As a restaurant owner, you know how much of a challenge it can be to stay competitive and keep your guests coming back. With so many eateries vying for consumer attention, being able to stand out is essential.
The good news is that by leveraging social proof strategies, you can create a powerful draw for potential guests and maintain strong relationships with your regulars.
Social proof is an essential marketing tool for any business. It’s especially useful for restaurants due to its relationship with guest reviews and ratings.
From showcasing positive reviews on your website or in ads to creating engaging social media posts about guest experiences, leveraging social proof can be a game changer when attracting new patrons.
Social proof is based upon “informational social influence.” This means people will conform in order to be liked by, similar to, or accepted by the influencer or society.
In terms of marketing your restaurant, social proof occurs when guests or potential guests see what others are saying about your business.
When consumers are looking to buy something, they look for ratings & reviews, recommendations, and ways that others have used a product before making their decision.
Here are some ways to use social proof to increase foot traffic and online ordering, improve customer lifetime values, and combat rising costs with better ROI.
Examples of Social Proof to Get More Guests
For instance, rating sites like Google or Facebook are avenues of social proof because users can quickly and easily see the ratings and reviews of your business.
The better your ratings, the more likely people are to give you their business.
When you visit a website and you see a testimonial from a happy guest or industry expert – that’s social proof. Deciding to choose a particular restaurant because you love steak and saw someone leave a comment about how good their steak is – that’s social proof. When you see an item on a menu with a star that says “Customer Favorite!” – that’s social proof.
All of these different tactics help build trust, convey value, and improve customer lifetime values. It is a simple way to use valuable third-party influence to market your restaurant.
Because social proof is such a powerful consumer trigger, it is a great item to incorporate into your marketing strategy.
Every customer touchpoint should display social proof. Consider incorporating elements of social proof into your:
- website pages
- social media platforms, including Google My Business
- paid marketing media (Google Ads, print, radio, etc.)
- physical location (signage, table tents, etc.)
- menu items
- email and SMS communication
- Google search results schema
- loyalty program/mobile apps
Let’s turn our attention to optimizing your online presence. Specifically, how to present yourself on Google and the pages of your website.
Have you ever been searching for something on Google and come across a result that displays a star rating and the number of votes? This is great social proof because the ratings come directly from guests who have left a rating on Google.
Using Google for Social Proof
Website schema, or structured data, is a standardized format for providing search engines information about a web page and classifying the page content. If you’re new to structured data, you can learn more about how structured data works here.
When users search for businesses on Google Search or Google Maps, search results may display a prominent Google knowledge panel with details about a business that matched the query.
When users query for a type of business (for example, “best NYC restaurants”), they may see a carousel of businesses related to that query. Likewise, some results will show the restaurant’s average rating and the number of ratings given.
With Local Business structured data, you can tell Google about your business hours, different departments within a business, reviews for your business, and more. In turn, Google may add some or all of these things to your search result.
As Google does not guarantee this will happen automatically, there are strategies you can implement that could convince them of your relevancy and boost visibility. To find out how, download our whitepaper, “Learn How to Use Social Proof to Get More Customers.”
Using Your Website for Social Proof
Another great way to show your guests and potential patrons social proof is to display your aggregate ratings on your website, blog pages, and social media accounts.
With the Bloom Intelligence website ratings widget, you can display a small badge on your website pages that will display your aggregate ratings from Facebook, Google, and Bloom.
Adding this widget directly onto your website can help display your reputation. It can also have a positive effect on your bottom line by creating positive social proof.
Unfortunately, most restaurant marketers don’t have the ability or time to create this type of thing. But with Bloom, it is simple and fun.
Click the banner above for instruction on how to do it!
Are you ready to improve your restaurant’s reputation by automatically building positive online reviews and using social proof?
The answer is simple. Show your positive online reviews to your guests and potential guests.
Discover Bloom Intelligence
Get your ratings to stand out online! Using rating schema, you can boost the visibility of your restaurant by having ratings appear in a Google search result. An effective tool for getting noticed on the web.
Likewise, creating a website widget that will display your real-time aggregate Google, Facebook, and Bloom ratings will showcase your positive ratings, and improve your reputation, helping you drive new Guests into your restaurants.
Call us or schedule a free demo online and Bloom will show you how our restaurant marketing and customer data platform can help you save time and increase your customer lifetime values by automatically building first-party customer databases, unlocking important guest insights to trigger marketing at the right time and place, showcase your positive ratings, save at-risk guests, increase your current guests’ frequency, and find new guests.
Click Here to Schedule a Free Online Demo, or call 727-877-8181 to see how we can help you save time and drive tangible results for your restaurants.
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