Review Sites: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Review sites have a grip on bar marketing. Most potential patrons do research before they go to a bar, and they are more likely to view review sites than your social media. How your bar is presented on review sites is key to attracting new customers and your bar’s online visibility.
It is even more important if you are in a high tourism area. Most tourists don’t have the benefit of local word of mouth, following you on social media, or knowing anything about your establishment. That makes review sites their number-one source of information on where to go.
Most of us in the industry have a love/hate relationship with review sites. They are frequently bashed for having no real quality standards for review, not taking down incorrect information, and supporting biased reviewers over good business owners.
But, you only have two choices. You can ignore them entirely, at your own peril, or play the game and use them to help bring guests into your bar. By treating review sites as what they are, customer feedback, you can use the information to help improve your business. Careful management of your bar’s image on multiple review platforms needs to be a part of your bar marketing efforts.
What are the most popular and influential review sites?
When it comes to review sites, there are plenty out there, but three have an outsized impact on potential guest traffic. Those are Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. What is interesting is that each review site attracts a different audience, and each site has its benefits and issues. This means that with each site you will need a slightly different approach and different expectations. Your overall bar marketing plan should include all three of these sites, and how you intend to handle them.
Google is the most influential review site. Google search handles over 90% of all internet searches worldwide. That means that almost anytime someone searches for your bar online, they are going to use Google and see your rating and reviews. Add to that the fact that Google Maps is the way most tourists will navigate and see what is around them, and the chances of a potential guest not coming into contact with your business on Google before coming in is very low. Your reviews on Google, or at least your rating, will be seen by almost every new customer who visits your bar.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is probably the most widely used review site in the world and is a key source of information for travelers. It has a wider global reach than Yelp, so if you are in an area outside of the US, or an area of the US that is frequented by international travelers, it is going to be very impactful for your bar business. However, inside the US it tends to have fewer reviews than Yelp, so how impactful TripAdvisor is on your business depends on your target guest.
Yelp
Yelp is the review site that is most popular in the United States, it is also probably the most controversial. It is less focused on travel and hospitality than TripAdvisor and allows for reviews on any local businesses. There has been a lot of industry blame on them over the years, and I can tell you that I have personally had some less-than-great experiences with Yelp as a bar owner. Plenty of articles online talk about Yelp being a four-letter word. But here’s the thing, it isn’t going away. And as much of a love/hate relationship as many of us have with it, it is a real way to attract new customers and something that must be managed. You cannot just be mad about Yelp and ignore it.
How Much Does Your Rating Matter?
The short answer is a lot. Review sites provide word of mouth, and the fact is that many travelers, people looking to try a new bar for the first time, or new transplants to the area are going to rely on online reviews and ratings to choose where they want to go. These groups will normally see reviews and ratings before they ever check your social media.
Where review sites do not have an impact is on your regular customers. They already love your bar and will be there regardless of what someone says online or how you are rated. But, regulars should only make up roughly 80% of your total volume, so you need to work hard to continuously attract new guests.
What does the data show?
A Harvard study of the impact of Yelp rating changes on restaurants found that an increase in rating of one star corresponded with an increase in sales of 5-9%. They also found that longer reviews carried more impact than shorter ones and that the overall number of reviews influenced the perceived value of the reviews.
A study conducted at Berkley estimated that “an extra half-star on Yelp reduces reservation availability by approximately 19 percentage points.” That is a huge impact on the flow of guests and those establishments' bottom lines.
Reviewtracker.com conducted a survey where 33% of respondents said that they would not dine at a restaurant with a 3-star rating. The good news is that they also showed that 68% of Yelp reviews are 4+ stars, with 1-star reviews making up only 16%.
The overall star rating for a bar or restaurant is going to have an impact on attracting new customers. The more positive reviews that your bar has, the better off that you are.
How Can You Leverage Review Sites to Attract Customers?
As a bar owner, you have no control over how people rate or what they write about your bar. You don’t have control over which reviews Yelp or Google decides to feature, how they are sorted, or anything about the reviews and ratings. What you can control is how you deal with and leverage reviews and review sites for your business. Review sites need to be part of your overall bar marketing strategy.
Claim Your Page
Claiming your page across all of the review sites is the single most important step in using them to help positively manage your reputation. It gives you the chance to have some input on what the pages say, ensure that the general information is correct, and give you a way to respond to reviews. How you claim your page varies from site to site, but on most of them, it is a relatively simple 10-15 minute process.
Fill Out Your Profile
Once you have claimed your page, you need to fill your bar’s profile out in detail. Whatever information that you are allowed to contribute, you should contribute.
To start, make sure you double-check anything that is already in the system. You need to ensure that your address, phone number, hours, and website link are all accurate. Then, make sure to add in your price range, cuisine type, or any amenities that you can.
