Smart Social Media Marketing for Cafes and Restaurants

With Ken Burgin from SilverChef and Mark Khoder from Your Social Chef

Social media keeps changing and developing. How do you choose the right channels and use them to boost sales, improve customer service and maximise profits? SilverChef's Ken Burgin and social media expert Mark Khoder show you how to get more results from the social media you're using now, and additional options worth considering.

Topics covered in the webinar include:

• What’s different with social media in 2021, and how that affects cafes and restaurants
• Facebook or Instagram – use one or the other, or both? What type of content drives the best sales?
• Likes and Fans – how to grow your following and leverage the numbers
• How to use Facebook and Instagram advertising without breaking the bank - examples of proven ads that give solid results
• Top Photograph and Content ideas – great examples for inspiration and future sharing
• YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok - where do they fit into the marketing mix?
• The Smart Advertising Formula to keep driving results 
  
  

Smart Social Media Marketing for Cafes & Restaurants.

With over 3 billion users, social media has had a huge impact on business. Competitive operators must select the right marketing channels and use them to increase sales, improve customer service, and grow profits.

Here’s how to get better results from the social media you are using now, plus additional options worth considering.The Best Restaurant & Cafes Content Ideas
Sharing content on the internet might feel overwhelming, but if you use these ideas one at a time, it can feel more manageable. Here are some of the key points shared with us by Mark Khoder from Your Social Chef...

• Mix your daily content with food, drinks, interior, exterior, and staff
• Keep people up to date with your special dishes and special offers
• Post about your new menu and make sure you are posting about your best selling items every week
• Post behind the scenes photos in the kitchen and at the bar
• Show the process of making some of your classics on video
• Post about the same topic in different forms such as images,videos, posters, motion graphics, cinematography, and so on
• Turn your Instagram feed into a visual catalogue of your menu
• Post-user-generated content
• Talk about your private room and functions in different forms, photos, videos, or share photos about a previous function you hosted
• Post about your delivery service if you have one, the market is heading to ultra-convenience more than ever
• Talk about your catering side of the business, educate people about what else you do, keep them informed about all things
• Share positive reviews from happy customers to demonstrate ‘social proof’
• Post zoomed out and zoomed-in photos of your food, take action shots of someone eating your food or sharing your food with others - keep trying different combinations
  
  

What are the Top 10 Restaurant and Cafe Ads?

Use a variety of advertising methods in your marketing mix, including the following;

• Concept Brand Awareness Ad - Organise a video post around your concept with short and clear copy, this ad will educate people about your restaurant and it will also work as a customer acquisition and retention campaign.
• Events Ads - Organise a special themed event every quarter as a special experience for your customers
• Specials Ads - organise unique and interesting chef specials that will bring new customers in as well as existing customers back more often
• New Menu Ads - every time you release a new menu make a big deal about it on social media including organising new menu ads in different forms.
• Function Ads - use your functions marketing material to create Facebook functions post ads, showcase your function room, or simply showcase a past function that was hosted
• at your venue.
• Unique Menu Items Ads -use any unique menu items that you know will receive a lot of social media interaction as Facebook Ads.
• Desserts Ads-organise Facebook ads around your popular and unique desserts and watch the magic happen
• Facebook Page Like Ad- increase your Facebook page followers by organising a Facebook page like Ad to be shown to the people who haven’t liked your Facebook page yet
  
  

8 photography tips to improve restaurant or cafe social media image

Food images are very popular on Instagram because people like to share where they eat and how amazing their food looks. Posting good-quality photos of your restaurant, staff, menu items, and past events helps turn your restaurant into a destination. To improve your online identity, follow these professional photography tips:

• Work out a theme that is relevant to your branding guidelines and have this theme in your mind before any shoot.
• Shoot next to a window where you have natural light and turn off the artificial light at that window section, then watch your photos looking magical.
• Shoot around 11 am to get better quality images than if you shoot midday onward - the light is better in the morning
• Always add contrast to your photos, it will help your photos stand out
• When shooting, keep in mind the square and the vertical size for social media, specifically Instagram and stories. Shoot horizontal and vertical, and some photos with ‘white space’ in them to place text over.
• At every shoot take as many photos as possible for future use - build your library
• Experiment with different locations around your restaurant
• Shoot on the floor, on the table, on a backdrop, or manipulate using photoshop until you find your ideal theme
  
  

The formula for effective restaurant and café advertising

The restaurant industry has evolved, and it should be your goal to find creative ways to improve revenue and attract new consumers. In our experience, here is the formula for the most effective advertising:

• Reach all customers or risk loss of growth
• Avoid lapses in advertising or risk losing market share - inconsistency reduces momentum
• Use clear brand links and images
• Refresh and create memory structures that make a brand more likely to come to mind and easier to notice, repeating familiar images eg McDonald’s golden arches or your own design images
• If there is a piece of information that is genuinely compelling, then tell it, as long as it does not interfere or confuse the brand message
  
  

TRANSCRIPT of Smart Social Media Marketing Webinar

My name is Mark Khoder. I am the founder and CEO of Your SocialChef. Your SocialChef specialises in restaurant marketing, advertising, digital, social content, social promotion and digital marketing. I started Your SocialChef late-2015, but I've been in the digital game since 2009.

The reason why restaurants, one, I love food. This is something that everybody knows about me. And two, back in that day, in 2015, when we made that decision, the majority of our clients were restaurants. And it made sense at that time to go dig deeper within this industry, instead of trying to learn a little bit of everybody else. And yeah, just do some really, really good work. And that's where we decided to go through that path.

Ken Burgin:

I think you'll probably share more of your experiences, because I know you're a man who always keeps experimenting and learning what works better and what works less well, and kind of keeps following that path.

What we've got first, I asked Mark to just dive straight into content. Mark's got 14 different content ideas, which I think you'll be able to kind of build on in all sorts of different ways. Let's look at the first couple Mark. And this is where I'd love to get questions and comments from people as well, because I would like to handle comments and questions as we go along. Let's not leave them until the end.

And first up Mark, on the left, you've got mix it up, people, food, interior, exterior. Even exteriors, it's funny, a lot of places, all you see is beautiful plates of food, and they live in a nice area, or there might be a nice park nearby, but they sometimes forget to kind of broaden it out a little bit. Any tips there Mark, on the first one?

Mark Khoder:

Well, this is a very important point, because what we've learned from our clients, in our work is, sometimes the point and the friction from turning a like or a fan to a conversion and a sale, most of the time they want to see, "How does this venue look like? Okay, I like the food. It looks good. It looks amazing." Whatever, but then, "How does this venue look like?" I don't want to rock up there and place look poor, or weird. So when we start mixing it and say, "Hey, this is the interior, this is the exterior, this is the food, this is the people behind the place." All of these things drive to finalising and completing a conversion. They're all related. And that's why-

Ken Burgin:

Yeah, so on the right-hand side, special dishes, it kind makes sense. Now, why have you got two different images here? Well, the right-hand one's a video, and the left-hand one's just an image.

There are 14 ideas here. But if you dive into what we're trying to say in here, you'll easily end up with 100-plus different ideas in terms of how you could generate content, even if you have a menu of five items.

Mark Khoder:

Even if you have one item, there is a tonne of things you can do. What we're looking at here, all right, we have the skewers, how can we promote this promotion in different ways? That's how we look at it. Okay, so we could create collection of images and use that to promote this promotion in one post. We could create a poster with text overlay, like the one on the left. We could create a video like the one on the right. You could create a motion graphic. You could create a cinemagraph.

Ken Burgin:

A motiongraph and a cinemagraph, what are they?

Mark Khoder:

A motiongraph is pretty much a video, but a video you technically put together using a software or an app. You could find motion graphic apps on the App Store or Play Store, Google Play. You just have to search some using those keywords, motion graphics, and you'll find a few apps around that.

You'll also look for cinemagraph. Cinemagraph is pretty much, it's a still image, but there is one element of this image is moving. Okay? It could be the smoke. And you'd use a cinemagraph app to create that. Obviously, at the agency we use advanced software to create whatever we need to create. But there are apps that you could use and create those forms of content and formats.

Even right here, on the left side in one, we're talking about different types of content that you create. On the right side, different formats. And then all the sudden, "Oh okay, now I'm getting this."

Ken Burgin:

Right. And now I've got one or two posts a week for the next six or eight weeks probably, just from that. Let's have a look at the next ones you've got here. Now, when we talked before, I was interested why you said in number three, to post about your bestselling items, but that sells anyway. Why wouldn't I try and post, talk about something that is, I want to sell more, one of the less successful ones?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, very good question. Most of the time when we speak to potential clients and they're trying to come on board, and they haven't done any marketing, or any advertising, or anything like that, they say, "You know what? These are our bestselling items. These are not selling. What can we do about that?"

