Brief overview
Riyadh is a city known for its good food and entertainment. Therefore, opening a restaurant to tap into the food market is a good idea. Its proposed name is Riyadh Swift Delicacies. As the name suggests, the business will develop innovative recipes that are relatively cheap and easy to deliver upon order. The restaurant will seek to focus on the delivery of lunch to the working class in Riyadh. Rather than people leave their places of work and waste time to go to the restaurants, the business will operate on social media platforms to pick and deliver orders. Besides online deliveries, the business will have a physical restaurant to serve customers who prefer physical visits.
The food industry in Riyadh is competitive due to the high number of restaurants in the city. Therefore, businesses have to apply innovation and creativity to carve a niche into the market. It is essential to build and maintain a brand that resonates with the public and market demand. One of the main ways of building a strong brand is to maintain consistency in high-quality services and a standardized food taste. Moreover, Riyadh restaurants focus on different customer segments, such as the working class or families seeking to eat out. Riyadh Swift Delicacies will come up with a blend of work and family restaurant that also incorporates delivery.
Riyadh Swift Delicacies will use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as a tool for social media marketing. In all the three platforms, the business will have an identical brand with similar posts to create a strong and standardized online presence. The screenshots for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will be provided below, respectively.
Social media is an essential aspect of businesses that thrive in the current market. Constant innovation in technology makes the society transform its mode of communication from physical interaction to online. Social media platforms play a crucial role in the current communication framework. Therefore, businesses that understand social media’s importance tailor their solutions to incorporate Facebook into their market communications strategy. The benefits of social media for businesses extend beyond merely increasing the sales of the organization.
One of the key advantages of social media is growing the business’s brand awareness within the market. Companies introducing their products and services in a market may find it challenging to use traditional market penetration methods. Conventional methods of penetrating a market may be expensive in comparison with using social media. Consumers in a market want to buy products from a brand they recognize. Social media enables a business to reach out to many people using fewer resources. A person can quickly come across a business’s brand even when they do not think about the product through social media. Riyadh Swift Delicacies is a new business in the town and seeks to expand its brand presence. Therefore, the established social media platforms will play a key role in growing the brand to make it visible within Riyadh’s food industry.
- Audit your social media platforms performance
Social media audits are essential in coming up with a comprehensive and dynamic marketing plan for the business. An audit helps the business establish what works and factors that hinder the successful implementation of plans. The business analyzes the performance and activities of its posts on different social media platforms from the table below.
For a business starting, the engagement on social media, as depicted in the table above, shows that the organization is doing well. However, it should work on the three negative sentiments on Twitter. Moreover, the business should reduce the average response time on all platforms to be five minutes or below. Users on social media have a short concentration span with low patience levels. Therefore, the speed of response should be high to provide an excellent customer experience on social media.
- Social Media benchmarking
Pizza Hut is a brand that runs several restaurants at the heart of Riyadh. The restaurant focuses on the provision of pizza, fries, burgers, and chicken for its customers. Other than the focus on delivery, the restaurant also has offers for family eat-outs. On Facebook, Pizza Hut has a strong online presence. The restaurant keeps uploading their product offers after an average of four days. After an upload, Pizza Hut monitors all replies. For instance, a customer complained about having ordered pizza that turned out to be bad. Upon the customer’s complaint, Pizza Hut replied on the same day with regret and a way forward for the customer on how the company intends to resolve the issue. On Twitter, the organization runs a global Twitter account that has 1.6 million followers. The organization focuses on solving customer complaints and advertising different products to the public. There are many issues raised by unsatisfied customers on Twitter regarding product and service delivery. The tone of the company, when announcing different products, is cheerful and happy. However, when dealing with complaints, Pizza Hut uses an apologetic tone followed by an offer to the customer to improve services or resolve an issue. Many customers keep raising their concerns and frustrations over delays in delivery or substandard products. Still, Pizza Hut keeps its positive attitude in empathizing with the customer’s situation and suggesting an amicable way forward. Instagram is a platform created for sharing photos and short videos. Pizza Hut runs an Instagram page full of Pizza pictures and photos of customers having a great time at their restaurants. On Instagram, the company does not have a lot of customer engagement. However, their post receives several likes and a few comments. Most of the feedback from Instagram is from satisfied customers who are happy with the service and awed by the restaurant’s interior’s elegance.
Burger King is an international fast food brand that major in making and selling burgers. The company operates several Twitter accounts to serve the needs of different geographical markets. Saudi Arabia does not have an official Twitter account, but customers can reach out to the company through any other platform with ease. The most common Twitter account for the organization is managed in the United States of America and tweets daily on each workday. In response to the tweets, the business gets an average of 150 comments, 120 retweets, and a thousand likes. On Facebook, Burger King runs a nationwide account with one post monthly. Every month, the organization posts an update regarding its restaurants’ latest offering and gets an average of 30 likes. Customers also air their frustrations for poor services through the company’s Facebook page. However, the company does not deal with the complaints in a good time. Burger King has a strong presence on Instagram. The company has many photos of their products and customers enjoying delicacies at the various restaurants.
Kudu is a chain of fast-food restaurants in Saudi Arabia. Unlike Burger and Pizza Hut, Kudu was started in Saudi Arabia. The fast-food chain boats of 275 thousand followers on Twitter. Despite the high number of followers, the company’s daily tweets do not get a lot of attention regarding retweets, comments, or likes. However, on Facebook, the company posts new offers for the market and have above 25 reactions from the public. People also share the company’s posts on Facebook. Kudu maintains the same brand identity on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. There are numerous impressive photos of products and services available at Kudus. The company does a great job posting the products on Instagram. It also has more than 340 thousand followers on Instagram.
