy of the FDD.

Check out the detailed requirements for the FDD here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_disclosure_document

Franchise Operations Manual

A franchise system's DNA - the basis that regulates franchise unit performance, processes, and conduct – is a franchise operations handbook. It details the requirements, rules, and procedures that franchisees must follow in order to operate their franchised businesses and deliver on the franchisor's brand promise consistently.

The length and substance of franchise operating manuals varies. In general, a well-prepared franchise operations handbook will cover at least the following categories below:

1. The objectives of the franchise system;

2. The day-to-day procedures that the franchisee must follow

3. Payroll and

4. Customer service, which includes things like welcoming customers and dealing with complaints, as well as personnel issues like training.

While working on your franchise legal paperwork, prepare notes on important things like how your franchise will run. Geographical areas to target, franchisee qualifications, royalty percentages for franchisees, and marketing strategies are just a few of the details to iron out. To accommodate a franchise concept and make operations more practical for franchisees, you may need to change some of your current practises.er franchisees must purchase products or equipment from you, etc.

Trademark And Logo Registration

When you franchise your restaurant, you grant another person the right to use "Your" logo and trademark. As a result, registering your brand's logo and obtaining a trademark is the most important, yet frequently overlooked, step in franchising your restaurant. When considering Franchise Restaurants, registering a trademark becomes critical. To protect their intellectual property, franchisors should register everything to avoid being duped by a fraudulent Franchise party.

Step 3- Issue FDD And Register As A Franchisor

Once all your important decisions are made, it’s time to complete all the legal paperwork. Issue your FDD and register it inside the franchise registration states.

After receiving an FDD, you can begin offering and selling franchises in non-registration states (i.e., states that do not require a special filing or registration) while filing your FDD for registration in registration states.

Step 4- Make Hires And Work On Training

As you prepare to become a franchisor, you'll usually need to hire several people who will be solely responsible for assisting franchisees. Staff training is essential in order to maintain the same product standards as the original franchise restaurants. The franchisor should train the entire staff, from the Head Chef down to the busboys wait staff. The induction and training of new employees should begin well in advance of the opening of the Franchise Outlet.

Step 5- Support Your Franchises

It is here, at the point where you start supporting your franchisee network. To minimize any future misinterpretation, the support should be included in the agreement. Some Franchisors provide solely infrastructure development, operations, training, and software support, while others also provide raw materials. You should make your decisions according to your abilities and get down to work!

Wrap Up

Running a franchise can be a terrific way to get started in business, but you need to know why you're doing it, what you're getting into, who you're getting into it with, and, of course, how you plan to get out of it. The better you grasp the answers to these questions, the more likely you have the chance to excel.

AI and the Restaurant Industry

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:08:24 GMT

Artificial intelligence is not a concept that exists in the far future; it is currently here. The restaurant sector is no exception, having found a foothold in every aspect of our life. Let us ask you a question: when you think of artificial intelligence in a restaurant, what comes to mind? Robots carrying your food in their fictitious arms? People having no idea what's going on since robots and drones are flying around all over the place?

Let's be clear about something: it's not true! In this article, we'll debunk all of the myths surrounding AI and discuss how it's set to change the restaurant sector with real-world examples.

AI doesn't need an introduction, but because it's being discussed around like a jargon, let's break it down in layman's terms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the process of teaching computers how to "think," and it is developed by humans in order for computers to emulate or rather copy human behavior.

It may seem hard to envisage a restaurant industry with AI that usually focuses on individuality and the human touch, yet it is already here.

Miso Robotics is a firm established in California that specializes on AI-driven robotic solutions for the kitchen. "Flippy," the company's AI kitchen assistant, helps in grilling, frying, prepping, and plating. The robot is controlled by software that is integrated with sensors and cameras, allowing it to "see" the food it is assisting in the preparation of and monitor key parameters such as temperature management.

(AI) has paved a new route for technologies that go beyond any other technology's social impact. Because AI influences and is a crucial feature of many businesses, it has become a valuable resource to have.

In the last decade, the restaurant industry has seen a significant increase in demand and demands for AI. AI implementation for organizations has demonstrated the substantial beneficial impact AI can have.

In the restaurant industry, AI has played the most crucial role in improving the consumer experience. Through thorough analyses of individual search histories, AI and ML combine to provide personalized suggestions to users. By providing relevant insights from clever machine learning algorithms, Artificial Intelligence has drastically transformed the way a major portion of the population consumes food and has improved food delivery time. Additionally, AI has been frequently utilized to track customer actions in order to provide restaurants with an understanding of customer behavior. As a result, restaurants have been able to create a favorable image of their commitment in the eyes of their clients.

Another aspect of restaurants using AI is to produce Personalized Customer Experiences using Kiosks. KFC , for example, which is using face recognition technology at kiosks to recognize return customers and customize their experience based on their previous orders and preferences. It uses AI face recognition technology to identify what a client might be interested in purchasing based on their sex, facial expressions, and other visual attributes.

McDonald's began employing predictive AI technologies and projecting orders in drive-thrus in 2019. McDonald's outlets were able to foresee rushes and even predict which meal would be the most popular at any given time of day by examining past data about what consumers ordered and when. The stores that used this technology were able to minimize wait times by 30 seconds on average by predicting orders, which is fairly impressive considering that drive-thru ordering experiences normally last only a few minutes.

Restaurants that integrate AI into their POS systems benefit from detailed analytical data produced by the system that informs management about the utilization of items in their inventory, resulting in significant cost savings. Underutilization or expiration of any product can be avoided by tracking and procuring items based on their use.

To be very honest, with the robots and everything, AI looks good with the budgets that these big chains spend, what about the small business owners? Does the typical restaurateur has the resources and even the desire to learn more about AI and machine intelligence? Although the ROI is still mostly unknown, the short-term costs will stay out of reach for the great majority of restaurateurs until it becomes part of the restaurant base model.

However, this does not rule out the possibility of AI in the restaurant industry for small and medium-sized firms. There are still methods to use AI and machine learning in your restaurant, empowering your operators and staff while running a profitable and efficient operation.

While it may appear to be completely perplexing, it actually brings with it a slew of new implications, whether in terms of product, marketing, or any other areas.

While restaurateurs should not fret about it, they should be aware of emerging trends because this is the future, and they will need to focus on these areas at some point to compete. So, rather than diving headfirst into the sea of data and analytics, take baby steps and concentrate on the data that your POS systems provide.

Restaurant Technology Trends in 2022

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 07:49:42 GMT

“Food is the biggest industry,” said Greg Golkin, managing partner at the Kitchen Fund , which invests in restaurant brands like Sweetgreen and Cava . “Every human on earth needs to eat roughly three meals per day.”

Restaurateurs, especially owners of SMB’s did not actually want to invest into technology because they never saw a need to. They just did not want to disrupt things and wanted to let them be as they were.

Now that things have changed, and for a long while restaurants all over the world had to shut down, they saw a need to change their systems too. Seeing people’s need and interest to order food online, everyone understood that we actually have to use technology to survive now. That being said, we are going to discuss how is the restaurant technology going to look like in the coming year, and what are the trends that would be the most prominent ones in 2022.

QR Codes

Have you ever seen those small white and black squares on menus, posters, or other printed materials? Those are, indeed, QR codes. They're popular not just because they provide a touch-free experience, but also because they're simple to use and offer a variety of advantages. There is no need to install a specific app because today's smartphones feature built-in QR Code readers with the camera. Customers would be able to follow extremely simple actions as a result of this. Restaurants can send diners to digital menus using QR codes, reducing the spread of germs between parties. Additionally, firms such as Coca-Cola are investing in touchless beverage dispensers, which reduce staff exposure. Your staff and customers should expect a safer eating experience as contactless technology becomes more widespread. QR codes seem to go a long way as far as future restaurant technology is concerned.

Online Ordering

Not only because of the pandemic, which drove many restaurants to close their dine-in options, but also because of the convenience of online ordering, which has witnessed a considerable increase in recent months. Nowadays, people want to have their favorite delicacies delivered right to their door. Starting with the basics, a good website and app provide a solid platform on which to build. Allowing customers to pay for their online purchases straight on your website would make the process even easier. Customers will appreciate the ease with which they may order and pay for food from their computer or mobile device.

The reason why restaurants are killing it in terms of revenue via their online ordering systems is because, given the ease and revenues, online ordering systems will take a huge leap in the coming year.

Cloud Kitchen

Meal delivery orders climbed by more than 150 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to recent data, and UBS expects the food delivery business to grow more than 10 times in ten years, from $35 billion to $365 billion. As the need for food delivery grows, more restaurant owners and food entrepreneurs are looking to cloud kitchens as a viable business solution.

Cloud kitchens are centralized licensed commercial food production facilities where restaurants rent space to prepare delivery-optimized menu items. One restaurant may operate many brands or virtual restaurants under one roof, or the kitchen may function as an incubator, with different vendors sharing the space. Imagine a vast warehouse with multiple stations (mini-restaurants) of stainless steel prep tables, hood vents, burners, ovens, and sinks, each with its own set of orders flowing in from customers.