And my first impression, why don't we go and sell more of what's selling already? Because it's an easy sell and you haven't even done marketing or advertising around what's selling already. So you could go, and you probably can double your sales just around that task. Yes, sure, we could try to do something with the items that they're not moving. But they're going to, after a while, it's going to prove to you that these items, trying to promote and advertise these items, one, waste of time, one is a waste of effort, waste of energy-

Ken Burgin:

Yeah, it's almost like we're feeling sorry for certain dishes, and it's not really an appropriate emotion is it?

Mark Khoder:

Yeah, and to be honest, I might get a little bit technical here. It's something that, a term that I would like you to look up, it's called the TURF analysis.

T-U-R-F, yes. With the TURF analysis, big brands use it to identify what should stay on the menu and what should go away, and what they should introduce, what they shouldn't introduce, what they should advertise and what they shouldn't advertise. And that's based on what we've just spoken already. They kind of identify stuff they're more likely to sell or more likely to appeal to people, and then exclude the stuff that might not sell or it's not selling at all. That's what they do.

Ken Burgin:

One of the issues that came up for people was frequency. How do I keep up? And already I think people are getting ideas, "Wow, 14 ways, or 10 different ways to do chicken skewers." But if we're starting to increase our frequency, let's say we're increasing to once a day instead of twice a week, we actually could put the neglected ones, or the ones we feel sorry for, maybe once a fortnight or something like that, because we're doing a lot more of everything, aren't we?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, the big idea behind the kitchen scenes, or creating content from the kitchen, is showing the authenticity of the menu. It's nothing that you're opening up bags with scissors and dropping things in the fryer. You're not.

I heard a term yesterday, they call them chefs with scissors. For every restaurant that wants to showcase authenticity and that they truly put a lot of love and a lot of deep work into it, you do want to showcase what's going on the kitchen. Either plating food items, or prepping food and so on. Even we sometimes ask clients to move some setups right next to a window and try to get the natural light culminating the scene so you can get the true colour of what you're trying to showcase.

Ken Burgin:

Fluorescent lights in the kitchen are pretty brutal aren't they.

Mark Khoder:

Yes, we call it the hospital lights. If you can move your prep around one dish, or two dishes, to somewhere where there is good natural light, where you can really showcase the true colour of that dish when you're plating it, you'll probably sell more, and you'll get better response, better quality than your competition.

Ken Burgin:

I guess this sort of relates to number five as well... How simple is it to just get your phone, and put it on video, and watch the pasta being extruded or something like that? People are endlessly fascinated by that aren't they?

Mark Khoder:

Okay. This is next example is using the same topic in different formats. As I mentioned, you could be motion graphics, cinemagraphs, collections of images. The one on the left, this is a motion graphic. The one on the right is just a collection post. And you can see there is an arrow on that image. When you click on that, you can see the next, and the next image, and so on.

But again, it's just another, this is a new way of ... More ways to talk about the same topic. And not only, so you'll be doing that with your bottomless brunches, your bestselling dishes, your events. If you're trying to boost your functions, you will try to create assets around your functions, posts with collection of images, one image post, motion graphic, video slideshow. And you'll use one of those every week. And that's just about functions. Then you will rinse and repeat about different topics within your business.

Ken Burgin:

Now, number seven, you are talking about Instagram here. The objective of this, a lot of people use Instagram today as a visual menu. They go, they look at the drink, or a cocktail or whatever, and say, "Oh, I would like to order this." However, a lot of restaurants, they post food, but they don't say what it is. They'll just put a generic caption. Then all the sudden, I can't order what I'm looking at or I don't know what I'm looking at anymore. Then I've got to ask the waiter. And a lot of people, they're too embarrassed, or they don't like talking to waitresses or waiters, they just want to make their own decisions.

Mark Khoder:

Be descriptive. Add the name of the dish, turn your Instagram into a visual menu, on top of all the other things that we've discussed in terms of interior, exterior and so on. And then you'll notice, you will have increase in sales when you are being descriptive.

Ken Burgin:

Mark, you're really getting into menu marketing here too. It's all of related, because I always say with menus, people have got to be able to pronounce everything too. If it's some Italian, or Lebanese, or Greek dish or something like that, make it easy, because most people don't speak those languages.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, so user-generated content on number eight on the left. This is something I've often seen mentioned, so what's the etiquette with this sort of thing when we see cool photos that people have made?

Mark Khoder:

User-generated content is probably one of the most successful forms of content you could use. One is, they've already done the work for you. Two, when you do put it up and share it, tag them, they get all excited, and they may tag their friends and family and say, "Hey, it's time to go back in." That's that.

