By now, most restaurants understand how important technology is for their growth. However, utilizing these specific digital marketing tools can increase new customer rates significantly.
The top places where restaurants should encourage and respond to activity are:
- Social Media Interactions
- Content Shares
- News Mentions
- Customer Reviews
Reputation management can seem tricky, but there are ways to automate the process.
1. Customers visit a location and leave.
2. Within a preset amount of time after exiting, the guest receives an email asking them to rate their experience on a scale of one to five stars.
3. The campaigns are automated based on their answer.
4. If a customer provides a rating of four stars or less, an automated follow-up email deploys. This email can ask for feedback about their experience to make it better. The message could also include a one-time redeemable offer to win their business back again.
5. If a customer provides a rating of four stars or more, a different automated email can deploy. This email can offer the option to direct the user to a review site such as Yelp or Google to share their positive review.
It might seem smart to dissuade customers from leaving reviews to avoid negative ones. However, it makes even more sense to encourage positive reviews and filter negative reviews while listening to negative feedback. Otherwise, it’s challenging to retain customers and promote new guest visits.
A few years ago, restaurants started to experiment with social media platforms to attract new customers and provide customer service. However, today, it’s no longer an option. Unarguably, social media is a necessity in 2021.
Increasing customer activity on review sites, social media, and listings will increase influencers’ visibility, therefore growing new customers.
Good social media is focused on peer content and gaining customers within a target market. Just like any form of reputation management, there are two ways to respond.
Reactive: Responses that are focused on the problem.
Proactive: Responses that are focused on the solution.
SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn): Reach target audience through ads, engage with followers, and understand your audience better.
SOCIAL REVIEW SITES (Yelp and TripAdvisor): Reach target audience through ads, engage with followers, and understand your audience better.
IMAGE SHARING SITES (Instagram, Imgur, and Snapchat): Encourage user-generated content with promotions, inspire, and engage your audience to increase your brand’s visibility.
VIDEO HOSTING SITES (YouTube and Vimeo): Share video content and engage with people watching your content for increased brand visibility.
COMMUNITY BLOGS (Wordpress and Squarespace): Engage your audience, develop your brand voice, share, re-purpose, and repost content with community blogging platforms.
DISCUSSION SITES (Reddit and Quora): Research what matters to customers and answer questions to help establish more site traffic.
Google My Business and other listings sites are making huge impacts this year, as well.
Many restaurants globally understand how to provide excellent customer service for visitors. Attracting new customers can be more difficult.
Often, restaurants do not have the marketing budget required for professional SEO services.
However, there is already one easy way that restaurants can improve their website rankings. Google My Business is free to set up and requires very little maintenance.
Now, advertising is more important than ever.
Facebook ads can reach millions of people daily, increase sales by up to 30%, and generates 2x more of a return on ad spend on average.
In comparison, organic posts only reach two percent of your Facebook audience on average.
1. After eating their meals, 12.5% of diners will post a review of a restaurant.
2. 92% of diners read restaurant reviews.
3. 77% of consumers pay more attention to peer reviews in comparison to critic reviews.
4. 90% of guests research a restaurant online before going there.
5. Millennials and Gen Zers are 99% more likely to rely on online reviews and social media.
6. 72% of customers use Facebook before making retail or restaurant decisions. Mostly, guests make their decision based on the images and comments. that are shared by other users.
7. 71% of customers are more likely to recommend a company that quickly replies on their social media messages.
8. 20% – 40%: The likelihood of customers spending time in restaurants that they have engaged on social media.
9. 43% of all Google searches are local or location-based.
10. On average 40% of all visitors to restaurant websites are visiting on mobile phones.
11. Over 50% of mobile searches are local or location-based
12. 49% of location-based business will get more than 1,000 views of searches per month.
13. 5% of Google My Business listing views result in a website click, call, or direct request. This is an average conversion rate of 5%. It may seem low, but it has grown from 3.87% to 4.83% – which is a 25% increase from 2017 to 2018.
14. 84% of the searches are of discovery searches. The average business is found in 1,009 searches per month. Where only 16% is direct searches. Hence, 157 are the direct searches and 852 discovery searches every month.
15. 76% of mobile “near me” searchers visit a related store the same day. “Near me” queries usually help consumers find a local business that sells the product/service they are interested in. For example, if someone searches for “hotel near me”.
Sources:
https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/industry-statistics/
https://dailyblogging.org/internet-marketing/google-my-business-statistics/
https://www.360pix.io/post/google-my-business-top-statistics-insights-for-2020
https://financesonline.com/restaurant-statistics/#link11
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