By 2023, the market for cloud kitchens is predicted to be worth $1.05 billion. People have begun to favor online platforms as a result of the digital transformation of all services.

Delivery Robots And Drones

Customers and restaurant businesses are finding their groove with AI, from burger-flipping and salad-making robots to machines that power order-taking. McDonald's bought AI business Dynamic Yield in 2019 with the intention of using the company's automated personalization product to improve the customer experience at drive-thrus. Menu options are displayed based on the time of day, weather, current restaurant traffic, and what's popular on the site. It also proposes menu add-ons based on the choices made by each consumer.

When the COVID-19 pandemic compelled people to stay at home, demand for third-party delivery services skyrocketed. While firms like UberEats and DoorDash have risen to the occasion, restaurants have an opportunity to improve delivery even further.

Automated Inventory Software Management

The marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive. Those that recognize current demands and adapt accordingly are the ones who prosper in the long run. The world is getting increasingly fast-paced and technologically dependent. Customers want increased efficiency, quick service, and high-quality items. An automated inventory system is a modern answer to the manual inventory methods numerous problems. Inventory systems are more efficient and simple to handle since they are automated, allowing management to manage activities more effectively and at a faster pace. Inventory management systems that are automated are in high demand.

Restaurant inventory management software aids in the administration of ingredient stock levels, purchase orders, recipes, and menu expenses in restaurants. The best restaurant inventory management software systems integrate with or are built into point-of-sale (POS) systems, reducing administrative time. These services range in price from $99 to $129 per month. Some tools, however, are free and have restricted functions.

This will be extremely beneficial to restaurants, since it will allow them to save money on unused food and minimize under-stocking of ingredients and other merchandise throughout the day. In addition, according to Dirk Izzo, president and GM of NCR Hospitality , they are using data for more precise forecasting to improve restaurant operations.

Wrap Up

The clear winners in any industry are those who are in touch with these shifting circumstances. Here we discussed the major restaurant technologies that we’ll be seeing in the coming year come to power, so gear up!

How Can Restaurants Be Prepared Against The New Omicron Variant?

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 07:13:34 GMT

On November 26, 2021, WHO designated B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern, naming it Omicron. This new strain of SARS covid-19 has heightened tensions in the country. The new coronavirus variant, first detected in South Africa, has sparked a flurry of doubts and questions, prompted new travel bans, and also prompted us to wonder what will happen next.

Scientists are working hard to figure out how Omicron mutations affect the virus's transmissibility and mortality rate, as well as whether existing COVID-19 vaccines are effective against it.

Given what has happened in the restaurant industry in the past couple of years, it is important that we plan ahead of time. In this section, we will discuss how restaurants can be prepared against the new Omicron variant.

Maintain Cleanliness And Hygiene

Before opening the store, this should always be the first step. Always sanitize and disinfect the entire restaurant, both the back and the front. Everything should be spotless, from the doorknobs to the tables and chairs.
Dishware, utensils, food preparation surfaces, and beverage equipment should all be washed, rinsed, and sanitized after each use.
Check that your ware washing machines are set at the proper wash and rinse temperatures, as well as use the right detergents and sanitizers.
While these regulations may seem onerous and time-consuming, it is vital to listen to and follow the instructions of your state and local authorities, as well as to keep things clean – it is the only way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect our communities.

Health Safety And Social Distancing- Always A Priority

Social distancing and health safety protocols should always be a priority in a public space like a restaurant.
You should consider avoiding dine-in services for some time, and if not, stopping completely, consider discontinuing operations, such as buffets, and beverage service stations that require customers to use common utensils or dispensers.
Start to find techniques to encourage consumers to leave enough space between them when waiting in line for service or checking out, in compliance with state or local regulations.
Hands should always be washed with soap and water. If soap and water aren't available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol and avoid handling unwrapped or exposed goods.

Employee Protection

If your restaurant is important to you, your staff should be as well. Treat them as though they were members of your family, and provide them with the greatest possible guidance and equipment.

Emphasize the importance of good hand hygiene, which includes washing hands for at least 20 seconds after using the restroom, before eating, and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.

If you have really strict guidelines for providing leaves, now is the moment to be a little more lenient and affectionate. In these terrible times, don't cut compensation. Be kind to your coworkers and attempt to assist them in any manner you can.

Personal protection equipment (PPE) such as gloves and masks should be provided to employees. Prepare to connect employees with medical resources.

Prepare for a situation when you'll need to hasten an employee’s exit from your restaurant ahead of time. Make sure your team has a plan in place to deal with a sick employee in general. Protecting your staff and ensuring the safety of your other customers is your first responsibility.

Promote Online Ordering

Start pushing online ordering because it is unsafe for people to eat out, yet people still need some flavor in their lives.

Make Use Of Social Media

Take high-quality food photographs and inform them about your services and the cuisine you serve. It's not just about the number of likes on your food photos or the number of followers on your business page; social media can be used for a variety of purposes to boost your online sales. You can add an "Order Food" call-to-action button to your business's Facebook page. This button can boost orders by 3% to 4%. You may also utilize Messenger chatbots to converse with clients who are placing orders in real- time.

Email Campaigns

Restaurant email marketing is a fantastic approach to get in touch with your consumers on a regular basis and form long-term relationships. It might be difficult to distinguish apart in the extremely competitive restaurant industry, when practically every other business uses emails to communicate with their consumers. Restaurant email marketing initiatives, on the other hand, can help you fill tables and foster long-term loyalty if done right.

Provide Incentives

Allowing people to receive rewards for ordering online is a terrific method to improve your online orders. Customers prefer to order via a mobile app or a website when they can obtain exclusive bargains, so take use of these statistics! You may provide free shipping for large orders and repeat customers, as well as a discount on a minimum purchase. Customers will return if you offer loyalty programs with points to gain. Whatever it is, make sure you publicize it widely enough for people to take advantage of it.

Boost Your Posts On Facebook

If you have a limited budget, say $75 a month, boosting a post rather than creating a campaign will save you time and provide similar results. The greatest candidates for boosting are frequently auto-suggested by Facebook. These are high-quality posts that are generating a lot of interaction in the form of likes, comments, and shares. Boosting a popular post allows you to reach a larger audience.

Support Delivery and Pick-up

Until recently, only huge restaurant chains could afford sophisticated technologies and a worldwide data infrastructure to benefit their operations. However, thanks to advancements in cloud computing, these services are now available to even tiny family-owned businesses.

There are a variety of options available, ranging from third-party online ordering POS integrations like FoodKonnekt to restaurant point of sale systems with built-in restaurant online ordering software. Foodkonnekt provides the exclusive option of providing delivery drivers.

You can choose a platform that best suits your needs.

Wrap Up

In these trying times, it's critical that we band together and try to put in place the best possible procedures in our restaurants so that we can face the challenges straight on.

Metaverse And The Restaurant Industry

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 06:57:26 GMT

One of the hottest subjects right now is Metaverse, often known as Meta or web 3.0 by others. What is the metaverse, when will it arrive, and how will it impact our lives are all topics that should be discussed, it’s just the right time.

So, where did it all begin? Neal Stephenson's dystopian cyberpunk novel Snow Crash is credited with coining the term "metaverse." The novel was published in 1992 and is considered a canon of the genre, along with William Gibson's Neuromancer, which describes the matrix, a virtual reality dataspace.

It's a hybrid technology that blends virtual reality, augmented reality, and video to let people "live" in a digital world. The metaverse is made up of two technologies: virtual reality, which is characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist, and augmented reality, which combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. It does not, however, imply that those locations may only be visited via VR or AR.

In a nutshell, it is living inside the internet, where you can party, buy, sell, attend events, and socialize.

What Is The Difference Between Facebook And Metaverse?

Facebook is a social networking website where users can post comments, share photos, and share links to news or other interesting web content, as well as chat, live, and watch short-form videos.

Shared content can be made public, or it can be restricted to a small group of friends or family, or to a single person.

Whereas, Meta is a concept involving an online world in which people can interact with one another, collaborate, and communicate virtually without having to be in the same physical space. For example, you could be in New York while your family is in Texas, but you could all see a movie together in the same room. It's like Zoom or Google Meet on a much larger scale. Rather than staring at a screen, you'd be able to see your family members across the table.

Facebook is simple to use and accessible to anybody. Even those with the least technical knowledge can sign up and start posting on Facebook. Although it began as a way to stay in touch with long-lost acquaintances, it quickly became the darling of businesses that we're able to narrowly target an audience and deliver adverts straight to those most likely to be interested in their products or services.

The VR, or virtual reality, headset appears to be the device of choice for the metaverse at the outset, at least according to Facebook.

“You’ll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create, and more. It’s not necessarily about spending more time online — it’s about making the time you do spend online more meaningful," In a September blog post, the company made the familiar pitch about time spent on its platforms.

What Does It Mean For The Restaurant Industry?

This concept is not totally new for the restaurant industry. Sublimotion in Ibiza, Spain, has been operating as one of the most exclusive, luxury VR food experiences for the past seven years. The multisensory space provides guests with a futuristic, interactive audio/visual event. While the price tag unfortunately puts Sublimotion out of reach for the average consumer, as technology advances, less expensive options have become more readily available to foodies who want to see food as an experience rather than just a source of nourishment .

