But it’s not just about getting reviews, is it? After all, negative, generic, and terse reviews won’t do you much good. What you want to encourage is consistently amazing, four- or five-star reviews.
Naturally, this all begins with your restaurant – customer service, efficiency, food quality, and so on. Without these basic elements, you can’t expect people to talk enthusiastically about you. Assuming you have all these ingredients in place, it’s then just a matter of getting your customers to act.
Let’s look at how to get amazing reviews for your restaurant.
Social media is a great place to highlight the latest press clippings, quotes, testimonials, and positive reviews you’ve been getting. It gives your restaurant social proof, and anyone coming to your social profiles to learn more about you will see that others have had positive things to say about you.
When you post a review and your followers see it, they may also feel compelled to create a review of their own, because they know it’s going to be shared out to your entire social media following.
Another important aspect of social media marketing is getting your followers to share what you’re posting. The more shares or retweets you can get, the greater reach your posts will have.
Again, leveraging third-party quotes is a great way to stimulate engagement. You can toot your own horn and say what you want about how great your restaurant is, but there’s a good chance your audience will resonate better with something an outsider has had to say about you.
Fine-tuning your social media strategy can not only help you get amazing reviews but also get more reviews in general, which can be a major help to your business.
This falls under the “easier said than done” category. But if you want to be remarkable, then it stands to reason you need to do something remarkable. You can’t just do the same things expecting different results.
Per Restaurant Engine, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Wisconsin-based Midwest Airlines became known for their complimentary freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, which passengers could smell in the cabin as they were being baked in-flight.
As we established at the outset, it’s best practice to offer your customers quality service and delicious food. Your place of business should be clean and welcoming. But that’s not enough because your customers can also find that elsewhere. What you need to do is something that surprises and delights them – something so memorable that they can’t help but share with their friends.
Get creative, and think about things you could be doing to “wow” your customers. Go above and beyond the call of duty. It’s only a matter of time before the buzz builds and more people start talking about you and reviewing your restaurant.
Getting amazing reviews for your restaurant is a good goal to have. The question is – what are you willing to do to get those reviews? Will you bring in entertainers to engage your customers? Will you offer unique drink specials? Is there something unique about the setting or décor of your restaurant you could highlight more? Is there something you could offer for free that would keep your customers coming back?
If you don’t make the effort necessary to be amazing, you can’t expect to get amazing feedback. It’s as simple as that. So, get creative and determine how you’re going to exceed the expectations of your customers.