Analysis

Introduction

Research into topics surrounding the questions of social media platforms as marketing tools can be addressed from a variety of angles. The team focused on the target demographic for Fishers Test Kitchen, the most productive platforms for food marketing, marketing content, tactics and planning, and events that can be held at the Fishers Test Kitchen. The following analysis addresses the search process and findings.

Section I: The Effectiveness of Social Media for Marketing to Young Adults (Millenials/ Gen-Z)

Building Relationships with Younger Audiences- Mack

Businesses can build relationships with younger audiences by reaching out to them during the hours they invest in social media each week. Social media is a big part of many people’s lives and it should be a big part of businesses trying to connect with their audience. According to a local study, about 75% of adults spend about 1 - 5 hours on social media every day, with Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube being the most used social media. This data is consistent with what Michael Del Gigante found; he is an alumnus of Pratt Institute and the founder of MDG Advertising, "Americans spend an average of 23.6 hours online every week, and most of that time is spent on social media accounts... YouTube is tops: 73 percent, Facebook ranks second, with 68 percent. Other sites included in survey data include Instagram (35 percent), Pinterest (29 percent), Snapchat (27 percent), and LinkedIn (25 percent). The last place belongs to Twitter, with 24 percent of consumers spending time on the site" (2018). It was also reported in the survey that about 61% of people follow food-related social media. With young millennials and gen z’ers using social media so often, it is a good place to subtly advertise to the younger generation and get your word about your restaurant and events you are holding out to your audience. It is important to have links to websites, videos, and pictures that represent your restaurant and how you want your audience to see it.

Using Food Photography to Target Your Audience - Mack

Food photography and food videos are a big part of advertising and getting the younger interested in what they are seeing. According to Helen Zhang, director of the media strategy at LFB Media Group, “There are people who decide on where they want to go out to eat by their Instagram feed, and that’s a fact that we in the hospitality industry just cannot ignore.” It is important for food photography and interesting videos with food are posted on social media for the world to see. People are using these things just to make decisions on where to go eat and what to order when they are there. While social media is a platform in which businesses can build relationships with their audience, the relationship can be built even stronger with appealing food photography and food videos. Restaurants usually see success in getting people to come to eat at their restaurant when they have good photography for their food.

Utilizing Instagram as a Platform- Crysta

We sought to narrow the social media marketing plan across a specific platform according to the target market of our business partner. We conducted a local study through various social media platforms and distributed a survey. In order to learn if a social media marketing strategy would produce the expected results, we asked users the amount of time they spend on social media per day in order for us to observe the likelihood of our strategy’s success. It was revealed that 3 out of 4 participants use social media an average of 1 to 5 hours a day. With this amount of activity on social media, a marketing strategy that relies solely on the use of social media would be extremely effective. Pairing this with our focused content would allow our business partner to reach the target market. Using social media as a marketing tool instead of just a social space will allow us to reach a younger audience and spread the word faster than ever before.

In order to accurately recommend a platform, we asked our respondents to choose their most frequently used from a list of popular social media sites. We found that for our specific market, young business professionals, 6 out of 10 used Twitter and Instagram above all others. In our survey, we received responses that match this statement. 32.1% of people we surveyed used Instagram the most and 28.4% use Twitter the most. This means that we should focus our plan utilizing the best aspects of these platforms and find one that will be most effective with our partnered business.

Another study conducted by Edward Pollitt at B&T Weekly shows that seventy percent of GenZers use Instagram religiously. The former social media giant (Facebook) is still popular among older populations, but for Gen Zers it is a different story. There has been a significant decrease in Facebook activity with our GenZ audience, only about thirty -six percent are still active on the site. This shows that when marketing to the younger audience it must be taken into account the difference in internet activity when it comes to social media. This led to the recommendation to use Instagram as the primary stage for our social media marketing plan.

Fishers Test Kitchen, the business we are partnered with, would be better suited with a platform that concentrates on visual media such as pictures and video. This would allow our target market to see the products (food and beverages) that are produced and the activities that go on. Bringing the social aspect of social media to life in a new atmosphere.