Mark Zuckerberg gave a "feast for your eyes" presentation to show how restaurants may incorporate this strategy easily.

It allows guests to swipe through a virtual reality menu, which allows them to explore options such as finding ingredients and witness the menu items being prepared and cooked. Restaurants might even allow guests to order directly from the virtual menu while dining in or ordering for delivery, according to Zuckerberg.

AR/VR and Avatars may replace physical staff or even manage a front office, from bookings and service provision to property sales. If this were possible, the industry's labor challenges could hasten the adoption of the metaverse faster than expected.

Restaurants can also create a Metaverse universe that allows guests to virtually experience the restaurant with their friends and family. This will allow people to have the experience of dining in a real restaurant while remaining in the privacy of their own homes.

“Often restaurants experience a tug of war between experience and convenience. The metaverse is the ultimate marriage of these two elements. Customers can look at and order food without leaving the house, whilst still having the experience of going out for a meal with others,” says Joseph Schumaker, who is president and CEO of foodservice consulting start-up FoodSpace .

What is unknown is how the normal mom-and-pop restaurant will deal with these massive technical advances and their financial consequences.

The most concerning aspect is that the metaverse prefers chain restaurants with large creative and technical budgets. Some independent operators might be excluded from the metaverse.

How Can One Prepare For It?

When it comes to evolving technology and applications, the possibilities are endless, and restaurants have complete control over what they choose to do as the meta world expands.

Food will be integrated into virtual experiences by brands. Restaurants will be able to recreate their physical space in the metaverse and invite guests from all over the world instead of using traditional email marketing. The metaverse will provide new opportunities to test promotions and loyalty programs.

Once more people begin to participate in the metaverse, apps will no longer be the primary ordering channel. Companies such as Doordash , UberEats , and GrubHub will need to reconsider their strategies as ordering and discovery become more integrated into more interoperable experiences. Someone would have to deliver the food after all!

While we expect restaurants to always accept dollars, we believe that over the next five years, a few large cryptocurrencies will emerge to the top of the metaverse. A restaurant's branding and marketing activities will be influenced by the money it takes.

Wrap Up

In the real world, most of us enjoy sitting down with friends at a relaxed restaurant and having a great conversation. That will not change as a result of the metaverse. Restaurants will continue to offer those one-of-a-kind experiences. However, through the metaverse, restaurants will be able to reach more customers who may not be able to attend in person.

Summarizing the whole discussion, all restaurants should prepare for the Metaverse, because it’s not very far, it’s already here!

If you have something to add, please add yourself to our Facebook community, HERE'S the link, let’s start connecting!

7 Strategies To Boost Your Restaurant Sales With Data-Driven Marketing

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 06:43:47 GMT

Gone are the days when we couldn't predict restaurant sales and had to rely on what we sold at the time. Gone are the days when we didn't know how much inventory we'd need in the future and had to rely on how much we utilized today.

GONE ARE THOSE DAYS.

Enter- Data.

Consider this- Organizations that are data-driven are 23 times more likely to acquire than their less agile counterparts. That means data is something, right?

Let's be clear: only those restaurants will survive who are able to collect and, more crucially, exploit critical consumer data.

Understand And Segment Your Audience

Manage Your Restaurant Inventory

Inventory management is a critical component of every restaurant, and it becomes increasingly difficult to manage without effective tracking and reporting.

Boost Customer Loyalty

Manage Labor Costs

Menu Management

Improve Upon Guest Experience

It's a lot easier to improve the visitor experience when you have a lot of data on your customers at hand. When visitors enter a restaurant, they are anticipating more than just the food; they are anticipating the entire experience in order to return. As a result, depending on your experiences with and research into your clients, strive to give the finest experience possible.

Sales Forecasting

Wrap Up

WHY IS THE RESTAURANT TECHNOLOGY SO HOT RIGHT NOW?

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 06:23:04 GMT

Toast is likely to join a series of digital businesses set to go public this fall, in what is shaping up to be one of the busiest years for IPOs in recent memory. It was claimed in February that the company may be worth $20 billion. $20 billion! And this is just one of the many examples that we have seen, where restaurant technology has been seen raising millions and billions of dollars recently.

Have you ever thought about why this restaurant tech mania is sweeping the world? Well, we did a bit of research on this and came up with certain findings.

One thing is for sure that the restaurant industry is one of those industries which work at a very slim margin. It is not one of those where on every order restaurants can save a lot many dollars, they work on very small ones. Before we were struck by a severe world-wide pandemic, things were super smooth for restaurants.

This being said, we now know that investors are pouring money into restaurant technology because of the need to modernize and benefit from it. This is something that the restaurant sector has excelled at.

The biggest example in this case is Toast. Toast has grown through acquisitions in addition to continuously innovating its products since its inception. It bought xtraChef , a back-office technology provider for restaurants, in June, two years after it bought StratEx , a provider of HR and payroll software. Due to lockdowns, Toast, which makes the majority of its money from fintech solutions, experienced a hard patch at the onset of the epidemic, and the firm was forced to slash its workforce in half through layoffs and furloughs.

It has since had a reversal of fortune as a result of the introduction of new items such as delivery networks and contactless payment.

Think of the family owned restaurants who have no or very little access to technology. Even if they have, they don’t know how to streamline it. They really don’t have any of the infrastructure required to grow at this point in time. At most, they'll be collaborating with a third-party aggregator like DoorDash or UberEats , which comes with hefty costs and limited control over client data.

Due to the urgency during the pandemic, they might have gotten on onboard with them, but all of them are now rethinking their decisions. They are more interested with companies that provide them with the facility of first-party online orders, where they have a good amount of access to the customer insights and can actually grow from it.

“Food is the biggest industry,” said Greg Golkin, managing partner at the Kitchen Fund , which invests in restaurant brands like Sweetgreen and Cava. “Every human on earth needs to eat roughly three meals per day.”

The most interesting thing about technology is that technology is not a separate market, it is present somewhat everywhere, and the restaurant industry is not something out of the world. Big investors feel that the sheer size of the opportunity in restaurant technology is attractive and hence are ready to put their money on it.

5 Ways To Protect Your Digital Assets As A Small Business Owner

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 05:59:39 GMT

Cyber attacks and data breach is a sobering reality for everyone. Even if you own a small business, protecting your digital assets is essential. You should spend a few dollars on security because if you don't, regret is the only thing that'll be left with you for the rest of your lives.

Cyber security is not limited to any industry or business size. The Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report is based on an examination of over 79,000 security incidents, including more than 5,200 confirmed data breaches. It provides us with a trove of interesting facts, such as the fact that stolen credentials were used in more than 60% of cases. So, just because you're a small business doesn't make you any less vulnerable in the eyes of hackers and data intruders.

A University of Maryland study found that computers were attacked an average of 2,244 times per day. This means that a single computer could be attacked more than once per minute. However, this study was conducted in 2007, implying that attacks are likely far more common than this. So there is a good chance that while you are reading this blog, a hacker is attempting to gain access to your system in order to steal your digital assets. I hope we've made our point. Next up What are digital assets?

What Are Digital Assets?

Before a business owner even thinks of digital asset management or protection, the first step will be to understand what actually are digital assets? According to Wikipedia, a digital asset is anything that exists in a digital format and comes with the right to use. So, in simple words, everything ranging from your company’s website (domain name and content, everything) to social media handles and posts to spreadsheets and documents to apps to intellectual property like trademarks and patents to visuals created by your company, everything comes under the umbrella term of “Digital Assets”.

So now that we are clear with what are digital assets, let’s talk about their management and ways to protect your digital assets as a small business owner.

How To Protect Your Digital Assets?

Get The Right Insurance

When there is a cyber attack or a data breach, there are numerous financial losses. Money may have been stolen from your accounts, private information may have been leaked, or you may require the funds for further investigation; these are just a few examples. As a result, you'll need insurance to cover all of these expenses. Every day, hackers attempt millions of attacks on businesses all over the world, and that number is only increasing, putting you at a higher risk for cyberattacks than ever before.

If you are targeted, the best thing you can do is prepare ahead of time by purchasing an insurance policy that will compensate you for any losses. You should also create IT policies to protect your company from unintentionally downloading viruses or accessing websites known to contain viruses. Additionally, you should keep your systems up to date and back up all of your data. Then, devise a plan of action to be implemented in the event of a cyberattack. Cyber/Network Liability is insurance that protects the 83 million online companies exposed to security breaches (By tech startup insurance FAQ). So, if you haven’t thought about cyber Liabilities and Insurance, do get it as soon as possible.

Make Sure Your Passwords Are Hard To Crack

From 100 million passwords leaked in data breaches that year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) compiled its own list of the 20 most common passwords in 2019. The top 5 passwords from this list are 123456, 123456789, qwerty, password, and 1111111. Are you guys serious? How can you lock some of the most important information into a password like qwerty?