The other thing is, when users are generating content of your concept, or your place, or your operation, they usually have, they communicate their perspective as a customer, not the way that you look at it as a business owner. And what it does, it converts people into customers. You notice that user-generated content, it converts people when they look at it on your account. Use that as much as you can. Very, very important.

Ken Burgin:

The middle one, you're suggesting we take photos of the Uber driving arriving, or our pizza motorbikes, or this sort of thing?

Mark Khoder:

Yes. I can't count the times when we are doing a debriefing a client, and we discover services or products we've never ever seen before. Not on their website, not on their social, nowhere, even though that we've been trying to research the place before we even move to strategy and so on. And all the sudden, "Why we're not talking about this? Why we're not talking about that?" So don't discount, try to create content, and advertising, and marketing messages around all the drivers that's running your business. Do not discount-

Ken Burgin:

Nice. There's a place in Newtown in Sydney, an Italian place, and they've had to move all their delivery people around the back there, because there'd be half a dozen at a time. And I mean, wow, what an image of busy and popular.

Mark Khoder:

And this guy, he is a bit hyperactive. As you can see there's a chicken costume in there, because it's a chicken shop, and that's what he ended up doing.

Ken Burgin:

Function rooms and spaces, I have to say, I see a lot of very boring pictures taken of spaces. I think the worst sing is when you see all the wine glasses turned upside down, but that's not the case in this photo. But you've got the empty room, immaculate, ready for people to arrive. What's your thoughts on rooms full of happy people? Should we use those as well? Do we need permission from everyone?

Mark Khoder:

Use all of them. Use all ... That's again, different format, different ways of getting content and marketing. You'll want to show an empty room, so leave the imagination to the customer and what they could do with it. Then showcase it in action, and show, "Hey, this is an existing, this is a recent function that we did here." Then yes, don't just do one thing and say, "Oh, it's not working." Do all sort of things. Showcase it when it's empty, showcase it when it's full. Then create videos, and images, and all sorts of different formats. One of them is going to click and generate a breakthrough of inquiries, it's just ... You know?

Ken Burgin:

So just say I'm promoting my function room, and I've got the empty room, and I might have another format with the tablecloths, and then I've got the 21st birthday, I've got the 60th birthday-

Ken Burgin:

How do I test? Is it just the likes that's going to tell me which one's most successful? How do I test which is best?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, again, we've done that so many times. One thing that you want to look for is an impression, level one of identification is likes and comments. If you start getting likes and comments on one thing more than the other format, or the other variations, you know that's working.

However, we have also noticed sometimes it's not the case. Sometimes you won't get likes or comments, but you'll still get a lot of inquiries. If you're getting inquiries related, and let's say you're pushing a christening ad, and then a birthdays ad, and something else, but then all the sudden you've noticed that you're getting a lot of christening kind of inquires, then you'll know, "Okay, the christening ad is working and most likely appealing to the christening audience. Why don't we try to create more advertising around that?"

Ken Burgin:

Okay, so that's the signal to actually double down? I guess it's like you said with the food menu, to promote your most popular item, if something's working, double down and do more of it. Don't sort of thing, "Oh my God, we better promote the one that no-one's ringing about." It's just-

Ken Burgin:

But we better jump onto our next slide here. And would like to say Mark, one of my brothers is a photographer who has done a lot of food, and he said buffets are sometimes the most difficult things to make look attractive. But I think that's not bad, those two photos there as well. Yeah, so this is the catering side. This is another arm of the business maybe people don't realise.

Mark Khoder:

That's right. Look, a good thing to point out here is, think as a journalist. Sometimes you don't need to be a professional photographer and make sure that the photo looks cinematic to get results. If you already have an audience, and all the sudden you've started promoting that you do catering, it does not need to look like state of art photography. Just let them know about what you're doing. And people that love your food, love your service, love your concept and that believe in you, all the sudden they're going, "Oh, I've got a corporate function coming up." Or, "I've got a birthday." Or whatever. Just talk about it, and do not procrastinate or get stuck. Just do it and see what happens- Perfection's the enemy of progress.

Mark Khoder:

I can tell you now that on Instagram, up to two posts a day should be perfect. One is just enough. Any less than that is too low, okay?

Ken Burgin:

And I can hear a few people sucking in their breath thinking, "Oh my God, twice a day." But you've already given us some formulas to double and triple the number of images we're creating as well.

Mark Khoder:

And you know what Ken, I should mention that, that people get scared that, "Oh, if I post more than once a day, or more than twice a week, my reach will go down per post." Or so on. Your reach is like zero-point-something percent. And the bigger the account, the less reach you will get from both platforms, Instagram, Facebook and so on. It doesn't matter.

