Restaurant Recovery - Get Chosen Online
90% of Customers use Online Reviews to choose a Restaurant
Review Management is Key to getting New Customers
Successful Review Management is based on a Plan
Focus on Quantity of Reviews, Frequency of Reviews, and Quality of Reviews
Avoid dangerous practices that hurt your reputation
90% of Customers use Online Reviews to choose a Restaurant
More than ever, it is essential that your Restaurant be easily chosen online. Do you know why some Restaurants get chosen over others?
Here are the 3 most important facts about Reviews that you need to know to survive in today’s world.
90% of customers read reviews before going to a business. Why does that matter to you? Because their whole opinion about you is formed by what people write there.
92% only pick businesses on the first page of search results. Google uses the volume ,frequency and quality of reviews and ratings when deciding where they will show your Restaurant. If you aren’t regularly getting reviews, Google assumes no one cares.
84% of customers trust online reviews just as much as recommendations from friends or family.
You need a consistent flow of positive reviews in order to help boost your findability, and to make sure you get chosen.
The good news is, there is a lot you can be doing to get not only more reviews, but better ones as well! But to do that, you need a plan. A good plan!
Successful Review Management is based on a Plan
A good plan involves
Defining specific goals for your Online Review presence,
Identifying and Stopping practices that get in the way of achieving those goals
Choosing effective actions to obtain those goals.
Every action in your Review Management Plan needs to have a specific goal, or purpose, that it is addressing. And that purpose should correspond to the Three Pillars of a successful ‘Getting Chosen’ campaign:
Review Quantity: Increasing the total number of reviews your Restaurant has available for curious customers to read.
Review Frequency: Establish a system that ensures that fresh, new reviews are coming in on a regular and consistent basis.
Review Quality: Effectively engage all of your customers so that the day-to-day positive experiences are being reflected in a way that will boost your overall star rating. More stars leads to more customers.
Understanding and working towards implementing tasks, tools, and systems that directly effect each of these three pillars (or Metrics) is key. Each of these metrics work together as a team. So focusing on just one of them won’t guarantee the results you need.
See these articles for more information:
Avoid dangerous practices that hurt your reputation
A word of warning: there’s a lot of bad advice out there, leading some Restaurant Owners to take actions intending to give an artificial boost to their ratings that, in the end, can actually do severe and difficult to repair damage to their online reputation.
For example:
X Don’t pay someone for a lot of reviews. People who do this are frequently caught and the consequences (which include getting blacklisted by most review sites) are just not worth it.
X Don’t get defensive or angry when responding to reviews. An unkind response to an ornery customer directly from Restaurant staff can make you look even worse than the review did.
X Don’t incentivise reviews. Offering rewards for reviews can lead to delisting and de-prioritizing of reviews for your restaurant.
X Don’t try to review yourself. Again, people get caught doing this all the time. Review sites have ways of knowing when multiple reviews come from the same location and they find that suspicious.
These actions, while they may appear to have a quick and positive result, will always in the end lead to an effective sabotaging of the work you hope to accomplish. If you have been doing one of these things, the first action you should take is to STOP doing them right now.
Begin Developing Your Plan Today
Being aware of these Key Metrics, as well as knowing what actions to avoid, are the first essential steps in being able to properly craft a plan that will revolutionize your online review presence, and bring in a flow of more great customers.
Don’t have time or the staff to spare? Consider letting us take care of it for you with our
