Narrative: Small restaurant owners are often not aware of the scope of the market around them and even those that consider themselves successful have a very small business relative to the size of the opportunity. The first thing we wanted to do was to make restaurant owners aware of the size and demographics of the market available to them. The challenge was not just the data but more importantly how to package and present this in a manner that is easy to comprehend, lights a bulb and compels the businesses to take action!

Solution: We decided to create a “no-signup” onboarding experience that pulled new users in by simply asking them to enter their restaurant name in return for quick insight into the market opportunity around them. Using data from 3rd party APIs, we designed a custom map that allows owners to view the overall size of the market, number of competing restaurants and key audience demographics residing within their coverage area. Next, we gave them a peek into how they can engage their preferred audience segments using targeted content across various channels.

Narrative: Each restaurant can have a different marketing goal. A newly launched unit may benefit by having more and more people being aware of their brand. Other restaurants may be looking to grow an active fan base through social media platforms. And some may be looking to grow their online orders or events bookings through regular emails to existing customers. For this reason, a one-size-fits-all approach will not be able to drive the maximum result required.

Solution: For each objective, we designed a uniquely tailored experience that walks restaurant owners through a step-by-step approach to get there. They typically do not understand marketing terminology and despise having to deal with complex workflows, so each workflow was broken down into a series of simple steps, allowing users to see their progress and pause, save or resume at any given point of time.

Narrative: Content remains the single most critical element of any online communication strategy. Posting on social media is a great way to build engagement provided it is done consistently and content is diverse. However due to low penetration of organic social media, restaurants need to go beyond and look to adapt their messaging for various paid channels. Even with their regular loyal customers, a proactive and personalized communication plan is a must to keep them engaged with new promotions and offers. All of this work puts a lot of pressure on small restaurant owners to produce high-quality and unique content on-goingly.

Solution: Having managed thousands of campaigns for restaurants, the team behind Byte Ready was as well positioned as anyone else in the industry to build the first-of-its-kind content ecosystem by leveraging best creative practices, templates and formats. For social media calendars, a database of 100,000 posts were tagged for cuisine, buckets and types so that the platform could generate a personalized calendar automatically based on restaurant’s cuisine, location and preferences. Finally, robust personalization tools allow users to completely replace a post with an alternative, swap between two posts or simply edit a caption and image.

Narrative: When it comes to marketing online, targeting a broad group of people might sound logical, but the more people brands try to appeal to, the more money they end up spending and the more diluted the value proposition becomes. Anyone and their uncle can turn on Facebook ads, but defining and building the right target audience that will want what the restaurant’s offering requires both gut instinct as well as testing.

Solution: Whether they are looking to reach and acquire new audiences or engage existing ones to return, we designed interactive tools to let them define what kind of users should be targeted with the marketing campaign. Only when they know what their target customers look like, they can hope to build sustainable engagement and ROI for the marketing dollars spent on the platform.

Narrative: The average number of people who see posts on social media that aren’t backed by ad dollars has been declining with all platforms now pretty much operating on “Pay-to-Play” model for brands. Facebook allows brands to view expected reach and increase exposure by boosting posts, but only one at a time.

Solution: We made it easy for users to boost one or more upcoming posts right after scheduling or at any time till (or even after) they are published. Whether they are looking to reach new audiences or engage existing ones to return, the tool gave them easy ways to target broad or precise audiences.

Narrative: Restaurant owners are not savvy marketers and do not extract much value in ogling at charts and graphs from marketing platforms who have erected walled gardens around them making data flow between each other awkward and inconsistent.

Solution: We opted for simple messaging and info-graphics in place of charts to make it easy to understand the wholesome impact marketing or social media is having on their key objectives, whether they are on track as measured through KPIs and get smart recommendations for altering tactics to get back on track if they are falling behind.

Narrative: For any restaurant, its online reputation is critical to maintain! They have to have an ear on the ground at all times and constantly look out for any incoming comment. As soon as they spot one, they must take time to respond to each new review, whether it’s a complaint or a compliment. Knowing all they have to squeeze in each day, a lot of issues fall through the cracks often.

Solution: We designed a virtual “Inbox” that automatically consolidates all complaints, compliments and feedback in one place and helps restaurant owners craft suitable responses using a series of pre-populated recommendations based on the tone of the message.

Narrative: Finally, after a social media calendar is published or marketing campaign is launched, restaurant owners often get too busy to come back to track, update or optimize their plans. That’s a big opportunity missed not only for the restaurant owners, but also for the platform to benefit from on-going engagement.

Solution: During discovery, we found out that while owners hate to take out time to deal with specifics, they are always excited to see high quality work. And so the idea for a curated collection of trending social media and marketing content from across the world of food and dining, all in one spot, was created. Restaurant owners can always come back to check what’s new. And if they’re truly inspired, they can make and publish new content of their own instead of starting from scratch.