Digital Marketing Assignment: Social Media Marketing Plan of Nesbit Restaurant Essentials

Question

Task: Write a well-structured digital marketing assignment presenting the social media marketing plan (SMMP) of the Nesbit Restaurant Essentials.

Answer

Introduction
As stated in this digital marketing assignment, within the hospitality industry, the Restaurant Equipment Suppliers provides the most eminent service of supplying the kitchen essential equipment to the restaurants consisting of star grade or are of moderate grade. As opined by Alalwan, Rana, Dwivedi&Algharabat(2017), these suppliers of restaurant equipment sell their products and goods through both online service along with brick and mortar and however, keeps it of affordable prices. Thus, the present study highlights the social media marketing plan (SMMP) of the Nesbit Restaurant Essentials regarding its kitchen equipment supply to the restaurants and the relevant aspects of its business.

1. Brief Overview [Brand Summary and Social Media Accounts]

The name of the restaurant equipment supplier company is Nesbit Restaurant Essentials.
The company falls under the hospitality industry as it sells the kitchen equipment and goods to the restaurants and cafes of both high grade and moderate grade with affordable prices. It is one of the leading commercial kitchen essentials supplier companies in Sydney, Australia with supplying over 4000 catering and kitchen products in their local store as well as online websites. The company boasts over 15 years experience in this field along with developing a consistent revenue amount as measured till 2019. Thus, the company supplies ovens, beverage equipment, food warming and holding equipment and the food preparation equipment to the hospitality sectors.

The Porter’s five forces analysis, for knowing the competitive advantage of Nesbit restaurant essentials, is tabulated below:

*Aspect*	*Power*	*Competitive advantage for the company*
Threat of new entry	low to moderate	The entry barrier in the hospitality market of Australia is high, which is a significant competitive advantage for the company
Bargaining power of the buyers	low to moderate	The company deals with both high and medium grade restaurants and provides the unique products at affordable prices and specific premium products at higher rates, which is uncommon for other significant competitors of the company
Bargaining power of the suppliers	moderate to high	supplier provides the company with exclusive and unique products with affordable prices
Threats of substitution	Low	Substitute products to the essential equipments sold by the company is minimal and thus, the competitive advantage in this regard, is high for Nesbit
Degree of rivalry	moderate to high	*Australia* consists of many restaurant equipment supplying companies that provide such equipment at affordable prices, however, the quality of the products might vary, depending on the suppliers of the company

The company wants to achieve the brand awareness with reaching the maximum end users (restaurants) within the hospitality industry which will help Nesbit Restaurant Essential to achieve a market lead. As viewed by Alves, Fernandes&Raposo(2016) the company will get directly connected with the audience by creating organic content and understanding the requirements of both pose and medium grade restaurants. Thus, this helps in building the brand image within the Australian Hospitality Sector.

The main contribution of Social Media Marketing is to create the brand Loyalty for Nesbit Restaurant Essentials, as it helps the company to get engaged with the end consumer and contributes in building the effective customer relationship. As stated by Felix, Rauschnabel&Hinsch (2017), this sets the company apart from competition by showing the audience the way the brand is different from others and reinforcing that Nesbit Restaurant Essentials cares for the needs of its consumers.

2. Audit you social media platform performances

*Metric*	*Sentiment*	*Reach*	*Company posts*	*Feedback*	*Average response time for feedback*
*Facebook*	It provides the positive and negative along with neutral sentiment of the customers about the company	It helps in reaching a vast range of customers in national and global context as each and every restaurant grade creates account *facebook* for promotions.	The company has posted more than 100 posts in the account yearly.	The customers provide positive feedback about the efficient service of the company and also certain negative feedbacks are given in the area where the company is still lacking.	The company responds to both the feedback within 18-24 hours of the feedback being posted.
*Twitter*	It provides neutral sentiment of the customers for the company as the company is not that active in this account.	The account helps in reaching limited customers as it networks the ideas and topic and call for action is to just follow.	The company had merely 10-15 posts in this account yearly just to provide their ideas and information to the consumer following them	The feedback received from this account is neutral but short as it limit to 140 characters per tweet.	The company responds within 36-48 hours.
*Instagram*	It is more popular among the younger folks and thus, the entrepreneurs of 25-30 age provide their negative and positive sentiment about the company.	It reaches the wide range of young entrepreneurs who created accounts for the restaurant promotions.	The company posts their product photos and has posted nearly 50 posts or above yearly.	The feedbacks are received from both forte like positive and negative and even the new entrepreneurs post regarding what their new need for their restaurant.	The marketing personals provide their response in 24-36 hours.

3. SWOT and Competitive Analysis

The SWOT analysis of Social media for Nesbit Restaurant Essential are

Strengths

The social media handles have increased the brand awareness and engage the customers to look for the company’s product and its quality (George et al., 2017).

The brand loyalty has improved along with satisfying the customers regarding the product and made the business authoritative.

Weaknesses

With negative feedback being posted the company is getting exposed to the trolls and bad publicity is happening.

The problems get much more visible to the competitors and it requires high investment for advertisement (Iankova, Davies, Archer-Brown, Marder, &Yau, 2019).

Opportunity

It directly targets the customers with the marketing campaigns and helps in promoting new products and equipment.

It measures referrals form the social media activities to the sales.

Threats

The uncertainty as it becomes difficult to predict the outcomes of the digital marketing strategies even with a correct analytical tool.

It is time constraint and the constant monitoring becomes difficult.

4. Define your social media marketing goals
The major goals and strategies of the social media marketing for Nesbit Restaurant Essentials are:

To increase the sales of the company by 25% by the year 2021
To increase customer reachability by 50%, by the year 2021
To gain a significant edge over the competitors in the market segment and become the market leader by the year 2025.