Where the money is, when you start doing paid advertising people will click through. They want to have a look at your account, and the more stuff that you have there, the more you give an idea to the customer of what's going on within your operations. It's not really a concern if you post once or twice, that's not a big deal.

Ken Burgin:

Now in the middle slide you're quoting happy reviews. I love that. This would be basically finding your Google Reviews, or your Facebook Reviews, or I guess your comments on Instagram, wherever, and copy and paste. Now, doing graphics like this, is this using something like Canva? Or how would you generate this kind of thing?

Mark Khoder:

You could definitely use Canva. Canva would be absolutely perfect for something like that. And again, share reviews, let people know what other people are saying. And hand pick what reviews you want to share, reviews that actually represent your brand, using customer feedback.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, is there a permission question here? Like a review from Hailey F. there, do we need to check in with Hailey, or do we just kind of assume that she's out there-

Mark Khoder:

It's already public.

Ken Burgin:

Great, that's the answer I wanted. Good, okay. Now, number 13, zoomed-out shots, zoomed-in shots, what's different here that you're talking about?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, this is where we talk about action shots, zoomed-in shots, zoomed-out shots, and that's again a different format. Let's say you're looking at a pizza right from the top and you're trying to shoot that pizza. If we want to create at least three different shots out of this pizza, I probably would do one from the top, zoomed out, the whole pizza is sitting inside the frame. I'd probably zoom in, cut the pizza in half, shoot that again, zoomed-in shot. I might get someone to grab a slice, shoot that, someone grabbing a slice of that pizza. I might shoot the pizza from the side, and then all the sudden, you have four or five different shots that you could use the pizza. I haven't even gone to stop motion.

Stop motion, you could do different shots while people removing slices from the pizza. Then you'd use a software that could create a slideshow app or something like that. Put those images together and all the sudden you've created a stop-motion format.

Ken Burgin:

The juice dripping down my chin. A questions: should you video and photograph in portrait, or landscape, or square? Especially video I think is the question here, because photographing we can all crop it anyway, but what's the video story Mark?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, video or photos, you want to try ... Well, when it gets to video, you could do vertical and square. If you're using a DSLR camera, you can crop the video using an app or something, to square, and you could use that. Using a square is definitely much better than using landscape, because it fills more screen space than a landscape. When you shoot using vertical, you probably could use your DSLR camera, or a recent phone camera, because they can get some really good quality using a phone, and can use vertical 100%. Vertical, square, doesn't matter if it's an image or a video, that's the recommended for social.

Ken Burgin:

I guess really, given what phones can do now, maybe if you're going to spending an hour doing something, maybe do several formats for the same ... The woman eating the pizza here, the next time she eats another slice we do a square, or horizontal or something. Or if we're doing vertical, we think about what's in that central square if we're going to crop it down. And I know you can do that sort of video editing in Canva-

Mark Khoder:

After a while, we trained ourselves, so when we're taking the shot, we know exactly what we're going to do with it on the spot. But when you're doing it, and you're not trained yet, then you might want to start experimenting. And don't worry, because you can always crop. You can always crop.

Ken Burgin:

If you're serious about social media, these are skills that either you or someone in your team needs to actually have in your tool belt now.

            A quick question here from Rowan about what app was that, Canva? Rowan, see canva.com. And another question here, what time should we post? Mark, you've upped us to twice a day, or at least once a day, what time?

Mark Khoder:

Well, it depends on your venue. If you're a breakfast venue, you want to be posting around 7:00 A.M. before lunch. The second post will be before brunch or lunch, maybe around 10:00, 11:00 A.M. If it's a dinner venue, you probably want to be posting twice, one around 3:00 P.M. and another one at 5:00 P.M.

What we've noticed, if the venue is open for dinner and they also do takeaway, the 5:00 P.M. post is, they actually work, they could cause someone to pick up the phone and order.

Ken Burgin:

Let’s talk about at types of ads, and then we're going to look at some examples you've given us, and which ones work better, and which ones don't. I might not go into too much detail here, but you've sort of reminded us I think, sometimes the only ads we might be doing is menu ads or special ads. But the concept or brand-awareness ad-

Mark Khoder:

Yes, this is a very important topic, because again, all the time I see a data, not doing advertising, and if they are doing advertising, it'll be about one thing. And then they'll say, "But we're not getting enough functions. We're not selling out events. We're not selling enough of our special, and so on." We're like, "But you don't have any advertising about any of the stuff that you just mentioned."