And let’s all admit that we use the same passwords for multiple accounts just because it is easy to remember! Is your private information worth nothing to you? If it is, then please start using passwords that are strong and tough to crack. Hewlett Packard enterprise suggests setting complexity requirements, such as meeting a character minimum, and use certain character types (mixed case, numerals, and special characters), and avoiding choosing previously used passwords.

Limited Access

When it comes to data breaches, employees are the low-hanging fruit. Yes, it is critical that you share the codes and passwords for documents and other assets with your employees; however, does everyone require everything? No.

According to a report, employees are responsible for 28% of all data breaches. We are not implying that this was done on purpose, but human error is a significant factor that cannot be overlooked in this case.

As a result, the best thing you can do in this situation is to create a list of employees with their names, designations, and passwords shared with them for a reason. Is it tedious? Yes. Can this, however, save your life? Also yes.

Always Use Two-Factor Authentication

2-factor authentication is something you should always opt for when creating an account anywhere; it hardly takes a minute to check the 2FA box. It is nothing more than an extra layer of protection for your digital assets. Once you've done so, you'll always have to enter a code that will be sent to your mobile device or your email, depending on the settings you've chosen.

This has two advantages: first, if a hacker tries to access your asset, you will always receive an alert that someone attempted to access your account, and second, because they will not have the code, they will be unable to enter. It applies to all accounts, from social media accounts such as Facebook to Google Drive or other cloud-based software such as Dropbox.

Use Wi-Fi Best Practices And Steer Clear Of Public Wi-Fi!

Wi-Fi is a technology that can be used to get into your system and obtain sensitive company data. There are two ways to do this: one is to utilize public Wi-Fi, and the other is to attack your company's wireless network. Always remember not to use public Wi-Fi while traveling or anyplace else in public; instead, purchase a data pack for your phone. Keep your router in a safe, restricted-access place, such as a locked cabinet or closet. Video monitoring is also a sensible security precaution.

It may seem basic, but many organizations fail to change their Wi-Fi name and password.

Update the firmware on your router, network security software, and employees' devices on a regular basis. These updates, in many situations, involve addressing security gaps, making them critical to pay attention to. Virus and intrusion protection should be installed on every computer.

Tools To Protect Digital Assets

Dignify

Market research, eBooks, training materials, modules, reports, and other private information can all be protected with Digital Rights Management. You'll be able to prevent unauthorized redistribution of your digital files and limit how your customers or recipients copy content. It allows you to control who has access to your papers and withdraw rights at any time. You can also limit forwarding and specify access expiration dates. With Digify's user analytics and activity log, you can see where and when each user visits all of your documents.

Keeper

The biggest benefit of using a password manager is that it allows you to set unique, strong passwords for each website and app you use—passwords that you don't have to remember. However, it's equally critical that you have easy access to your passwords across all of your devices. Keeper Password Manager & Digital Vault is a fantastic password manager and digital vault that works on a variety of platforms and browsers. It also has excellent features including strong multifactor authentication, good sharing capabilities, handy auditing tools, and complete password history. Keeper is a winner in the Editors' Choice category for password managers.

SeePlus

SeePlus, an ACD Systems professional asset management application, helps you regain control of your digital workflow by tracking Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, and a range of media assets. You can use this platform to manage your whole file collection from a single location.

The software enables you to establish a simplified system in which you may define the location of your files in your workflow using hierarchical keywords, ratings, dates, and categories. You can also access and backup material to your Dropbox and OneDrive accounts without having to leave the platform. This also means you won't have to go through the time-consuming procedure of uploading files to the site.

This is especially helpful for small enterprises that lack the time or manpower to keep everything in order.

DNS Protection System

The Domain Name System (DNS) translates human-readable domains into IP addresses that may be used to connect to them.

On the internet, there are many servers that run DNS. Many consumers rely on their ISP's DNS server, but they don't have to. Instead, they can utilize either a free or a commercial DNS server that is safe. DNS Protection is a fantastic way to boost security. Both commercial and home networks can benefit from DNS protection. Because many people's business and personal lives are becoming increasingly intermingled, it's critical to safeguard home networks as well. A secure DNS solution can be used to enhance BYOD policies by safeguarding data both within and outside the business and giving additional benefits.

Endpoint Security

Endpoint security is the technique of preventing hostile actors and campaigns from exploiting endpoints or entry points of end-user devices such as PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. Cybersecurity risks are protected by endpoint security solutions on a network or in the cloud. Endpoint security has progressed beyond antivirus software to complete protection against sophisticated malware and emerging zero-day threats.

Nation-states, hacktivists, organized crime, and purposeful and unintentional insider threats all pose a hazard to businesses of all sizes. Endpoint security is frequently referred to as cybersecurity's frontline, and it is one of the first places where businesses attempt to defend their networks.

Wrap Up

You must put the security of your company's critical information first. Consider this: if your company's data is lost, everything is lost. All I can say is that it is critical to protect it. I attempted to address the majority of the topics of digital asset management. If you have any additional comments, please feel free to drop a comment or join our Facebook group (link), where we discuss such topics in depth.

10 Reasons You Should Love Blogging

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 14:43:18 GMT

Blog posts are a great way to get recognized within your community and share your voice. Here are the top 10 reasons you should love writing blog posts.

Anyone can make one:
For better or worse, anyone can write a blog post about anything they want. Everyone has a voice and thet voices will rise to the top.

The writer can show their personality:
In blog posts, the writer has more leeway to add in their voice and personality than other types of writing.

Blogs are a great form of mass communication:
You can help people, learn new things, entertain your audience-the possibilities are endless and amazing. Blogging opens up all of these to a very wide audience.

You can make money:
Get the right blog going and you can make a lot of money through advertising and sponsored posts.

It allows people to craft better thoughts:
Instead of reading haphazard, uneducated Facebook statuses, it's much better to see people's thought process in a well-written blog post.

You can establish a community:
Blogging allows you to connect with other individuals who share the same interests. Sharing ideas and opinions within your community helps establish yourself as a thought leader.

Good for SEO:
Keeping content on your site fresh and relevant, you can use your blog to boost the search engine ranking (SEO) of your site and your business.

It brings people back to your site:
If your blog is strong enough and updated regularly, people will come back looking for more and bring traffic back to your site as well.

It's free:
It costs you a grand total of zero dollars to post to the blog, so if you have something to say, there's nothing to stop you.

You can establish yourself as a thought leader:
A blog is a great place for your original thoughts, and it can be a wonderful way to show off your individuality. If people like your ideas, you can become a thought leader in your industry!

What else do you love about blogs? Let me know!

Marketing Tools For Smart Marketers

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 05:25:25 GMT

To say the least, marketing is not that easy! With years and years of working in the digital world, we have known this for a fact, that just knowing who your audience is, is not enough. You need to think out of the box, and come up with strategies that will actually reach out to potential people and get the results.

Once you have come up with effective strategies, it is time to get rolling and implement them. Then again, you need on-point tools, which will help you get people to your business.

We have got an infinite amount of tools which can be leveraged to our benefit. Because we have used most of them, we have come to know that some of them are just what we need, some of them are just fine, and some are an utter waste of time. Being marketers, we really need to be on our toes to be aware of what are the new trends and practices in the market. So, we have come up with a list of tools which can be very helpful for you in your marketing journey. You need not waste time on any further research, because we got what you just need.

So without further ado, let’s see what we got here.

Email Marketing

HubSpot Email Marketing

This tool allows you to reach out to customers with personalized email campaigns that are professionally designed and look great on any device. Personalization, segmentation, and tracking are all included in every campaign because HubSpot's free email marketing tool is built on the HubSpot CRM platform.

Special features -

It helps you to Increase the number of people who open and click on your emails.
Create emails that are automatically tailored to the recipient.
You can do it all on your own, you don’t need any IT or professional designer’s assistance!

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing platform that allows you to manage and communicate with your clients, customers, and other interested parties. Businesses use it to manage their mailing lists and to create email marketing campaigns and automations to send to their customers.

Special features-

It is a very user-friendly tool. It’s creative assistant helps to create designs for your emails baked on your brand.
It’s Subject line helper helps to draw your customers in with the right subject lines based on feedback and keep them reading with content that is dynamically personalized for them, or experiment with different content versions with A/B testing.
It’s Customer Journey builder sends emails based on your customers' behavior and interactions, resulting in better experiences and increased engagement.
With their Reports, you can see what's working in your email campaigns and track your sales. With Click Maps, you can drill down into where people clicked in your emails to better tailor your content.

Data Analysis

Sprout Social

If you want to try an easy-to-use platform with a dashboard that allows you to manage and analyze all of your social media efforts across major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn, give Sprout social a shot. It provides a free 30-day trial period.

Special features-

The most distinguishing feature of this tool is that it allows a brand to receive genuine feedback from customers, allowing you to build long-term relationships with them. The new Engagement Report sheds light on team dynamics (Premium Plan only). Examine social engagement trends by day and time, and see how you compare to profiles with similar message volume. The Smart Inbox feature from Sprout is the ultimate social media monitoring tool, combining every message, alert, and action from all of your profiles into a single, filterable stream.

To get a high or low-level view of performance, Sprout combines profile-level, group, and roll-up analytics reports. You can report on your social profiles in a way that is relevant to your company.

