How to attract more customers to your restaurant?
For any business, getting and keeping a large number of customers is essential. It’s a matter of the durability of your establishment. Let’s take the example of a restaurant. Let’s imagine that night after night it is empty. Would you have a good image of this establishment? Would you want to dine there? It’s no mystery, as the writer Paul de Kock says “The world attracts the world”. So you have to react quickly and find simple and effective ways to reverse the trend and attract more customers to your restaurant through Google reviews. To achieve this, here are our tips.
The challenges of your brand image
To begin with, you have to think about the marketing issue that is fundamental. That of your brand image. It allows you to create a dynamic and must be the subject of special attention on your part. Indeed, the stakes of your reputation are multiple. A good image will allow you to enhance your restaurant, attract more customers, build loyalty and ultimately boost your sales. On the other hand, as you can imagine, the effects can be harmful for your restaurant business: loss of customers and bankruptcy. Which is obviously not the objective.
In an era where information is available everywhere and at any time, a large part of the success or failure of a restaurant is played out on the web. This brand image on the Internet is linked to what is called e-reputation.
The online reputation or e-reputation of your restaurant is made up of everything that is said about you, your company and the company’s products or services on the Internet. In the case of restaurants, customers will mainly talk about the food or the service. The channels where e-reputation is played out are numerous: search results on engines such as Google, on forums, social media or online review platforms.
Finally, what really counts to have a good e-reputation are the customer reviews. They represent the heart of this online reputation. Indeed, your future customers, before going through the doors of your restaurant, rely more on the opinions of former customers than on your menu or the front of your store. In fact, 90% of consumers get information before making a purchase. Therefore, it is important to improve your online reputation and to collect a maximum of positive customer reviews and to publish them on different review platforms: TripAdvisor, Booking, Google My Business etc. This way, your brand image will be optimized to acquire more customers.
Finally, it can be interesting to set up satisfaction questionnaires in your restaurant. It is important to know that only 1% of the customers express themselves and generally, it is the unhappy customers. Would you let only 1% of your customers do your e-reputation? Satisfaction surveys can counter this statistic. On the one hand, you can ask your customers what they liked and on the other hand what needs to be improved. You will be surprised to get constructive feedback that can sometimes lead to new ideas. On the other hand, you will have the opportunity to collect customer reviews that can then be published on the platforms mentioned above. This way, you will give voice to more customers who will praise the merits of your establishment.
To be present in the essential guides
As you know, today’s consumers are very informed. This trend must be taken to its advantage. For any restaurant, it is important to be present in the most reputable guides. This allows potential customers to be reassured and to demonstrate your seriousness and the credibility of your establishment. You will also benefit from the guide’s reputation and influence.
The most important ones for restaurants are the Michelin Guide, the Routard Guide and Lonely Planet. This presence allows once again to improve your visibility and to attract new customers more easily.