As observed by Seo& Park, (2018), the company can further drive the traffic in their website and increase their brand engagement with reducing the diversified types of contents, as a long-term goal for the organization.

5. Target Market
The target audience for Nesbit Restaurant Essentials will be restaurants in Australia, both premium as well as mediocre restaurants, and the owners of the restaurant who are interested in buying their kitchen essentials from Nesbit.

The three members of the company's target audience will be owners of a premium restaurant, whose age is 50 years old, owner of a mediocre restaurant, whose age is 40 years age and a young entrepreneur of 30 years of age, from a startup restaurant. Thus, the persona development of the target audience are as follows:

Demographics

*Competitors*	*Type of content and social media platforms*	*Content getting higher engagement*	*No. of followers*	*No. of posts*
*All Food Equipments*	Has an account in Facebook and twitter and posts about their service quality, value and price of the commodities (Keegan & Rowley, 2017).	The likes and comments of Facebook are getting higher engagement as per the post they upload regarding their products.	More than 1000 followers and happy clients.	More than 200 posts yearly.
*Commercial Catering Equipment Warehouse*	Has an account in facebook, twitter and instagramswith providing their vast experience of 30 years in this field with letting the customer browse over the product range.	The retweets from twitter handle and the comments from facebookgets the higher engagement.	Has more than 2000 followers and facebookand instagram and1200 followers in twitter.	Nearly 250-300-postyearly on Facebook and instagram and 50-100 posts on twitter.
*Alpha catering equipments*	Has accounts in Facebook and instagram and provides the 40 years of experience in granting commercial kitchen equipment with best price (McCabe, 2017).	Thelikes and comments from Facebook and instagram gets the higher engagement	Have more than 2500 followers because of its experience and premium brand holding.	Nearly 250-300 posts yearly.

Identifiers

*Restaurant type*	*Age of the persona*	*Years of experience*	*Income*	*Preferences*
*Premium*	50 years	26 years	$3-4 millions per annum	Premium class products and its high quality.
*Mediocre*	40 years	17 years	$0.5-1 million per annum	Affordable products with good quality.
*Start-up*	30 years	2 years	$60,000-70,000 in 6 months	New and unique product with quality and affordable rate.

Goals

*Restaurants*	*Interest of the persona*	*Persona’s involvement with company*	*Communication strategy*
*Premium*	To seek premium class equipement with great quality despite the rate or process to maintain the class in the market.	Through social media handles and also the local stores.	Through written communication and face to face meetings.
*Mediocre*	To seek affordable products of good quality to increase the position in the market and grabig the high grade status.	Through the social media handle and the local stores.	Through verbal communications and phone conversations.
*Start-up*	To seek new and unique products of appropriate quality and price to promote its position in the market among the famous restaurants.	Through social media handles.	Through written communication.

The suitable social media platformsare facebook, twitter, instagram and foursquare to get these target audiences engaged with the company through providing precise and concise contents regarding the products and equipment along with chance if browsing through the varieties.

6. Implementation
Facebook
The purpose of Facebook handle is to build a long lasting relationship with the customers with increasing the brand awareness among the members of the target audience and the markets with burnishing the reputations (Shareef, Mukerji, Dwivedi,Rana& Islam, 2019).
The ideal time for posting the brand contents is between 2-4 pm during the week and Saturdays the engagement rates are higher by 18% on Thursdays and Fridays.
Precise and confined contents will help in driving people to the websites and the local stores.
Posting at the best time and with shareable blog and graphic posts is the actional tactics in social media platforms.

Twitter
The purpose is to create successful campaigns in social media that helps in increasing the sales and boosting the nrad recognition along with customer service.
Between 9 am to 4 pm on weekdays
The contents need to be short and precise in between 240 characters explaining about the company's product and position in the market.
Establishing a frequency of consistent posting along with advance schedule posts.

Instagram
The purpose is to create personal connections with the customers by sharing photos and videos for engaging the audience as visual connection providers uniqueness of the brand (Stephen, 2016).
The best time to post is from 2 pm to 3pm and the best day is thursday.
The contents needs to be filled with videos and photos of the team and the happily clients of the company so that the customers gets attracted
Adding shareable graphics and blog posts and social media calendars.

Foursquare
The purpose is to leverage the network in building the customer base with the new prospects and rewarding the most loyal consumers all at once (Tafesse& Wien, 2018).

The best time to post is 3pm -4 pm on week days.
The constant need to be consistent with providing the location of the company to let the people visit there.
Using feedly for following the relevant contemporary sources with developing a suitable marketing plan in social media.

Regarding the influencer strategy for the discussed social media platforms

*Restaurants*	*Needs from the company*
*Premium*	The premium and exclusive class kitchen equipment of high quality and best prices to be installed within the kitchen.
*Mediocre*	The good quality kitchen equipment with affordable prices to be installed in the kitchen.
*Start-up*	A new and unique style product with affordable price rates.

7. Evaluation and Measuring
The four metrics to measure the success of social media marketing are,
Monitoring the growth of the audience with the volume,
Amplifying the messages to reach the audience,
Building the trust and nurturing with the engagement,
Inspiring the action with the influence
To measure the effectiveness of the social media, companies like Nesbit Restaurant Essentials must use the vanity metrics to see whether the activities are working or not, the increase in the sale after posting on the social media, increase of the website trafficking along with the workload (Wang & Kim, 2017).

Conclusion
The present study discusses the social media marketing plan of Nesbit Restaurant Essentials regarding the products it sells to the high and medium grade restaurants in Australia along with different aspects of the business like the ways to identify the persona of the target audience and the platforms to use for the social media marketing purpose, after careful analysis.

Reference
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