With the exception of Valentine’s Day, of course, many customers are now absorbing the cost of the festive season and so are going out to eat a little less.
There are still simple things that restaurants can do to attract more diners though, and so in this and other posts over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of these in the hope that it will spark some ideas that you can easily implement in your own restaurant.
We’re going to start with Reviews…
I’m starting with reviews because they are becoming more and more important in both convincing customers to choose your restaurant over your competitors… AND… getting your restaurant found in the search engines.
In recent years it was considered important to get reviews for your restaurant on multiple sites including Tripadvisor, Yelp, Google, Facebook and others.
In 2024 though, I’d highly recommend that you concentrate your efforts on simply getting more reviews on Google!
But why just Google?
Well, it’s for two main reasons…
- That’s where the majority of consumers go when they want to check out a restaurant. 63% say that before they will visit a business or restaurant, they will look at their reviews in Google. And if the restaurant has lots of poor reviews, or no recent good reviews, then they start to consider other restaurants instead.
- Reviews influence search engine rankings. According to a Moz study, review signals make up around 15 percent of ranking factors. That means that the more positive reviews you have, the higher Google ranks your restaurant on local search results.
BUT…
Do you actively encourage reviews, or just hope that diners will leave them?
The vast majority of restaurants that I visit don’t do anything to actively encourage diners to leave a review. They simply hope that the customer will enjoy their meal, go home, think about their lovely meal, decide to leave a review, search to find the place to leave a review, and then post that review.
But of course, most of the time that doesn’t happen!
In fact, the person who is more likely to think about leaving a review later, is the person who didn’t have a good meal and so leaves a bad review for you!
So here’s my challenge to you…
How can you make it easier for your diners to leave a review on Google for you?
Thinking about this (and putting it into action) could easily quadruple the good reviews you get in 2024… and significantly increase the customers that dine in your restaurant.
At the VERY least, you could simply ask every customer if they could leave a review for you. They’d still need to find the right place to leave a review but at least it puts the idea in their head.
Or could you do more?
- Could you give the customer a QR code that would take them to the correct place to leave a review?
- Could you add a review request to receipts, along with a link or QR code?
- Could you add a link to your website that takes people to the correct place to leave a Google review?
- Or if you have the contact details of your customers (maybe from your booking system), could you send them an email or text message after they’ve had a meal with you? This could then include a link for them to click.
Review Boost
I'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my own brand new system for getting more reviews for any restaurant. I've been testing the system with my restaurant clients for quite a few months and the results have been superb.
Review Boost makes it SO easy for the customer to leave a Google review as well as encourages (or even incentivizes) your staff to always ask diners for the review. It also helps to reduce the number of bad reviews and increases good reviews.
You can see full details of Review Boost by Clicking Here.