Stop focusing your marketing efforts on customers you already have
Think about your marketing angles, you probably use social media to get your message out there. In essence, you are marketing to people you already have. Every social media platform is full of people who have heard of you, many of them are already customers, some are regulars. It’s hard to follow a bar or restaurant on social media that you don’t know exists yet. This is where the new customers are. People looking for a new place use primarily 3 sources – word of mouth, online review platforms like Yelp, and doing a Google search.
As a marketing guy, I’m pretty useless to effect word of mouth, the other two I can absolutely influence. Online review sites like Facebook reviews, Yelp, Google reviews, and Tripadvisor are the single biggest source of new customers that we can affect. Whether you have a service like mine that responds to your reviews for you, or you do it yourself – respond.
Respond to the good and the bad reviews.
You obviously want to get the negative reviewers back in the door but don’t forget to thank your fans. Here is a guide on how to effectively respond to online reviews. Don’t make the mistake of only giving attention to your guests who had a bad experience. This is effectively ignoring the people who love you and rewarding the people who don’t. To get started on responding to these on Google, go to this page and check out my guide on how to claim and edit your Google For Business account if you haven’t already.