The post 3 Tips To Up Your Restaurant’s Instagram Game appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

Created by Diana Khusniyarova

The post Infographic: Why You Should Add Email Marketing To Your Mix appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

If you’ve ever thought about opening a new restaurant, it might feel a little like assembling Ikea furniture – daunting. New restaurants can be a big venture with long hours included, and many steps and confusing tasks to walk through. Design a new menu, choose a location, hire staff; It takes time, patience, will most likely cause aggravation, but the important part is to not settle for ‘close enough.’ Because, when you put all the pieces in place, the reward is great and you will be so satisfied when it is finally done.

Unlike the traumatizingly laborious Ikea instructions, we’ve created a noninclusive list of items you’ll want to make sure to check off for your restaurant’s opening.

1. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

You’ve got a great menu planned. Hospitable staff hired. Unique concept in place. Well, unfortunately, none of that matters if no one knows about your restaurant. Marketing is a very important part of your business plan.

Opening a restaurant requires a marketing plan that will help you connect to potential customers in the community. In your plan, you’ll want to include everything from opening day incentives, to your specials, to your social media plan.

2. Create/Claim profiles on Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Google My Business.

Our previous blog How to Claim Your Business Profiles will guide you through how to do this the simplest way possible, but you’ll also want to make sure to set up notifications for any new reviews. The opening days of your restaurant are vital, and any customers you get will be ‘new’ customers so first impressions are everything – and that includes how they’re responded to online.

3. Get Your Online Presence Ready

If potential customers see or hear about a new restaurant in the community, they’ll google it. It’s a fact. Be one step ahead by having a landing page live online at least 30 days before opening day. This landing page should include your social media feeds, a spot to collect job applications, information about opening day, and MOST importantly, a place to allow customers to sign up for your E-club. In addition to a landing page that represents your style, start posting on social media regularly. By regularly, we’re talking 3-4x/week. You’ll also want to start utilizing those emails you’ve been collecting, so start sending weekly emails. These posts and emails should include updates about the status of your opening, any news stories covering your opening, and even offers and incentives to get people in the door early on.

4. Share the Good News

A new restaurant opening is always exciting news in a community. There’s nothing worse than a silent grand opening because that puts you at risk of deflating morale in the community and with your staff. One important tip to prevent this from happening is to create a press release to send to local media once you’ve chosen a date and time for your opening. Talk up your new restaurant – this is your chance to share about everything you’ve worked so hard for. Make this an event no one wants to miss.

5. Start Thinking About How to Keep the Customers Coming

In a competitive industry like the restaurant business, word of mouth isn’t always enough to sustain a busy restaurant. Unfortunately, many restaurants fail in months 18-24, so you’re definitely not going to want to rely on your “honeymoon” traffic when you first open to guarantee your longevity and success. Now is the time to make sure you have systems in place to collect guest information. This should include things like handout cards/contests, table tents, or posters. It takes multiple visits to create habits, so you’ll also want to consider handing out some kind of “Bounce Back” offer during your launch window. This can be a coupon valid after your opening ends, and even extends another couple weeks.

Typically, the “honeymoon” phase wears off after about 6 months, and unfortunately many restaurants don’t think about marketing until that point, then regret not having a customer list to reach out to.

6. Online Reputation

We’ve already hinted at it, but that just goes to show how important it is. Having an interactive and intentional online engagement during the first six months of being open is the most important time. Unfortunately, this is also the most difficult time operationally speaking as you hire new staff, create new recipes, etc. The first 5000 guests that walk through your door will make or break your restaurant. Be sure that a single customer doesn’t leave the building without knowing how to give feedback on their experience. This is a great opportunity to utilize review cards, and an online survey platform. Take a peek at our Combating Online Negative Reviews blog to gain some insight on handling reviews you may not love.

Looking for more tips for your new restaurant business plan?  

The post Insider Tips for Opening a Brand New Restaurant appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

The answer is simple. You’ve been out-marketed. I know what you’re thinking — of
course, they have a much bigger marketing budget than I could ever have. While
this may be true, it is easier than it ever has been to compete and win against the big brand marketing
wave. The internet and social media have equalized the playing field. The real
question is, are you taking advantage of it? 

The key to winning the marketing battle is to have a balanced marketing plan &
calendar. If you’re like most independent restaurants your current marketing
plan looks mostly like this:

Don’t fret – we’re here to
help. Today, I am going to show you how to make some simple adjustments to
create a winning marketing calendar within 6 weeks. The goal – have your
marketing planned out 60 days in advance.

Week 1: Carve out an hour in
your schedule to get your marketing calendar set three weeks out.

Week 2-5: Take ½ hour to add 2
more weeks to your marketing calendar

Week 6 (and beyond): Add 1 week
to your marketing calendar

Sounds simple enough…but what
exactly do you include on that marketing calendar? Here’s some tips:

·
Start with email. Best practice is 1 email per week. Best things to
email? Glad you asked. Let your customers know about LTOs, coupons, menu
launches, and upcoming events.