What we believe is, work out a budget, then split that budget on all of those topics, and create advertising around all those topics, and turn on the advertising around those topics 24/7. But don't, let's say if you're spending $30 a day, or $50 a day, and you're pushing just that one thing or two things, why don't you split that ad budget for all of those topics? Concept advertising, a new menu or best selling items, events, functions, the specials like chef's specials, doesn't haven't to be a discount even, offers. Yeah, so if you had a campaign for every single one of those, and you also had within that campaign, advertising promoting that topic in different formats, so just you're doing like A/B testing and so on-

Ken Burgin:

I think what you're telling us too is, at the beginning when people were panicking about twice a day and all that, suddenly, especially if we put a calendar together, it might be a simple Google spreadsheet or something like that, where Monday we do this type of ad, Tuesday we do this, suddenly the calendar can actually take the pressure off, because we realise we just rinse and repeat every 10 days or two weeks or something.

Mark Khoder:

Now Facebook's trying to hide that number, but the beauty of that, when we get people to like the page, or follow the page, we can create advertising to those people are following the page later on. You'll be able to create targeted marketing and advertising for those that already raised hands and they're interested in your business. That's if you have, it's perfect to use when you don't have a large database of customers, when you're using email marketing and so on. This is just another way of doing it.

Ken Burgin:

There's a question about on-the-spot specials for quiet days. Let's say suddenly it's been a wet week or something like that, what's something that we could roll out kind of urgently?

Mark Khoder:

We usually get that from some clients, not so much on quiet days, more for the lockdowns that we've had throughout the last year. And so we've had to create some advertising on the go in terms of, "Hey, the rules have changed, can't do any dine-in, it's takeaway only. What are we going to do?" And we might come up with an offer on the spot, go in, adjust your online ordering system, or your point-of-sale system. And then bang, create advertising, promote it, push it, put in ad budget.

The ad budget to reach, you might want to increase your ad budget a bit if you're trying to promote something on the day, for today or for tomorrow.

Ken Burgin:

Mark, question that I've been waiting for, it's finally come in, how much is too much? Can we overdo it? Can we be too much in people's faces?

Mark Khoder:

You're not even scratching the surface, I don't care how much you do. Because look at McDonald's, look at KFC, look at all those big brands. They're on everywhere, TV, and all the social platforms, and advertising 24/7, billions of dollars. When you're doing something and you think you're overdoing it, you're not even scratching the surface.

Mark Khoder:

Okay, so that takes us back to this example of being descriptive. We want people to know what this special is all about. We tried to explain that in the caption itself. And we also tried to explain that in the image itself. What we've noticed, because that was an ad, and usually the Facebook advertising algorithm, they try to push things with less text. Okay?

Even though it removed the rule where if it has 20% text or over, they won't push it, now they would push it, but if they think that there is something more interesting within their database, they'll prefer to push that and put yours on the side.

Yes, so you can see the one on the left was straight to the point, small town special, and that was it. Where the other one had more text in it, it didn't get as much response.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, let's have a look at the next one here. Looks pretty similar to me, what's the difference?

Mark Khoder:

Again, these are too similar, but there's one element that's different. I'm not sure if you guys can pick it up, but we've showed some of the interior with the ad on the left.

And then all the sudden, this ad had more response, because one, people wanted to see, "How does this venue look like? If I'm going to dine here, how does it look like?"

Ken Burgin:

And this one, the cocktail image, why do you think it won, why was it the winner?

Mark Khoder:

Okay, these are principles. You want to test your background, your text, the elements, every single thing that you see here from caption, to copy, to graphics, artwork, backgrounds, food, drinks, test all of that. And what we did here, we tested two different backgrounds. The one on the left, the background obviously was more appealing to people. The one on the right-

Ken Burgin:

With the grey stripes?

Mark Khoder:

Yeah, it's hidden

Ken Burgin:

Really what you're saying is, if we're going to do some simple advertising, we really want to load up two or three options every time as a matter of course because-

Mark Khoder:

Yeah, you don't have to go out of your way too much, just try to test within your capacity.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, so now we're going to jump into photography. And the phone in our pocket is a pretty powerful camera these days, so you've given us a couple, some nice photos here. Were these done professionally, or with a phone, or what's the background for these?

Mark Khoder:

These were done with a DSLR, that's right.

They were done on a restaurant floor, right next to the window. The chef, the first time that we did the photo shoot, he asked why we're not shooting on the tables. When we compared the floor shots and the table shots, he's the one that kept asking, "Can we shoot from the floor please?" Because the food looked so much better. And there was no artificial lighting. There was no supportive lighting from the photographer. All we had was a window, floor and a camera, that's all what we had, and this is the quality that you can get.

