Love them or hate them: Restaurant reviews are powerful. Economists at the University of California, Berkeley found that a half-star improvement on Yelp’s 5-star rating scale makes a restaurant 30-49 percent more likely to be fully booked during peak dining times. Google has become especially important, attracting 73 percent of all online feedback, because so many people find a restaurant by searching Google Maps. At the same time, reviews carry risk for restaurants. Guests may not feel inspired to write a review unless they have an extremely good or bad experience, and the bad reviews often amount to noise, including nothing that could actually be used to improve the business. Accordingly, research from Nationwide Insurance and Edelman Data & Intelligence found that when restaurant operators were asked about their digital risks, 25 percent of them reported that managing negative reviews was among their biggest risks. This is where you can lean on your special occasions – like your holiday gatherings, contests and other features of this time of year that delight guests – as well as your loyalty program. Target these guests when asking for reviews. After they visit, send them an email or text asking them to share their review on Google if they enjoyed their meal (and link to the review page so it’s easy for them). Include some simple boilerplate language on each of the general messages you send to your list and invite people to leave a review. When you serve a happy group that has clearly had a great experience with you, consider mentioning at the end of their meal that they will be getting an invitation to review their experience – and that their feedback really does help you. Consumers want restaurant food this holiday season. A recent HungerRush survey of 1,000 adult consumers in the U.S. found that 64 percent of respondents said they planned to order at least one food item from a restaurant to include in their holiday meals, while 37 percent said they would order their entire holiday meals from a restaurant. Does your data hold clues as to how you can best support your own guests’ holiday wishes for festive food? Maybe they’re looking to treat themselves after cutting back on meals out of the house this year, to minimize their own prep work at home, or to simply enjoy the festive season with foods they wouldn’t normally make themselves. Fill out your calendar with outreach that taps into those wishes. This could include contacting last year’s guests (and other segmented groups on your email list) to share your holiday menus, take-out meal bundles or limited-time offers. Or, help people get into the holiday spirit by creating videos of your decorated restaurant or your chef preparing a special menu item that you share on social media. Encourage new social media followers (and sharers) by launching a social media contest and offering a free meal or a gift card as a prize. If you have community partners – like charities or complementary businesses – coordinate your social media efforts with them to encourage new people to support you this season. With each promotion, ask yourself what need you’re aiming to fulfill so you can ensure you’re sending out content that connects with your ideal guests. Thinking of tapping into social media influencers to help with your marketing efforts? It helps to be patient and flexible. The return on investment can be difficult to trace directly, and because influencer marketing is fairly new, you may be unclear about how to set mutually beneficial agreements with influencers. That said, if you cater to a niche audience and you follow social media influencers who have developed large and/or loyal followings in your space, your efforts to partner with them may help give your social media marketing exponential power. A report from CIO Coverage indicated that when the restaurant brand All Bar One partnered with 10 micro-influencers with a combined following of 200,000, they were able to increase their brunch sales by 28 percent across their 50 restaurants and bars. If you’re thinking about giving influencer marketing a try, it’s important to approach the right partners – ideally, people who consistently post content that is relevant to your brand, generate positive attention in the form of likes and comments, and engage professionally and responsively with their audience when that happens. In a recent interview with Expedite, Jennifer Bell, the CMO of the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, said their company has been working with influencers to extend their brand in new ways. She says: “I love the idea of us not telling you why you should come to the restaurants, but an influencer showing you why. That is a much more powerful message and a more powerful way to connect with customers.” |
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