·
Next, add some Facebook and Twitter posts. Best practice for Facebook
is 3-4 posts weekly. We recommend the rule of thirds: 1/3 promotions, 1/3
stories, and 1/3 creative posts; pictures of food, pictures of things happening
in your restaurant, staff highlights, upcoming events, community happenings.  For Twitter? We recommend daily posting. These
posts should include your daily specials, pictures of food, weather-related
posts, holiday-related posts (national burger day, etc..)

If you’re looking for a
template to use for your marketing, you could look into building your calendar
on a google doc, an excel spreadsheet, or even by using Google Calendar. If you’re
looking for an even simpler option (that doesn’t force you to waste time
copying and pasting), we highly recommend the use of our marketing calendar on
Restaurant Logic’s dashboard. By using our Restaurant Logic marketing calendar,
you can visualize your marketing strategy in way in advance. And guess what? It
even offers recommended content and ideas so all you have to do is schedule
them out. If you’ve been searching for a simpler option…we found it.

By following the outline above,
you can make a significant impact on your marketing success. If you feel you’re
not able to make time for it quite yet, we believe adding even 10 minutes a day
to work on your marketing schedule can make a huge difference to your bottom
line.  Focus on some small goals to start
off. Transparently speaking, we don’t believe writing a lengthy marketing
strategy isn’t nearly as important as simply sitting down and planning some
real content.

Here’s hoping these bite size
action items will realistically help you gain a better grasp on your marketing
concept.  Your marketing might not start
out perfect, it will probably need some tweaking and adjusting along the way,
but if you start planning now we know that it will become a valued resource
that will not only make advertising your restaurant easier, but more successful
too.

The post How To Create An Effective Marketing Calendar for Your Restaurant Today appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

But I have noticed one
thing… I’ve noticed a unique trend in our eating habits.

About every three months, while my wife is innocently browsing Pinterest, she stumbles upon a juicy new
article about healthy eating. Usually it has the world “cleanse” or
“challenge” in the title, and before I can ask what gluten is, all our bagels are
in the trash, our milk is down the drain, and I’m sitting in front of a bowl of
spaghetti noodles made out of squash.

There was a lot of resistance initially. I mean, if you remove meat-lovers pizza and baby
back ribs out of any man’s life, there’s bound to be a period of withdrawal.

But I’ve been roped into enough of these now that I actually don’t mind them as much. It’s hard to
admit, but by the time it’s through, I almost always feel better and weirdly
enough, all my pants miraculously get a little bigger.

Whether it’s abstaining from sugar, dodging carbs, or focusing on “clean-eating,” there are always a set of
guidelines we have to operate against in order to stay within the boundaries of
the chosen program.

These programs, while being good for my health and whatnot, can end up being terribly inconvenient and
radically interrupt my day-to-day eating habits. But I know if I want to see
the health benefits of this program, I need to set myself up for daily success,
knowing I’m going to get hungry at least three times a day. Also knowing that
my go-to lunch buddies of old aren’t going to cut it… bye bye cheesy gordita
crunch.

It’s wildly unrealistic for me to think, with my sporadic schedule, that before every meal, breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, I’ll have the time, resources, or energy to cook up a fresh
meal tailored to my dietary restrictions.

It’s just as wilding unrealistic for any restaurant owner to think they are going to be able to give
their marketing the attention and preparation it deserves trying to figure it
out day to day.

It all comes down to one word.

Preparation.

Meal prepping, I believe is the term my wife uses. For those of you like me who didn’t know, that means
planning out, shopping for, and cooking up all your meals on Sunday for the
entire week ahead of time. If you look up the #mealprep on twitter, you’ll see
exactly what I mean.

We meal prep to make sure there’s enough good food to get us through and I don’t end up scarfing down a
bag of cool ranch Doritos because we didn’t cook enough broccoli, or, for a
restaurant, making sure there’s no poorly thought through social media posts or
under-utilized email marketing efforts.

You won’t know whether or not your efforts are successful if you don’t
intentionally invest in your marketing plan. If you randomly post content or
send emails to appear active, how will you ever know if your efforts are
contributing to your business’s success? Some speaks to meal planning. If I eat
steamed broccoli with my Big Mac at dinner, chances are any affect those
vegetables have on my health will be hard to notice.

When meal prepping, there are three steps we have to think through in preparing for each week.

1.] Outline what we want to eat this week day-by-day

-How many meals do we need to prep?

-What do we want those meals to be? (Monday: Turkey
burgers and sweet potatoes, Tuesday: Lemon Pepper Chicken…) 

What do I want my restaurants marketing to look like this week? 

-How many Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts do I want?

-What do I want the contents of these posts to be?

We recommend posting on Facebook and Twitter no less than once every three days, as a low-end rule of
thumb. You really don’t want your frequency to drop any lower than that though.
People dropping by your page want to see you’re alive, you’re active, and you
have something to say. Allow the personality of your restaurant to shine
through online, don’t be afraid to have fun with it!

2.] Map out what we need to get from the grocery store

-What ingredients do we need for each meal?

-Do we have the right balance of meat, vegetables, and fruit?

What do I want the content of my restaurant’s posts to be made up of?

-How many pictures of menu items do I want to showcase? Dessert items? Alcoholic Beverages? Are there menu
items we would like to sell more of?