SocialInsider

SocialInsider is a benchmarking and analytical tool that assists you in measuring the various metrics and KPIs associated with your social media strategy.

Special features-

It is applicable to all influential platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. The tool employs powerful analytics to provide detailed information for each social media profile, resulting in increased interaction, improved content design, automated report generation, and dashboard management from a single location. Users can also conduct extensive competitor research across major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. As a result, customers can contrast their channels with those of top competitors and influencers.

Text Message Marketing

Attentive

Attentive helps you increase your digital revenue using personalized mobile messaging. Text messaging is a highly effective form of advertising because it is a direct communication channel that can be tailored to your specific needs.

Special features-

With their valuable first-party data provision, you can better understand your audience and send personalized messages that elicit action.
It helps to scale your SMS and email list more effectively than many other solutions.
It helps you to build a revenue-generating SMS marketing program with confidence, keeping compliance in mind.
With strategic guidance and resources, you can easily measure and optimize the impact of your brand's mobile messaging program.

Postscript

Special features-

Postscript works closely with Shopify to provide the best SMS marketing platform for Shopify stores. That starts with best-in-class Shopify integration, which auto-syncs with your store and instantly accepts any new relevant customer. Custom coupon generation, results-based analytics, and customer order level segmentation are among the features.
Don't be satisfied with estimated performance. Postscript includes cutting-edge analytics and attribution, allowing you to adapt, learn, and grow. Investigate overall or per-message performance over time. We are constantly updating and expanding Postscript's analytics functionality as former ecommerce marketers.
Correspond with customers 1:1 within Postscript to answer questions, provide customer support, or close sales through chat. Send all communications to your support email address to keep everything in one place.

SEO

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a software company that creates online SEO tools as well as free educational materials for marketers. A fantastic platform for easily searching, optimizing, and managing various results. It's amazing how quickly you can get help with all of the features related to growing your business with a new set of techniques.

Special features-

It’s site auditor helps you to optimize your website.
You can study what your customers are searching for using it’s keyword explorer.
Learn what your industry’s top performing content is using it’s content explorer.
Use it’s rank tracker to track your ranking progress.

SemRush

SemRush is a tool suite that helps you improve your online visibility and discover marketing insights. Our tools and reports can assist marketers who work in the following industries: SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, and Campaign Management are some of the services available.

Special features-

The market's largest and fastest backlink database allows you to find and track backlinks. Analyze your competition and look for ways to develop links to boost your SEO.
Learn the organic and advertising value of any keyword based on search volume, keyword difficulty, number of results, CPC, competition level, SERP Features, variations, and other factors.
With a high-speed crawler, you can process your pages in minutes and get actionable solutions to your website's problems. Use our flexible crawling settings and run our in-depth on-page and technical SEO checks.
With the Position Tracking feature, you can keep track of your daily online performance. Keep track of any keywords and device types, keep an eye on your competitors' domains, and track your search engine performance on a ZIP code and local pack level.

Bonus tool

Q4 platform

You just got lucky today! We are here with a bonus tool for you! It is the 4Q Dashboard. It is a super smart dashboard with which you can get a rapid snapshot of your offline and online marketing strategy' Key Performance Indicators for quick analytics and insights.

On a single dashboard, our 4Q platform collects, presents, and gives insights to consumer data from all of your marketing channels, providing you with actionable insights to increase brand awareness and earn incremental sales. From a single dashboard, you can manage all of your marketing channels and utilize data to deliver the correct message at the right time.

In the four quadrants, you can manage your reviews, buzz creation, local marketing, and analyze data from all social media channels.

Check out this beauty here .

Get started with mKonnekt today. Schedule a demo with us to learn how mKonnekt can help you develop your restaurant.

Labor Shortage- What Is Happening In The Restaurant Industry?

Tue, 11 May 2021 04:59:06 GMT

Restaurant owners have been posting job requirements after job requirements, hiring sign boards after hiring sign boards, with no success. The restaurant industry is suffering from a severe labor shortage. The struggle is real right now.

But what is going on in the restaurant industry? Why aren't people applying for jobs in this industry? Is it due to the covid 19 pandemic? Is it due to the supplemental unemployment benefits? We really need to think about this situation before making up our minds about it. We really need to get real and talk about the practical side of things here.

Some Facts And Figures

Let us take a look at some data that can help us understand what exactly is going on in the restaurant market.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , job openings rose to a record 9.3 million in April, 2021, an unprecedented number that has remained stagnant in the following months

By May 2020, the industry was down 5.9 million jobs , and the number of restaurant jobs scheduled was down 75%

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate sits at 6% or 9.7 million people

17% of restaurants closed for good, and laid-off employees had to find new ways to make ends meet

Now the real question is, when the U.S. unemployment rate sits at 6% or 9.7 million people, then why is the restaurant industry still struggling to fill the available positions?

Reasons of Labor Shortage in the Restaurant industry

There are many reasons for the labor shortage in the restaurant industry besides the unemployment benefits, which may have been a cause of the earlier staff not showing back to work as per some restaurant owners and other executives.

Recruiting new employees is difficult due to the restaurant industry's poor reputation for workplace quality. It's known for high-stress shifts in hot kitchens, few employee benefits, and frequently low pay. Restaurants are finding it difficult to provide competitive wages and unemployment benefits. According to the New York Times, the median cook or food preparation worker earned $13.02 per hour in May 2020, and dishwashers earned $12.15.

Hence people would naturally find it better to work in other industries with multiple employee benefits as well as a better pay, or maybe use the unemployment benefits and never return to the hot kitchens!

Pandemic hit us all very hard. And with everyone sitting at home, people had a lot of time to self analyze and think about what they are making out of their lives.

They now feel empowered to be more selective when choosing jobs. According to a recent Joblist survey, 58 percent of job seekers are not interested in hospitality jobs and prefer a different work setting, such as an office environment.

During the peak of the pandemic, many of the workers must have been subjected to the deadly coronavirus. Because of the uncertainty surrounding safety conditions and the insecurity of working in a restaurant, many people have left the industry permanently in search of other opportunities.

With the pandemic hitting the world and the daycares and creches closing down, they had no way to go but essentially quit their jobs to take care of the family commitments. Everyone has to think twice before getting back to work. In the United States, 72 percent of families report paying more for childcare now than they did before the pandemic, and many parents are reducing their work hours or leaving the workforce entirely to care for their children.

Realistically, it is a mix of these factors and many more that have driven the U.S. labor shortage.

We really need to come up with certain new and innovative ideas to combat this labor shortage issue, otherwise the restaurant industry is going to be in deep trouble.

Leverage Tech To Combat Labor Shortage

With the Covid 19 restrictions slowly lifting up, and people getting ready to eat out, restaurant owners are facing the biggest nightmares of their lives. With trying to reduce their opening hours to reducing the items on the menu, they have tried everything and failed. “Now is the time to incorporate tech into the restaurant industry and focus on how to combat the labor shortage”, this is what everyone says, but the biggest question is- HOW?

Let’s find out.

HANDHELD POS!

Gone are the days when your staff used to move around the restaurant, back and forth to the customer’s tables to get the bills ready, then getting the payments done. With the provision of handheld systems, your staff can easily get the payments done then and there. No hassle of moving all the way around. With less staff by your side, you should absolutely do this so that the staff can save that amount of time to wait on thirty other hungry tables!

Promote Online Ordering

Not only because of the pandemic, which forced restaurants to close their dine-in options, but owing to the fact that it is far more convenient, online ordering has seen a significant surge in recent months. People nowadays prefer to have their favorite foods brought to them, at their doorstep.

One way to see this is that you will need less front of the house staff to wait on the tables. You give your guests the ability to order on their own personal devices, freeing up time for your present staff to focus on bringing food to tables with that extra revenue coming in.

Online Targeted Recruitment And Hiring

When putting the HIRING banners used to drive applications after applications in, are the talks of old days. Websites and software are becoming increasingly important in the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding processes. Indeed and LinkedIn, for example, are frequently optimized to present job opportunities to potential applicants who are the best fit for the job. You can also use Facebook to post jobs and then run ads to target the most suited audience. See the applications flying in, thanks us later!

Focus On BOH Too

To be very frank, you could have world class equipment, state of the art décor, but if your food doesn’t taste good, you’re nil. Hence, in these difficult times, we have to focus on the back-of-house operations also. To speed up the process of delivering high-quality food in a timely manner, kitchen display systems replace paper tickets and kitchen printers. It has the tech to give the chefs what ingredients to use, specific instructions and even what to prioritize first. This is a very good option to actually get work done faster and in an efficient manner, considering the fact that we have a labor shortage at our hands.

Leverage Data Analytics

Use analytics to inform scheduling decisions – using historical and predictive data can help you better plan, staff up for busy hours, and operate on a leaner scale during slower hours. Using data from your restaurant can help you optimize your scheduling methods and save money on labor.

WRAP UP

All of us at this stage have to really understand the fact that there is a severe staff crunch right now, whatever the reasons may be. Instead of thinking about what has happened or what is happening, we should also focus on what can be done. Tech is something which can be our best friend right now. So let’s come together and fight ourselves out of this struggle.