If the site allows you to write an about the business section, not only do you need to fill it out, but you also need to ensure that the brand voice and messaging are consistent with your other digital marketing and play into your overall cohesive guest experience.
The last thing you need to do, if the site allows you to, is to add your own pictures. Like with all images you use for your bar across social media platforms, these should be high-quality pictures that show off your establishment and your food.
Respond to Every Review
You need to respond to every review. Not some reviews, not only good reviews, not just bad reviews, every single review on every major review site, and you need to do it within a week of the review being posted. That can seem like a daunting task. But, if you are smart about how you do it, and respond to reviews in the right way, it can greatly increase the perception of your potential customers. In fact, one survey showed that 12% of people said that a response to a negative review would change their feelings about the overall experience, with an additional 82% of respondents saying it could change their feelings, depending on the way the business responds. I would recommend setting time at least once a week to review the reviews that came in and respond to them.
How you respond matters. There are a lot of opinions out there about the best way to respond to reviews. Whether you are responding to a good, neutral, or bad review, you need to make sure that you are responding in your brand’s voice. Another tip is to keep your responses brief. You do not need to write a book, just respond, show that you care, and are grateful for their input.
When responding to good reviews, it is often enough to thank them for coming in and for their kind words, make a quick statement about something in the review, and invite them back in. Short, sweet, and to the point. An example of a response to a positive review could be:
Thank you so much for coming in and your kind words about our bar. I am glad you enjoyed the Sidecar, it is one of my personal favorites on our signature cocktail list. Next time make sure to try our Brandy Flip, lots of guests who love our Sidecar love it as well. See you soon.
Bad reviews are a little harder to deal with, both emotionally and in how you respond. When it comes to your emotions, the worst thing you can do is be defensive or try to argue with the reviewer. Nothing is gained from trying to prove a point about the guest having the wrong expectations or explaining why the situation was what it was. You need to try to keep your emotions out of the response as much as possible and show you care about what the reviewer said. You also should provide a way for guests to contact you, and invite them to come in again. An example of a response to a negative review could be:
Thank you for bringing your recent experience at My Bar to my attention. We aim to give excellent customer service and the fifteen-minute wait to be greeted by a server at your table is not acceptable. Please accept our sincerest apologies for falling short. I am glad that you enjoyed our cocktails and food. If you would like to personally discuss your experience with me, feel free to email me at owner@mybar.com. We would be honored if you gave us another chance to show you that our service can be just as good as our cocktails. Thanks, Chris Owner
You may or may not want to also offer something for free in your response to encourage the guest to come back in. There are different opinions on this approach. Some experts say that offering a free drink or appetizer is a great way to show that you care, while others say it is just a way to encourage people to leave bad reviews to get free stuff. Personally, I think it can go both ways and depends on your local area, culture, and the psychographics of your clientele. It is something worth trying, if you want to, but is in no way a requirement in your response. You need to use your best judgment based on your understanding of your guests.
Reviews are Testimonials, Use Them
Every positive review that you get on any platform is a testimonial about your bar. It is real customer feedback that you can point to and leverage for your marketing. I would recommend keeping a document on your computer where you put quotes for the best reviews you receive. You can even take screenshots of the reviews and use the images.
These testimonials can then be used across your social media accounts as social proof of the great drinks, food, and guest experience that you provide. They are a great way to promote specific items, that were positively called out in a review and to use on your website. Just make sure that you are quoting your guests properly and not putting words into their mouths.
Anytime you use reviews as testimonials on your social media pages, I would recommend not including the guest's last name. While they did write that with their name in a public forum, so you are free to use it, it is best to afford your guests a bit of privacy in your digital marketing.
Track The Trends
One of the huge benefits of tracking and responding to your reviews every week is that you can aggregate the feedback from your guests. The easiest way to do this is in a spreadsheet. Create columns for the date of the review, and the rating, and then write down any areas that the reviewer either praised or didn’t like. Over time this will build into a valuable resource that allows you to see trends in your ratings, understand where areas you need to improve highlight what's going right, and help you retain customers. This data will be crucial for strategic planning, determing topics for training, and ensuring that you’re optimizing your bar.
Final Thoughts
Most of us in the industry are not huge fans of review sites, but they are not going anywhere and have a real impact on your bar. You have to play the game and play it well. By making sure that you have claimed your pages on review sites, filled in all the information that you can, respond to every review, and aggregate the data to help guide your decisions you make sure that you are setting your bar up for success.
If you want help optimizing your brand on review sites to create loyal customers, schedule a free thirty-minute strategy session with The Bar Business Coach to learn how we can collaborate.