How To Win Customers In This New Media World

The internet has taken over all the marketing of your restaurant and bar. More and more people are relying on Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google+, Facebook and others to determine where to eat, sleep and go.

Unfortunately, restaurant and bar people are too busy to focus on all the internet stuff.  Making matters worse, they tend to have a low computer IQ and they ignore what Yelp and other review sites are saying about them.

If that’s you, you better sell now because no matter how hard you work, a bad review here and there will kill your business.  You can’t ignore this area.

And if you’re still spending money on mailers and coupons, you may want to rethink that strategy.  Snail Mail has limited success and it is slowly dying.

So get yourself educated and be proactive.  Here is what I suggest:

1. JOIN THE REVIEWS SITES: Checkout joining these sites to manage reviews.  Negotiate prices hard with them. Yes it costs money, but so do mailers. Cancel the mailers. One bad review will turn away a lot of customers for a long, long time. The internet is a permanent mark working for you or against you.  When you join, then you’re able to contact the customer who writes a bad review. Invite them back and make them feel like a VIP.  But get the review changed! BUT DON’T GET NASTY WITH THE CUSTOMER! Always be professional and kind. I had one client who would swear at the customers in his response to them if they refused to change their reviews. The response were published as well!!!! CRAZY!
    
2. GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO WRITE REVIEWS: Encourage your customers to write reviews, right on the spot!  Give them a free desert? Give them a small discount.  Whatever it takes get that review!
    
3. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS: Restaurant people tend to have egos and tend to discount negative reviews. That’s a bad thing to do. Hear them, they can be useful indicators of what you’re doing wrong. If you hear the same complaint more than once, you ought to investigate and fix it. Don’t brush it off as jerk customers.  Don’t think your food’s great when customers are complaining about it. Suck-up your ego and fix the problem.

These three simple steps will grow your business.  Ignoring these steps, well all I can say is I’ll be selling your place!

We at SellingRestaurants are obligated to educate the public, our customers and our clients with information that can help them make more intelligent buying and selling decisions as well as helping restaurant owners improve their business.  

Mel Jones is one of the premier restaurant brokers in the nation having published hundreds of articles on buying and selling a restaurant and bar business, selling thousands of restaurants in CA., WA and AZ and building one of the most copied business models in the brokerage industry.  Mel started SellingRestaurants in 2004 with the one simple concept, give the buyers the information they need to make intelligent buying decisions without being pestered by a broker or hiding information, prepare the business for market by researching key details that make or break deals and educate the buyer on the buying process to create an intelligent buyer.  Prior to SellingRestaurants, Mel was a Chief Financial Officer for Universal Music Group, the largest music company in the world.  There he participated in more than $11.5 billion of merger and acquisition transactions.  He also work for top companies such as Nestle Foods, USA. He hold a Bachelors in Business Administration Finance as well as attended Law School at Gonzaga University.