How To Increase Sales With Restaurant Online Ordering?

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 04:34:21 GMT

Not only because of the pandemic, which forced many restaurants to close their dine-in options, but also because online ordering has seen a significant surge in recent months, owing to the fact that it is far more convenient. People nowadays prefer to have their favorite foods brought to them, at their doorstep.

Starting with the essentials, a decent website and app provide a solid foundation from which to work. Allowing your consumers to pay for their online purchases directly through your website would further simplify the process. Customers will love the convenience of ordering and paying for food from their computer or mobile device.

The next step, which is quite obvious, would be, to come up with something that would improve the restaurant's sales through online ordering systems, because believe or not, the restaurants out there, are killing it in terms of revenue through their online ordering systems. So pull up your socks and get ready to learn some top-notch ideas and tactics on How To Increase Restaurant Online Ordering Sales.

Start From The Top- Make Your Website Visible

Customers can use search engines on restaurant online ordering platforms to find food based on cuisine, dish titles etc. SEO might help your business stand out if you use third-party sites. People using certain search terms that you can optimize for, and rank for it at the top of the list as compared to other restaurants that don’t optimize for it. Try to use vivid descriptions with simple words and avoid using vocabulary that normal people like you and me wouldn’t use while searching for food around. For example, name your pasta as “Fettuccine Alfredo” rather than naming it “Pasta al burro e parmigiano”, does it make sense?

Optimize Your Menu Like You Mean It

To say that the menu for a restaurant is the central component of it’s website would be a complete understatement. Menu is everything. It should be easy to navigate, easy to read through, descriptive, there should be good quality pictures in there and it should be in a proper order. Imagine you go to a restaurant, and they serve you dessert first in place of an appetizer! Similar is the case with online ordering. Proper menu optimization goes a long way and will definitely help you to increase your online orders.

Make Ordering From Your Website Simple

70% of customers prefer to order from a restaurant directly, but they will only do so if you make it simple for them. When someone lands on your website, the user must feel that the process of ordering their food is super smooth. From menu to choosing what to eat to ordering to making payments, it should be super simple and not complicated. And honestly, if my experience as a user is not good, it not only spoils my mood for food, but also, I’ll never order again from that place! Spend some time on working on the user experience.

Integrate Online Ordering With Your POS

Integrating your online ordering with your POS is one of the smartest moves ever. You’re not only cutting the time and labor required to put in the orders manually, but also cutting down on the risk of making mistakes while doing so. And no one likes their orders delivered wrongly! Another benefit is that You'll be able to access your online ordering statistics and insights with the rest of your point-of-sale information, giving you the best of both worlds. Just integrate them, and see your sales sky-rocket in no time!

Have A Solid Email Marketing Game And Make Use Of Social Media

It's no good having a terrific online ordering system if your consumers aren't aware of it, and email marketing is still the most effective way to reach out to your existing customers, with a $42 return on every $1 spent. Make use of beautiful, eye catchy templates and use automation to target your potential audience. Track the insights and check who would be the best person to target and at what time. You really should know for a fact that you don’t need to be an influencer to promote online ordering. Take good quality food pics and tell people about your offers and the dishes that you serve. It’s not just about the number of followers on your business page or the number of people liking your food pictures, social media can be optimized for a plethora of things to increase your online sales. Facebook lets you put an “Order Food” call-to-action button on your business’ page. This button can increase orders by 3-4%. You can also use Messenger chatbots to chat with your customers trying to place orders in real time.

Make It Easy For Local Customers To Find You

Customers can easily locate you and connect with you if you have a GMB account. Because it's designed to help promote local companies, this free Google service is a terrific approach to improve your internet visibility.

It allows restaurant and takeaway operators to choose how their businesses appear across Google platforms and stand out. Given current consumer behaviors, with massive quantities of local searches conducted through smartphone every day, this is a critical area to focus on. The Google Maps interface's convenient 'Delivery' icons also allow users to navigate straight to restaurants that provide those services with just one click. Just try this hack, you can thank us later by the way!

Create Incentives For Online Ordering

One fantastic way to increase your online orders is to let people have some incentives on ordering online. When they can get exclusive deals, 60% of customers prefer to order via a mobile app or a website, make use of these stats! You can offer free delivery services for bulk orders and regular clients, some percentage off on a minimum purchase. Customers will return if you offer loyalty programs in which they can earn points. Whatever it is, you make sure that you promote these enough for people to redeem.

Consumers that order online visit 67 percent more frequently than other customers, so whatever you can do to increase that number means more revenue for your company!

There you have it! Use these tips and create the best online ordering strategy ever!

Best Tools for Social Media Marketers Today

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:06:51 GMT

This is not a regular column of “Top 10” or “Top 20” or “Top 30” marketing tools. We will be diving deep into a social media marketing strategy, and then work our way towards using tools for creating it. There could not have been any better time than now, to be taking care of your social media presence. In the year 2021, there are nearly 3.98 billion people actively using social media, worldwide. 3.96 billion!

If you are a social media manager or a business owner, you’d know the importance of social media presence for your brand in general. Building a functional social media presence is not something that can be done overnight. Wish there was an easy recipe to it, with which we could put together all the ingredients in the right amounts and get the world’s best social media marketing strategy! Sadly, that’s not true.

A social media marketing strategy is also like any other marketing strategy, which is prepared with creating, measuring, strategizing and analyzing. And for that, you can’t just wake up in the morning, sit in your chair, sip coffee and get your hands on all the possible data you could ever get from all the different social media platforms, all by yourself, create, strategize, automate and analyze! By virtue of the upcoming technologies, there are many such tools that are available that will make your lives much much easier. Trust me! It’s a very good day for you that you’ll get an amalgamation of the most used and important tools, here today, which will be immensely helpful to you.

So, let’s start from the top. For any social media marketing campaign, you need content. After creation and curation, you schedule them, then measure the success of your campaign and then analyze the results at the end. Here, we are dividing the categories into- Content creation and curation tools, automated scheduling of content, measuring and data analysis tools, and another thing is, “social listening”, which we will cover in the later part of the blog. So let’s get started:

Content Creation and Curation

Canva

When creating content for your social media platforms, you always need some pictures, graphics, infographics etc. Canva is the basic and extremely useful tool with which you can go ahead and make beautiful content. There are free as well as paid templates which you can use, or make your own designs. The best part is that you don’t need to be a graphic designer to use it. You need no special skills, anyone can use it. It has a free and a paid version, so depending on your needs, you can use either one of them.

Animoto

Did you know that the native videos that are uploaded on Facebook have 10x reach than of the videos on other video search engine platforms like YouTube? If you weren’t focusing on video content marketing, take this as your sign! Animoto is an amazing video creation tool that has lots of beautiful templates which you can use. And it allows you to make marketing videos from scratch with drag and drop features which make it a lot easier to create video content for your brand.

Quuu

Your audience wants to hear from you. But you don’t always know what they want to hear about. This is when the CURATION of content comes in. As a social media manager, you should always take care about content curation strategies. And Quuu does just that for you. It gives you hand-curated content ideas to you. Once a piece of content is submitted to it, a real human from their editorial team reads it, approves it, and adds it to its distribution network. So it has both curation and promotional sides to it, it’s quite interesting, you know!

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is really killing it in terms of research and curation. It is literally one of the best tools I have ever come across. Have you ever gone through those days when you are just not able to come up with content, no matter how hard you try. Why worry when BuzzSumo is here? You just need to put in the relevant keywords and it gives a list of the new trends and content that’s getting viral on the internet. And to top it off, it also shows you all the influencers who shared that content, so it also gives you a chance to get in touch with those influencers and plan your influencer marketing strategy.

Automation and Scheduling

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the oldest tools in the game. It is a boon to any SMM. It has many such features which can help one in the long run. It gives options to schedule bulk content in advance, helps to create and analyze streams, keep track of your social media performance in terms of engagement and other metrics and analytics. One of the best features it provides is the collaboration of team members and the approval feature. It provides a free trial period of 30 days. It is a very beneficial tool for any brand which has multiple social accounts to be handled simultaneously.

Tailwind

It is for your audience that digests a lot of picture related content, that is Pinterest and Instagram. Not only does it help you in scheduling bulk content for Pinterest, but also lets you find the best people to reach out to (with hashtags), tells you what’s working for your page and what’s not, and also gives you an option of collaborating with your team. It’s drag and drop calendar feature helps you in easy content strategy planning.

Buffer

When talking about automation tools for scheduling, Buffer would always be the front-runner. It is kind of an all- rounder tool, as you can do anything with it, from scheduling to analysis to group collabs. One of the most amazing features of Buffer is that whatever you are searching on the web, you like it? Buffer helps you to put it to your queue of scheduled content. It makes sure that your posts will be shared at the best possible times. You can also track links to see which content is most popular with your readers.

Measuring and analyzing data

Sprout Social

If you want to try an intuitive platform whose dashboard will help you to manage and analyze all your social media efforts on major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, then do give a try to Sprout social. It offers a 30 day free trial period. The most unique feature about this tool is that it helps a brand to receive genuine feedback from customers which allows you to build long lasting relationships with them.