What Content to Cultivate - Nicole

Think of the creative foodie Instagram posts you see daily in your feed. The restaurant check-ins on Facebook and the contests on Twitter. That engagement is how restaurants are using social media channels to connect with younger audiences and we sought to find ways to improve the Fishers Test Kitchen’s engagements.

Utilizing social media to attract a younger audience is the main source of income for restaurants in this current time period. Within the next decade, social media will be the main source for people when deciding what they eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We found that Instagram is used the most by restaurants to show off photos of their food and use food hashtags to attract that younger audience. Wall Street Journal conducted a survey in large cities like Chicago and New York and found that through social media targeting, food halls are becoming a large marketplace. Having a strong social media presence with a proactive campaign is the key to running a successful business.

In order to properly gain that younger audience, the restaurant needs to know how to utilize all of their social media resources. That being said, things like high-resolution photos, creative captions, and contests on Instagram have drawn the most attention. Visual content is superior to any other form of content. It’s easier to absorb, stays in mind, and, in the case of food, holds the appetite. Food is visual. Posting frequently so viewers see the content often is another draw in. Since more than 371 million posts on Instagram are tagged “food”, social media is a huge platform for restaurants and companies to gain a bigger following. According to a Sprout Social Index, 75% of people purchased a product because they saw it on social media. Of that percentage, 60.7% need to see a post 2-4 times from the company before making a purchase.

To grow a social media account and learn from the process, we found the best way to interact with restaurant go-ers is through receiving reviews from people who have dined in. Receiving feedback from others via social media comments has recently become a big approach in how some restaurants are being run. Keeping up with things like Yelp and the comment section of an Instagram post not only makes the restaurant interactive with the younger audience, but it shows they care for them. People traveling to other cities often ask on social media for restaurant recommendations which help build a network outside of the restaurant's original city.

Since being a fairly new restaurant concept, Fishers Test Kitchen works to make their social media an inviting place for the 16-20-year-olds. Through the survey we sent out, our responses show ages 18-23 use social media the most.

Section II: The Importance of Planning and Strategizing for Social Media

How to Plan Out Your Social Media - Christina

Social media has taken over the world as we know it. Our findings in Foodservice Marketing Trends in the U.S. show that 74% of adults are using social media on a regular basis (2015). Starting up a social media account is the easiest part. When planning your social media you want to start with some basics. First, you want one email that you will use for all platforms. When signing up for social media business accounts, you will attach your business' email. The reason for this is, when you get messages they will go back to one email and you do not have to search through several different emails.

Once you have your accounts set up, it is not time to just start mass posting, you need to have a plan intact. Restaurants need to use the time they have before opening to start getting evergreen content. Evergreen content is photos and videos you have saved for social media rainy days. Before opening, get your chef to cook your most popular dishes and present them on a pretty plate, get the dishes in a nice background, and take good pictures with a high-quality camera. You can create a lot of content out of these photos. Have a photoshoot with your staff and chefs. All of these things are great evergreen content to have before opening.

The next thing you will want to do is find a platform to use that will hold a content calendar. Your content calendar will hold months of planning on your social media platforms. If you're holding events or there are special holidays you want to plan in advance for, they will all live on this calendar. There are a few tools you can use when hosting a content calendar, such as a simple Google calendar, Smartsheet, or Post Planner.

Lastly, you’ll want to find a platform that will post your scheduled posts. Sprout Social and Hootsuite are some of the most popular social media planning tools. You can draft posts and schedule for certain days and times and they will automatically post for you. After posting for a few weeks make sure to look over your analytics to see what days and times are best for you to be posting so that you can apply that to your future posts.

Starting your business accounts is exciting and easy to start up, but you have to make sure to plan and keep producing more evergreen content so that you do not lose your audience. Don’t get too excited and just mass post and then lose all your ideas in one day. Businesses will start accounts without planning and they will run out of ideas and their following will eventually crumble.