Ken Burgin:

Should I just stick with my own photography, or should I organise a professional?

Mark Khoder:

Well look, test, try, if you've got a recent phone, and look for a perfect natural light spot within your business, somewhere where the sun is not hitting it direct, yeah?

Mark Khoder:

If you want to invest with a professional photographer, they're not expensive anymore when it gets to food photography. They're all over the place today.

Ken Burgin:

And so the key thing I would say is to have a shot list and be ready. Again, drawing on my photographer brother, he said, "If they're ready, they'll get 300 photos. If they're not ready-"

Mark Khoder:

These are action shots and closeups. The ones on the left, the two on the left there are closeup action shots. The one on the right, it is an action shot. Again, it's just a different way of creating content. Don't just put the dish there and shoot. Try to replicate what would the customer do? How would they eat this food? And shoot that. Let them imagine, this is you. This is [crosstalk 00:50:03].

Ken Burgin:

Right, so interestingly you've got fingers and forks-

Mark Khoder:

Yeah, if I'm looking at this and I'm the customer, I'm looking at this, I'm like, "This is me. I shall be eating that mussel."

Ken Burgin:

Yeah, mussels are messy things, you need your fingers.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, so you've got a few tips here for photography?

The natural light we've talked about, and 11:00 A.M. is the sweet spot. That's a good reminder, I didn't actually know that. Watch the first and the contrast, okay that makes sense. This first one though, because you mentioned brand before, what are you saying about on-brand theme?

Mark Khoder:

Yes, again, a lot of restaurants on Instagram, when you're looking at their content, they all look like the same.

And the way that you want to make your brand stand out is, you want people, when they look at your content, while they're looking at everyone else, is to identify, "Oh, this is Bird's Nest." Or, "This is X-Y-Z." Or, "This is [Gratti 00:51:08]." Or, "Or this is 825." That's because we're using their brand themes, and colours, and fonts, and logos.

And if you're not using a logo, you probably want to use the overall vibe of how this brand should look like. And usually to do that, you would need to have a brand guide provided to your marketer. That includes your logos, your fonts, your vibe, your colours. And this should be communicated with your photographer so they can follow those guides. Otherwise, any photography that you're doing, it's just going to look like any other restaurant.

Build a photography bank, so when the photographer is there, or when you are creative photography, don't just create what exactly do you need on that day, on that time. Try to create, again, as much as you can within your capacity, within that time. And then you'll definitely, 100% you're going to need it, you're going to use it, or your marketer might need it, the website guy might need it. You might be putting brochures together, or a menu together, or a website together, 100% try to create as much assets as you can.

Ken Burgin:

And if you've got Santa hats in the back cupboard, put them on even though it's March, and now we've got our Christmas photography.

Testing different settings means, let's say, you've just thrown a food spread on the floor and you are shooting, you might move that, try to shoot it somewhere else within the venue. You might want to try the table. You might want to try the fire table. So you might try to do some food styling, then remove the food styling. Try to test different settings.

Ken Burgin:

Right. We've made four different cocktails, let's put them in six different places?

You keep talking about throwing the food on the floor. And you've got number eight example, using the floor again.

Mark Khoder:

The floor. We took some of our best, best, best shots using venue floors. It's absolutely-

Mark Khoder:

To be specific and straight to the point, that a lot of people, they go to webinars and the read things online, and they think, "Oh, I've got to be targeted. I've got to be targeted. I've got to target people using behaviour marketing." And all that sort of stuff. But the thing is, if you're a local restaurant, your audience is already small. And when you start using advanced targeting strategies, and behaviours, or interests, or whatever, it cuts your audience to a very narrow bucket.

What we're saying is, when you come in with different advertising campaigns, like we've mentioned in the past slides, try not to go after a specific target market or specific demographics, try to target everybody in the area, and let the customer raise hand and say, "Oh, I'm interested. Check this out. How come I haven't seen this before?"

The Facebook algorithm will do that automatically based on what they're doing without you needing to do anything technical-

The other important thing is to not stop advertising. Don't stop it. All the sudden, you're running a campaign, you turn it off for two, three months, you've just lost everything that you've just built within those people's minds, you've just gone off on top of mind. You want to be on top of their mind 24/7.

Make sure you have advertising always on. Put forward thinking within your strategy, within your calendar. What am I doing the next months? And the month after, and the month after? Create assets for those and be ready. Do not turn off your advertising because you will just lose all the money that you-

Ken Burgin:

A challenge for the small-business operator who's wearing all these different hats, and I guess as a plug for you, there's a strong case for having an agency or a specialist who will post twice a day for the next 12 months. Because they're not being distracted by staff problems or something else.