AdEspresso

Do you need a customizable dashboard that can automatically monitor all your on-going ads on Facebook, Instagram and Google ads? AdEspresso is the thing for you. It checks out all your active ads and suggests what is working for you and what is not, and automatically promotes new posts and uses some extremely intelligent filters to decide what should be promoted for how long. This is legit fire!

SocialInsider

SocialInsider is a benchmarking and analytical tool which helps you to measure the different metrics and KPIs depending upon your social media strategy. It can be used for all influential platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Social Listening

Whenever you run a business, online or whatever, always remember, it’s not just about you. It’s not just about selling. It’s not just about announcing your offers, your products. It’s also, not also but to a great extent, about your customers. What do people feel about you, your product, your brand. Are they even happy with you? Do they respect you? Would they want to make a purchase with your brand? Would they want to come back to you? More than talking, LISTEN. (Ahh, you see what they did there?)

Social listening is just this. Your reputation is on the line when people put in mean comments about your company, your product online. Listen to what’s going wrong with your product, respond to them online, make your customers feel respected, make them feel that you care. Let’s see some tools which may help you in this:

Mention

If you want deep insights on what people have to say about you, Mention is just for you. You can track 1 Billion sources across the web daily with it. 1 Billion. As I discussed above, protect your reputation, build relations and in turn more number of leads using it. It offers real time social media monitoring of your social media presence. It helps you to respond to all the tags, comments, and mentions on one single dashboard. It also gives you an option to sort out the mentions based on priority and N number of other filters available.

Awario

Awario is a majorly discussed tool when Social listening is talked about. It not only lets you know whenever your brand is mentioned or other related keywords are discussed on all major social media platforms, it also segregates the mentions into positive reviews, negative and the neutral ones. It provides you with a detailed report on how many times your brand was mentioned, and by whom, if they were influencers, it gives you a list of them too. Hence, it helps you in monitoring your social media presence in terms of mentions to great heights.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch's analytics data is ideal for illustrating the meaning of social media marketing. Signals is another feature that sets Brandwatch apart. You can set up an alert to get notified anytime a keyword is discussed by the writers you select. Signals are triggered when major changes in the data set occur, such as a sudden surge in unfavorable comments or a sudden peak in the number of mentions.

Local Marketing for Restaurants

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:44:45 GMT

What is Local Marketing?

Restaurants are hyper-local in nature; a large section of our customer base is local. It therefore makes sense for restaurants to connect with the local audience and foster their brand image as an integral part of the community.

Local Marketing for restaurants refers to offline marketing strategies employed to spread the word about the restaurant and build long term bonds with the local audience.

Local marketing is built on the principle of establishing long term mutually beneficial bonds with local businesses. The power of human relationships is the most basic idea on which this marketing strategy is built. The more powerful your capacity to create personal ties, as well as the fact that your proposition should truly help local businesses out in one way or another, the more effective your marketing plan will be.

Why Local Marketing?

While online marketing strategies such as social media and email marketing help you establish your brand identity and reach a wider audience, local marketing provides you an opportunity to build a loyal local customer base. It is a fantastic way to get the community enthusiastic about your brand and give them the opportunity to join and invest time in you. This not only helps get your enterprise’s name out there, but it also allows customers an opportunity to try out your food and services.

For example,

Collaborating with schools or local organizations sends out a message to your local customer base that you are not just a business operating for profit but an integral part of the community that is interested and concerned about the local issues, causes and people.

Fundraisers also are a great way to encourage people to come in and experience your food and services. And like we have always stressed, word- of mouth advertising is the best form of advertising. These events and partnerships are your opportunity to build brand ambassadors, garner reviews recommendations and some awesome user- generated content form check-ins to pictures.

Local Marketing is one of the most cost-effective and efficient marketing channels. Combine this with some social media promotion by posting images from the event, and voila! You've got yourself a winner! Watch how quickly your name spreads around the community. People will not only come back to see you, but they will also tell others about you so that they can try your food.

What To Look For In A Potential Partner?

Who Do You Want To Reach?

Identify your restaurant’s target audience. In order to engage with the correct type of consumers for you, approach organizations who have access to this target market.

What Do You Want To Achieve?

Identify your business goals and approach the partners accordingly. Is your goal brand awareness, or are you launching a new menu item? If you're looking for brand awareness, approach organizations that give you a chance to spread your name, for instance. If you're releasing a new item, look for an event partnership that will allow you to show it off.

Look For A Long- Term Partnership

While approaching potential partners, see to it that they are in for a long- term partnership. A win-win situation is the essence of a healthy, long-term collaboration. A one time partnership may not necessarily mean a huge amount of ROI. Repeated partnerships will not only result in a good amount of brand awareness, but also would lead to monetary benefits in the long run.

Local Marketing Strategies For Restaurants

Let's take a brief look at some simple grassroots marketing tactics:

Charitable Events

This is one of the most effective grassroots marketing channels. This can be accomplished by working with local groups such as animal shelters and non-profits, and sharing a portion of the sales with them. This not only communicates a favorable message about your enterprise that it cares about the neighborhood, but it also attracts people who would not have come to see you, if not for the fundraising event.

According to a study, 91 percent of consumers are likely to switch brands to one supporting a good purpose given comparable prices and quality.

For example, Chipotle organizes fundraisers with public schools, sports organizations, Libraries, Youth Community groups, etc. They generally support organizations in a variety of ways, including dine-in fundraisers for schools and in-kind donations. They make it a super fun event or a night wherein they give back 33% of the proceeds back to the organization! It’s kind of a win-win situation here, right?

Everyone gets to enjoy, everyone eats and at the end of the event, they help the community by raising funds, interesting isn’t it?

Coupon Partnerships

Coupons do not always mean giving away free stuff- they can help you to generate additional revenue, if you put some thought into the offer- say providing a free item under $5 with purchases of 15. They also provide an opportunity to upsell to a customer who is already sitting at your restaurant

Coupons bring new customers to your restaurant. Offering coupons can keep current customers interested and help bring back former customers.

Discounts and coupons are an excellent way to build interest and launch new menu items.

Another excellent idea is to collaborate with apartments, local schools, libraries, or churches etc.

Events that you can look out for:

VBS
Summer reading programs
Back to School events
Oktoberfest/ fall Events
Trick or Treat Events
Thanksgiving events
Christmas Events
Dad daughter dance
Easter egg hunt
Seuss day Celebrations
Spring Festivals
Teacher appreciation Week
Summer events

You can present coupons for the participating children, such as a free meal or a free menu item or move-in coupons to new residents in the apartment complex. This motivates the entire family to visit the restaurant in order to redeem the coupon. When they are satisfied with your services, they will recommend you to others, taking no time for them to be your regulars!

Bonus tip for you- it is always better to provide coupons tied with a minimum purchase or BOGO Deals To boost online ordering. You can also provide coupons with codes that work on online orders only.

Social Media

For instance, Einstein Bros. Bagels tested a restaurant promotion in which anyone who “liked” their Facebook page received a coupon for a complimentary bagel and shmear. As a result of this activity, the number of fans increased by 1000 percent in the first week, gained 296,000 new followers in the first month and it became the 54th most popular business on Facebook.

Local Community Events

Local events appear to be an ideal venue for putting your grassroots efforts into action! Look for local community events such as fairs, summer festivals, and so on. Participate in these events, and people will buy things from your menu; this is one of the most successful ways to extend your brand recognition locally. For instance, Franchisees of Buffalo Wild Wings frequently sponsor local school sports teams in exchange for having their logo displayed on the teams' shirts.

To support the Monticello High School Cross Country team, an Illinois Subway franchisee built and donated a 52-foot-long sandwich to a local event. What a fantastic method to engage with the community!

Local Prize Distribution Sponsorships

Offer to sponsor employee of the month, trainer of the month, etc. with auto dealerships, dance schools, sports clubs, and so on. You might also suggest sponsoring student or teacher of the month certificates for schools to acknowledge their outstanding performance.

Pizza Hut's reading initiative, Book It !, began in 1984 with the intention of encouraging more children to read by giving out free personal sized pizzas to children who fulfilled a reading goal and read the number of books assigned by their instructor. According to Pizza Hut , as of 2017, more than 14 million students across 620,000 classrooms have participated in BOOK IT! Teachers only had to join up their class and then assign each kid a reading objective based on their ability to participate in the program. A ‘Reading Award Certificate' was given to the youngster once they had accomplished their reading target. These certificates could then be used at Pizza Hut stores to get a free one topping pan pizza. So this is a perfect example to demonstrate the power of offering to sponsor a prize distribution at a local level.

Ideas Of Events That You Can Organize

Toys For Tots:

In 2019, Applebee’s locations throughout New Jersey, hosted a Breakfast with Santa Fundraiser. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the Breakfast with Santa event were donated to the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program. More than 96 Applebee’s restaurants across New Jersey, Long Island, Florida and Georgia have raised over $4.8 million for the Toys for Tots initiative till date, helping out more than 230,000 deserving children.