-How many staff highlights should I do?

-Try to keep it high level

Sometimes when you start to prepare and outline your marketing, you realize you may actually have an
opportunity to delegate some of this responsibility to other staff members. For
instance, if you have a socially savvy server that you know is already active
on Instagram, maybe ask her pre-shift to keep her eye out for a moment to snap
a photo of that she could pair with a clever statement and post online. Maybe
you want to post it right then and there, or maybe you want to save that post
for a later date. Possibly even give her $10 bucks for every usable photo and
phrase; some employees might even get excited enough to share that photo on
their personal page to get the ball rolling.

3.] Go get the food and prepare those meals.

Take the outline you created, and sit down and make
your restaurant’s social media posts in advance.

-The key is to have a plan that is actionable, and do it. It won’t take forever, but make sure to set some
time aside before the week begins to prepare your posts.

For many people, myself included, preparing ahead of time for anything is extraordinarily difficult
because there are probably 83 other things screaming for your attention that
feel much more pressing. But without a clear strategy, your marketing plan
becomes lost in your to-do list.

Creating a simple outline for yourself is always a great idea. The best part about an
outline or framework for social media posts, is that once you find a few
structures that work, you can reuse them month-to-month. As long as you’re not
carbon copying posts and reusing the same images and catch-lines, a solid
framework for posting can go a long way.

This is something we believe quite strongly in at Restaurant Logic; so much so that we actually created a
Marketing Calendar for our customers to us when mapping out their social media
content. It’s filled with dozens of different posts every month that you can
use as inspiration for your posting, or even use them word for word if you’d
like. Our calendar makes it very easy to plan your posts and schedule them out
for automatic posting, so you can focus your attention on your business.

The post Marketing Meal Prep – Tips On Getting Your Marketing Calendar Started appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

If you’re like most restaurant owners, you know online marketing can have a big impact on your business but you’re not sure where to start: it seems that there is an endless to-do list for online marketing, websites to check, places to log in, new social media sites to manage. Marketing your restaurant online doesn’t need to be complicated — here are 5 keys to online marketing success for busy restaurant owners:

Key 1: Mobile-Friendly Website

The best place to start with your online marketing is to create an adaptive website — a website that looks great on mobile devices, tablets, and computers. Nearly 70% of visits to your website will come from a mobile device while there are still more restaurants that don’t have mobile-friendly sites than those that do.

Not only are your customers on mobile, Google is too. Google announced that if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, it will discount your website in its’ search results.

Key 2: Email Marketing

In the midst of a world with endless communication mediums, email is by far the most used medium on the planet. 92% of online adults use email and it is estimated over 200 billion non-spam emails are sent each day.

While email marketing might seem a bit tired with the increased popularity of social media, email marketing is actually become more effective as options for online communication continues to increase. The restaurant industry has seen an uptick in almost 5% open rates year over year.

Key 3: Social Media

Social media is the best place online for your to interact with your customers, have conversations, and show your restaurant’s personality, brand, & culture.

With the number of potential social media networks available, you may be wondering which networks are best for you to invest time in. You may choose to invest time differently based on your target customers, however, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are recommended. Some quick tips as you consider which social network to use:

Facebook: Usage is increasing with people aged 30+, decreasing with users under the age of 30 — Facebook is your best bet to reach an older audience with more disposable income. Facebook is a great platform to share events, latest happenings, staff highlights, and share photos.

Instagram: Recently passed Twitter in number of users and has become the most used network for people in their 20’s. Great for posting food pictures, things happening in your restaurant, staff highlights, etc.

Twitter: Has a wide audience — nearly 1 in 4 adults are on Twitter, the most active users are under the age of 35. Great for sharing daily specials/features, latest news/updates, and having direct 1–1 communication with your customers.

Key 4: Online Reputation

Let’s face it: consumers wield a remarkable amount of power over restaurants these days through online reviews. Sites like Yelp & TripAdvisor have revolutionized the way consumers talk about and discover restaurants. Review sites can either be a great thing for your restaurant or a major deterrent of business.

Instead of being a bystander when it comes to online reviews, embrace and encourage customer feedback online preferably through a medium you can more directly control — your website. Make it simple for your customers to provide you feedback through your site; keep the negative feedback internal, and encourage positive reviewers to share their feedback on other review sites.

Utilize the customer feedback feature in the Restaurant Logic Web Marketing Dashboard to collect and automatically respond to feedback based on sentiment.

Key 5: Marketing Calendar

Once you have an adaptive website, email marketing, and social media set up, you’ll need to have a strategy. Keeping your strategy on a marketing calendar can allow you to be more clear about what, where, and when you’re going to communicate with your customers (without bombarding them). Best practice is to plan your marketing 30–60 days in advance.

Hopefully you’re feeling less overwhelmed when it comes to marketing your restaurant online. If you’re looking for a resource and tools, Restaurant Logic has developed an online marketing platform exclusively for restaurants that will help you create an adaptive website and one dashboard to manage email marketing, social media, and assist with online reputation.

The post 5 Keys To Online Marketing Success for Busy Restaurant Owners appeared first on Restaurant Logic.