Building your restaurant’s word-of-mouth reputation
Word-of-mouth marketing means taking direct action to encourage others to talk about, suggest, or otherwise promote your business. This differs from organic word-of-mouth, which occurs without the action of your business. By taking action to influence the word-of-mouth surrounding your restaurant, you can take short-term actions that lead to long-term results. Here are some ideas for how to increase your word-of-mouth:
Run a Contest
Word-of-mouth starts by building trust and a positive reputation with your clients. A great starting point is a chance to win contest. Offer an in-house promotion to patrons incentivizing them to leave your restaurant online reviews. Many campaigns will offer a gift card to the restaurant as a reward (i.e. Leave us a Yelp review between these dates for a chance to win a $50 gift card to our restaurant). You can select a winner once your contest is over, and private message them with details to claim their prize.
The beauty of this method is that you can adapt it to any platform. Don’t have as many Facebook reviews as you’d like? Old negative Yelp reviews dragging your star rating down? Direct your campaign to creating more reviews on these platforms. You’ll increase your star rating over time, which will encourage more patrons to visit you.
Share User-Generated Content on Social Media
You’ve probably caught customers having mini photo sessions with their plate in your restaurant before. Use their content to your advantage and share it on social media! Keep an eye on posts you’re tagged in, geolocation tags to your restaurants, and any relevant hashtags. When you repost the image, tag the user who took it, and credit them for the photo in your caption. You can even run a separate contest on social media to determine the best fan photo. The customer who took the photos in your contest will encourage friends to visit your page and vote for them, increasing your exposure even further!
Get Creative
Think outside the box on ways you can get more online reviews and get recommended to customers more often. If you’re in a tourist area, do a special event where you invite local hotel managers and concierges to your restaurant for free or discounted meals to encourage them to recommend you to visiting guests. You could also offer free delivery to guests at local hotels. Think about your area and what’s popular, and get creative with ideas to engage more members of your community.
Sherane Chen, LLC is glad to assist you in developing and monitoring your restaurant’s reputation management strategies. We recognize that customer reviews are extremely important, and will gladly lend our expertise to your restaurant. Contact us today or call (386) 627-3628 for a consultation!