As the name suggests, Maestro Pizza is a chain of restaurants that major in making pizza in Saudi Arabia. The chain has a restaurant in Riyadh. Like all other competitors in the market, Maestro Pizza has a strong presence n social media. It has 179 thousand followers on Instagram, and these people interact with 915 posts by the company. On Facebook, the company posts several photos and video about their products and services. They also handle issues raised by the customers in a bid to give an excellent customer experience. The engagement on Twitter is similar to those on Facebook and Instagram, where the company posts short captivating videos and pictures.
Herfy is a multinational food chain with its presence in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East. The chain serves burgers and other fast foods in major cities in the Middle East. The company has an official website that provides links to its social media pages. On Twitter, the organization makes frequent posts several times a day and gets feedback from an average of 21 users. Herfy uses Instagram to attract over 355 thousand followers through its 3500 posts. Herfys’ Facebook account does not have a lot of recent activity since it was last updated in March 2020. Nevertheless, Herfy’s Facebook page had a relatively lively user engagement regarding reactions, comments, and shares.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Riyadh Swift Delicacies is a new brand on social media and still has a clean slate to start its marketing campaign. Social media marketing’s strength is coming up with creative recipes and representing the same in the form of short videos and captivating images. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words means that the target audience can deduce a lot from the posts. As a relatively smaller company that competitors in the market, it will be easier to handle customer issues and complaints raised on social media. Therefore, the company will be responding to all feedback on all their social media platforms within two hours of posting.
Weakness
Small companies the size of Riyadh Swift Delicacies do not enjoy economies of scale as established brands such as Burger King. Over time, the established brands have created a great market presence that gives them an edge. Introduction into the market makes the company have difficulties because people are not familiar with the brand and may not be willing to engage
Opportunities
As a new market entrant, the business has a clean slate to start its social media marketing campaign positively. From this perspective, Riyadh Swift Delicacies has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of those already in the market and develop a marketing plan that will generate positive results for the company. Moreover, the restaurant has a chance of creatively using the existing social media platforms commonly used in Saudi Arabia to quickly reach out to prospective clients using fewer resources to create a strong presence of its brands. Some competitors in the market delay in dealing with complaints or sometimes fail to sort them all together. The restaurant could focus on making sure that all issues raised on any of its social media platforms are sorted within a timeframe.
Threats
Existing competitors in the market are always moving to come up with new innovative initiatives to increase their market share and eliminate competition from new entrants. In doing so, the initiatives make it harder for new entrants such as Riyadh Swift Delicacies. Moreover, changes in technology that drive social media platforms may lead to changes in a company’s plans regarding its marketing strategy. Such changes may need more resources that are not readily available for new market entrants.
- Social media marketing goals
As a new entrant into the market, the social media marketing plan’s main goal will be to increase brand awareness, drive traffic into the business, generate new sales leads, promote effective customer experience, and boost brand engagement.
An average person in the world spends approximately two hours per day on social media. The business needs to tap into this opportunity to penetrate social media and get the attention of millions of users on different platforms. Since part of the business strategy will be to make online deliveries, increasing brand awareness through social media will easily attract potential customers. Most social media platforms provide data on the reach of content and its engagement with the users. These analytics are vital for the organization to determine the effectiveness of the content on social media.
Driving traffic onto the business is also an important goal of the social media marketing plan. After building a strong brand presence on social media, the business’s next goal is to convert this awareness into leads by channeling the attention to the business. One way to do so is to encourage social media users to click on links that will redirect them into the business website. The business can monitor the traffic of people from different social media platforms on the website.
When people visit the business’ social media pages and develop interest, it is important to channel this attention and generate leads. One way to do so is to creatively make the users provide contact information such a name, email address, or phone contact. The sales and business development teams can then use this information to make follow-ups and seal the deal.
It is now a trend for customers to raise their issues regarding the products and services of various organizations. Therefore, coming up with a good social media customer service framework that seeks to resolve any raised issues within a short period is important for the business and its brand in the market.
The business’s last goal is to develop and boost brand engagement by posting content that excites and captures the attention of social media users. Brand engagement will create a community of users worldwide and make the business a part of the people’s activities online. Building a community around social media platforms is one way of creating engagement between people and the business. As mentioned earlier, the business will develop creative and captivating posts that attract the attention of users and elicit a response.
- Research on the target audience
Riyadh Swift Delicacies is targeting the working people that are busy and prefer online deliveries rather than visit physical restaurants. Moreover, the business will serve people on quick business meetings by providing ample and quiet places with food and affordable drinks. Finally, the business will create an environment that encourages family evening outings. Saudi Arabia is a country whose culture is centered on families, and servicing this segment of customers in terms of food will be profitable for the business.
The first persona representing the target audience is a woman working in a bank and has customers over the lunch period; hence she cannot go to a local restaurant nearby. Instead, the woman orders food online to be delivered to the bank so that she can eat while still working.
Another persona is a software engineer who works remotely and does not have a physical office. The engineer needs to meet a client during the day and opt for a nice, elegant place with affordable food for him and the client.
Lastly, a family of four kids, husband, and wife want a change from the normal home meals. Instead, they opt to eat out in a restaurant that can accommodate the family in an evening. The restaurant should have family packages that will cover both kids and adults.
The Saudi population likes to use sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. All these are social sites that encompass the audience targeted by the business. Therefore, customizing the social media marketing plan around these platforms will help the business attain its objectives.
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