Benefits of Planning Your Social Media Content - Adebola

Businesses need to set goals and create long term plans for their posting strategies and content creation. For the most part as a group, while working with our business partners, we have decided to focus on a specific age group, which are the young adults. We conducted a local study through various social media platforms and distributed a survey. We did this just to check if a social media marketing strategy would give us our expected results. In making an effective social media marketing plan, you need to ask yourself the five W questions (Who, Where, How, What, Why you are planning). Because these would help you know what directions need to be faced for an effective social media marketing plan. These plans could also be used for all intending social media platforms. In the survey that we distributed, we asked questions like the age range of the people who filled the survey. As I mentioned earlier, we targeted a certain demographic. In which the majority of the responses were filled out by young adults.

While a restaurant owner makes social media marketing plans, there is the need to choose social media that fits the restaurant best and supports the mission of this business. We asked which social media platforms they use frequently and how many hours they spend on these platforms. These questions were asked in order to have a knowledge of where our demographic hangs out the most and when to dish out the social media marketing plans. Because while making plans, you have to choose your social media. However, you can only do this when you are considering where the target market hangs out the most, and if social media has the right demographics. Also, you need to plan to devote a particular amount of time to those social platforms and upload quality visual content on food, the restaurant’s space. Interestingly, a large number of these people use Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube.

Certainly, many millennials and Gen Zers who are considered to be the ‘young adults’ are highly connected to technology and the internet. Now, we know the number of hours and platforms which they use most. One of the plans that a restaurant owner can use effectively with their social media for marketing to young adults is to be ready to create a positive representation of your business to this age group, a positive purpose that influences the world. According to a google study titled “it’s lit” stated that teenagers want brands to be “a representation of their values, their expectations of themselves and their peers.”

According to one of the recommendations we made earlier in our group on a loyalty program. This was also asked in the survey we sent out, and 87.3% of these people love loyalty programs. Furthermore, a restaurant owner should be prepared to cultivate brand loyalty and loyalty programs interwoven, by meaningfully interacting with their young adult customers in any way they can, which is rare. Our business partner can host games, competitions, events and ask for ideas and feedback on their food or products and in return with loyalty programs. Our business partner would decide how rewards are earned, which could be by visit, spend, even social media likes. Moreover, some of the plans you need to make is how your social media profiles should be filled. As a business owner, you should try to visit each of your social media profiles and make sure that your profile photos, bio, cover photos, and profile information are all up-to-date, recent and complete. A completed profile shows professionalism, cohesive branding, and a signal to your customers that you’re serious about your business. You then have to be consistent with the visuals you use on your social media platforms. Profile photos on Instagram can be made to match your Facebook profile picture as well as other platforms.

Section III: Translate the Demographic Information Into Physical Bodies in the Test Kitchen - Katy

One of the focus points for our client was how to translate online activity on social media platforms into consistent customers at the Fishers Test Kitchen location. To investigate how this might work we began with peer discussions and by browsing other restaurants and bar social media. It soon became clear that we needed to consider another qualifier- weekends vs weekdays. Weekends seemed to have more consistent traffic while restaurant businesses were working harder for weekday customers. Weekday social media focused on lunch offerings and happy hours, but consistent repeat customers were looking for a repeating event like a trivia night, or a targeted event such as supporting local charities or even a venue for hosting events. This pattern- lunches and happy hours and consistent weeknight events- along with the type of social media posts that support these patterns are where we decided to dig in for the Fishers Test Kitchen.

In the beginning, it was difficult to find peer-reviewed data on the types of events that attract a weeknight crowd. Individual bar trivia companies had statistics on their websites but there was no reference material to support their numbers and observing social media trends were difficult to quantify without parameters. Our local study, however, included a question regarding the types of events that would draw customers out on a weeknight, and that is where we found our answer. In response to a “select all that apply” question, over half of the respondents (58.8%) selected that they would come out for local live music, while happy hour (54.4%) and trivia nights (46.9%) ranked as the second and third most popular options. With this supporting data, collected from the Fishers Test Kitchen target audience (62.6% of those that took the survey fit the target demographic) we are able to add consistent in-house events to our social media marketing strategy.

Conclusion

With this information, we were able to formulate three primary recommendations for Fishers Test Kitchen: the most effective ways to engage the target audience, how to plan impactful content for social media marketing, and how to translate online engagement to in-store customers.