A great question's come in from Bill. How do you promote great customer service?

Mark Khoder:

You could share your customer reviews. That's one.

Don't take my word for it, look what people are saying.

And, great customer service today is expected, okay?

Ken Burgin:

Right. That's the price of being in business.

Ken Burgin:

Okay, so your third part of your advertising formula here is, can you explain this?

Mark Khoder:

Get recognised by customers. Again, like we were saying before, you want people, when they see your content or advertising, you want them to be able to identify your brand from everybody else. Always try to put something in there that will help people to identify, this is you. Either a logo, or colours, or vibe, or something.

Ken Burgin:

It's such a simple point, but the number of places that don't have a logo, they've got a name, but there's no strong graphic identity.

Ken Burgin:

How is that different to this fourth element, the brand links?

Mark Khoder:

This just gets deeper into it. If you have jingles, use them, if you have font types, use them, if you have logos, use them, if you have colours, and colour pallettes, and all of that sort of stuff, visual and verbal, use all of that within your ... Why? Because the colour could trigger say, "Oh, this is Gratti." The jingle, the golden arches that McDonald's uses all the time. It's about repeating consistently..

Mark Khoder:

When you get a client and they say, "Oh, we're a family restaurant. How do we promote ourselves? We're a family restaurant." This is what McDonald's does, say, "Okay ..." They did research, obviously advanced research strategies that have gone in every single way you could think of that we're not going to go over here today. But you could start with people reviews on all the platforms that you have. And then scan their reviews, and find out repetitive terms that they're using around your brand, and then use those and create captions, content, marketing messages and advertising around those terms. Because those are the terms that people are relating to your brand, okay?

Mark Khoder:

This is one strategy you could use. The other strategy, you could survey your customers, either through a physical form, or through an email marketing survey, and try to learn more about what terms or what keywords relate more to the brand.

Ken Burgin:

Right, and I think given that McDonald's has done the research for us, even if we for our own individual business took those, there's about eight different circles there, and thought about, "Okay, what's the content? What's the ..." That we can create around all those things, even the social investment one. We make all these donations locally, where's the photos of presenting the check, or going to the fun run, or all those sorts of things?

Ken Burgin:

And coming back to that point about how much is too much, when there's variety, a rich variety like this, the only thing being repeated is your name really, isn't it? There's so many different kind of interesting messages. And you'll see from the clicks, and the likes, and the comments, which ones resonate more powerfully than others.

Mark Khoder:

The important thing is, McDonald's continues repeating those messages for 50 years plus. They keep doing it. And they keep doing it today. They've never overdone it. They know that they're maintaining those memory structures in their people's minds. As soon as they drop it off, it drops from their customer's mind.

Mark Khoder:

Talk about something compelling that makes sense to your business, and to your operation, put it out there and talk about it.

In this case, this client invented the Guinness World Record with their 154-cheese pizza. Sure, let's create advertising about that, and let's try to push it in every single way possible, 100%. Even the next example is they've won an aware, the best pizzeria in Oceania, 100% let's create advertising and marketing, and let's talk about that in every single way that we can because it's relevant, it's on brand, and it talks to their audience. We can talk about that.

Just try to discount the stuff or take away the stuff that is not really important or it doesn't really trigger anybody's interest. You know?

Ken Burgin:

And sometimes we need an outsider to identify these things too. We're so close to our own business-

Ken Burgin:

I'm sure you've done that many times. People haven't been talking about some fascinating part of their business, and you come in and notice it.

Mark, any last thoughts on, what should people be doing in the next few days you think, if they want to really up their game?

Mark Khoder:

Well, we know that because of the social distancing rules, and the COVID is, we're still in a COVID-normal situation, obviously whatever you think you did in 2020 or 2019, you'd want to double, and triple, or quadruple your efforts, in terms of energy, in terms of investment, in terms of ideas. Why? Because we've even had reports from McDonald's and so on, they've actually doubled their advertising budget in 2021 to recover what happened to them during 2020.

That's my recommendation is, take your marketing very seriously. And it doesn't matter how serious you're taking it, or you might take it, it's still not scratching the surface.

Ken Burgin:

Before we say goodbye to everyone. Nikki Smith, you were helping ot run the webinar, what were you picking up?

Nikki Smith:

I think the thing I really got out of it was that you can take one picture or one item, and make a ton of different posts just around that one thing. It takes away the panic about creating content.