Canned Food Drive

Food drives a great way to involve yourself and your enterprise with the community. With canned food drives, you can collect canned food items and then donate them to the local food banks or organizations taking care of the less fortunate group of people. They can be made more effective if coupled with fundraising.

Setting Up Angel Trees:

Coffee With A Cop

Coffee with a cop is an initiative to break down the traditional barriers between the citizens and the police officers. There always has been a strange distance between us as citizens and the police. Coffee with a cop makes that distance fade. Officers on patrol come and sit down with the people they serve, chat with them over coffee, and have a good time.

Starbucks has joined Coffee with a Cop program since 2011. Since then, they’ve supported more than 1,500 Coffee with a Cop events.

Some other popular ideas are back to school collection drives, donating a meal station, ice house etc.

Wrap Up

Despite the fact that the world is becoming increasingly digital, reaching out to people directly, chatting with them, and giving them your unique services with a human touch will never go out of style. We've provided a link above for you to join our restaurant marketers hub group, test out some of these methods and tell us there, which ones worked best for you!

Digital Marketing Trends To Watch Out For In 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 14:51:40 GMT

With 2020 proving to be a particularly trying year for everyone, there were numerous developments in the digital industry, with everyone confined at home with their phones in hand. In other words, we became more technologically savvy. In this article, we'll go over some of the most crucial digital marketing trends to keep an eye on in 2021, so that you can compete at a higher level in today's digital world.

Featured Snippets

Though Google first released "Featured Snippets" in 2014, coming into 2021, it has become a top priority for marketers. According to the statistics, when there isn't a featured snippet in the search results, the CTR for organic search results is 26 percent, however when a featured snippet is there, the CTR drops to 19.6 percent. Having your content appear in the featured snippet can significantly increase your click-through rate. So, if you haven't been paying attention, now is the time to start.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation has always been crucial, but in 2021, enterprises, digital marketing companies, agencies, and bloggers are paying close attention to it. But what is digital marketing automation anyway? Marketing automation is nothing but using technology, software and tools to automate your marketing activities in a machine and data-driven approach to actually measure your marketing efforts in the end. And why do marketers care about it so much these days? Here are some figures to consider: Using marketing automation software, 4 out of 5 users saw an increase in leads, and 77% saw an increase in conversions. Businesses that use marketing automation see a 451 percent increase in qualified leads on average. It not only saves you time and effort, but it also improves your return on investment. As a result, whether you've just established your business or have been in the market for a while, it's past time you realized the value of digital marketing automation.

Voice Search Engine Optimization:

According to a survey conducted by SemRush , over 1 billion voice searches are performed every month. They gained a lot of traction with the emergence of voice recognition technology like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant for the sake of convenience. According to Forbes, 58 percent of shoppers use voice search to find local companies online. With these statistics in mind, it's critical that local companies improve their webpages for voice search recognition. According to Google's research, the keywords utilized in Voice Searches are long-tail and conversational.. For example, if a person wants to search for the best Mexican restaurant in Texas, instead of typing "best Mexican restaurant in Texas", they'll use a more conversational tone like "which is the best Mexican restaurant in Texas?" while talking to their smartphone. As a result, it's critical for local businesses to focus on voice search optimization in order to attract more traffic, as some predictions indicate that the number of people using voice search will reach 8 billion by 2023.

Local SEO

The pandemic, which impacted us all hard, dealt a significant blow to the local businesses. But, as things slowly return to normal, searchers are looking for enterprises that provide convenience, and trust without requiring them to travel too far from home. Hence, Local businesses must be at the top of their game when it comes to local listings. You must be discoverable. People should be aware that you are there for service simply down the road. The best method to achieve this is to optimize your Google My Business listing. It's become essential to learn how to improve your Google My Business page for your restaurant's website. They don't buy from you if you're not up there.

Learn how to create a Google My Business listing for your company and how to optimize it to reach more customers.

Social commerce

In the year 2021, keep an eye on social commerce. But what precisely is it? Social commerce is the act of selling a product directly on social media platforms without requiring the buyer to leave that site and go to another, but rather to complete the transaction there and then. At the moment, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest are at the top of their game. According to Insider Intelligence, retail social commerce sales in the United States will increase by 34.8 percent to $36.09 billion in 2021, accounting for 4.3 percent of all retail ecommerce sales. Conversational chatbots powered by AI technology play an important role in this process since they provide customers with a real-time, personalized experience. In other words, D2C is the future!

Short-form videos

It is undeniable that content in the form of video is highly valued by viewers. According to a Wyzowl study from 2020, individuals share videos twice as much as any other type of material. It was also discovered that 84 percent of respondents were persuaded to purchase a product or service after watching a brand's video. As a result, videos that are less than 2 minutes 30 seconds (by HubSpot) are deemed short videos which are typically thought to be an excellent method to engage with clients, are a great method to do so. In the year 2021, TikTok and Instagram took advantage of the ideal opportunity to launch their video and reels features, which have received a lot of attention. Consumers adore user-generated content (UGC). In fact, it has a greater impact on their purchasing decisions than content created by brands or influencers. Brands can create engaging films without wasting a lot of resources. It is a trend to really watch out for in 2021.

Wrap up

We've just covered some of the most crucial digital marketing trends to watch out for this year. In 2021, we strongly advise all marketers to pay attention to these.. If you have any further trends to add to, please use the link above to join our restaurant marketers group! Please do not hesitate to contact us.

How To Measure ROI From Your Digital Marketing Campaigns?

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 14:50:46 GMT

If you think money is the only thing that matters in your campaign, think again. There are many more things to think about.

Restaurant Marketing Platform: mKonnekt Integrated Marketing Platform for restaurants

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 14:49:26 GMT

Always wondered what happens on the other side of your campaign. Well, now you’re going to find out.

holdingsite1

Stop Chasing Customers. Start Keeping Them.

Unlock smarter growth with the combined power of FreeKwent and Greta.

The Hidden Power of Repeat Revenue

Loyalty Is More Than a Buzzword

Bridging Transactions With Long-Term Value

See It in Action — Book Your Demo!

7 Proven Ways Digital Loyalty Improves Repeat Visits & Revenue

Exploring How Digital Loyalty Tools Like FreeKwent Support Sustainable Business Growth

How Restaurant Loyalty Programs Like FreeKwent Increase Repeat Visits & Revenue in 2026

Boosting repeat visits, higher spend, and lasting profits!

A guide to the Do's and Don'ts in Restaurant Email Marketing

In the fast-paced world of restaurant marketing, email campaigns remain a powerful tool for engaging customers and driving conversions. However, success lies in the strategy.

Top 5 Marketing Hacks for Restaurants with a Limited Budget

In the competitive world of the restaurant industry, marketing plays a pivotal role in attracting customers and staying ahead of the competition. However, not every restaurant has a substantial marketing budget to work with.

10 Menu Hacks To Boost Restaurant Profits Without Raising Prices

In the competitive world of restaurants, boosting profits while maintaining affordability is a constant challenge. Fortunately, there are creative menu hacks that savvy restaurateurs use to increase revenue without resorting to price hikes.

Food Photography Hacks For Restaurateurs: Capturing Irresistible Dishes With Just A Smartphone

In today's digital age, visuals play a pivotal role in attracting customers. This has led to food photography becoming an essential skill for restaurateurs.

Dine-in Discoveries: 8 Effective Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Restaurant

The Rise of Food Bloggers: How to Leverage their Influence for Your Restaurant

How to create a winning restaurant marketing plan: Step-by-Step guide

Social media ROI- How to measure your social media ROI?

What is Social Media ROI?

Why is it important to measure social media ROI?

How to measure social media ROI?

Step-1

Identify your goals:

Step-2

Understanding marketing funnel:

Step-3:

Calculate!

Why is measuring social media marketing ROI difficult?

Wrap up:

Top Restaurant Technology Trends 2023

#1 Online Ordering-

#2 Ghost/Virtual Kitchens-

#3- Loyalty programs-

#4- Automated Inventory Software Management System-

#5- Restaurant Marketing Automation and Smart Tech-

Wrap up-

Instagram Reels- Top 5 Questions Answered

Table Of Contents

What Are Instagram Reels?

How To Make And Post An Instagram Reel?

Step 1-

Step 2-

Step 3-

Step 4-

Audio -

Effects-

Length-

Speed-

Video Layout-

Timer-

Dual (newly added feature)-

Gesture control-

Step 5-

Step 6-

﻿ What Are Some Tips To Make My Reel Viral?

Use trending music and follow ongoing trends-

Use appropriate hashtags-

Use a custom reel cover for each of your reel-

Post consistently-

What Is The Best Time To Post An Instagram Reel?

﻿ Analytics- How To Track The Topmost Important Metrics?

Individual reels-

Insights tab on Instagram-

Through Meta Business Suite-

Wrap-up

How To Prepare For The Holiday Season As a Restaurant Owner?

Seasonal Menu

Why should you do it?

What should you think about before-hand?

Take a look at a few examples below-

Sales Forecasting

Take A Look At Your Inventory

Do You Have Enough Staff During The Holidays?

Decorations Make It Worth It!

Holiday Catering

What Are Some Tips To Make My Reel Viral?

Analytics- How To Track The Topmost Important Metrics?