Artist Corner: Paula Pena
If there’s one thing we can learn from Paula Pena, it’s that experimentation and creativity are key to the success of both PosterMyWall artists and customers. One of our most prolific artists, Paula says that coming up with ideas for creative promotions and communications has led to more template sales for her - plus taking advantage of PosterMyWall’s new features like social media posting, email, and video.
Getting Creative to Help The Community
In the restaurant business, the difference between success and failure has always hinged on your ability to excite and entice customers. And now with COVID-19 impacting EVERYTHING, this is more true than ever. Paula, who lives in Clearwater, Florida, says she loves designing on PosterMyWall because it enables her to exercise her creativity in a way that helps others.
Paula began her design life after moving to a Clearwater, Florida neighborhood in 2016. To meet people, she joined a neighborhood group. When the group needed someone to make event notices, flyers, posters, and the like, she Googled and found PosterMyWall. Paula was impressed at how creative she could be using PosterMyWall - with literally no training. She began to use PosterMyWall to create graphics for other groups and businesses. Eventually, it began to pay off. “PosterMyWall made it easy to find or create templates. And they continually add new features, like social media formats, video and all sorts of good marketing features,” she said.
Customer Council: Restaurateur Feedback
At PosterMyWall, we run regular customer feedback councils (let us know if you’d like to participate!). Recently, we gathered a group of restaurant marketers so we could learn more about the drastic adjustments they’ve made to their businesses in the wake of COVID-19. During the council meeting, we noticed that Paula has a lot of experience and great suggestions for what restaurants can and should be doing to broaden their reach/expand their business. (More on that below.)
We asked Paula how she became so knowledgeable about how restaurants worked. She explained that before starting her current designer career, she had been a sales person who worked with a lot of local area restaurants. From this vantage point, she noticed some specific approaches restaurants could use to increase their success.
Best practices for restaurant promotion; Pre-COVID and the New Normal
Sharing her designs on PosterMyWall put Paula’s work in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of marketers and small business owners. By watching which designs they gravitated toward, she was able to identify what trends, styles, and approaches were the most popular and successful.
Right off the bat, one of Paula’s most popular templates was one that showcased daily specials. Customers love to know what’s going on at their favorite restaurants. Promoting different themes on different days helps attract larger crowds.
Making video versions of the daily special menu to post to social media has become more and more popular because it helps restaurants to grab attention for their posts. Paula says that the kids and holiday menus are also popular as they entice more people in.
One of Paula’s superpowers is taking her templates, then using PosterMyWall’s “resizes” command to adjust each template to the proper dimensions for other formats. For instance, if she starts with a Facebook layout, she’ll also create ready-to-customize versions for Instagram, Pinterest, and emailable video. This ensures that customers who search by size find her template and can make their own graphic with a minimum of effort.
In relation to restaurant reopenings, Paula says that people are hungry for any sort of change--and for things to do that give them a reason to leave their homes. Customers love anything relating to the theme of “We’re back!” Being really detailed about what that means is a good way to re-open the conversation with your customers.
“I see a lot of usage of my ‘delivery’ templates; it seems almost everyone who is open has had to get into the delivery game; whether they use their own staff or partner with a delivery service,” Paula said.
And while none of us can travel to places like Italy or Mexico, templates that let people feel a little festive about a restaurant’s menu are pretty popular.
Special Promotions
To get people to take action when they are feeling trapped at home, it’s nice to offer them a gift, offer, or promotion. This sort of marketing can easily be deployed by using PosterMyWall’s email and social media tools--as well as with printed materials.
“I’ve really enjoyed all of the great tools, creative options, and amazing community I’ve found at PosterMyWall. It’s let me start a whole new phase of my professional life, and I am excited for all the new ideas that the team at PosterMyWall keeps coming up with!” Paula said.
Learn more about Paula at her PosterMyWall artist page.
