5 Awesome Ways In Which You Can Use Yelp To Grow Your Hospitality Business

In today’s internet savvy world, the hospitality industry builds and collapses on the kind of word that is spreading about the restaurant and customer reviews and testimonials play an important role in this.

One such popular local search site that focuses on reviewing businesses and sharing information about them is Yelp. Founded in 2004 to help people find great local businesses like food outlets, dentists, mechanics, hairstylists, and more. Yelp finds it’s application mostly in the hospitality industry, i.e., the hotels and restaurant businesses.

Understanding it’s significance, Taggbox integrated Yelp to it’s social feeds as a source. Yelp provides it’s users with more than almost 177 million reviews, making it a great source when it comes to integrating user reviews on your social wall being displayed either on your official website or as digital signage in your reception or sitting area

Why Yelp?

Yelp manages more than 80 million unique visitors every month. That is enough to indicate the vastness of the platform. Most of them write reviews about their experience, ambience, food taste, customer services etc. regarding the restaurants or hotels they visit. Here are a few reasons why you should consider Yelp to grow your restaurant and hotel business.

1. Ease of Communication- Yelpers as a community find it really easy to interact about the quality of services or food quality any restaurant or hotel provides. It acts as a platform to spread word of mouth marketing about your restaurant or hotel in the digital world.
2. Influence People- When someone is looking for a food outlet or a hotel in a locality on Yelp, they are at a critical point of making a decision. Yelp gives you an opportunity to influence people in a positive way via Yelp reviews making them choose your services and probably be your customers for years.
3. Makes You Reach The Right Customer- Yelp shows your food outlet or hotel to people who are searching for the same and positive Yelp reviews help you to close the deal-making you reach the right customer.
4. Creates Brand Image- On Yelp, basically, customer reviews build your brand profile. But Yelp also gives you the power to define your brand image the way you like by uploading images of your food, beautiful interiors of the outlet, your services and adding your content giving you an opportunity to present your business the way you like, but fairly.
5. Creates a Community- Yelp also helps you to create a community around your brand name. In fact, it encourages people to interact more about your restaurant or hotel by checking in and leaving their reviews about the same. It organizes friendly competitions where you can become the “Duke” and “Duchess” of a restaurant or hotel if you are a regular. There are also funny badges like “Maverick” to encourage check-ins.

How to Use Yelp To Earn Social Trust?

Yelp is an essential cornerstone for any local food outlet or hotel industry to grow. Having a strong online presence on Yelp is a must. Restaurants and hotels use Yelp to grow their business every day.

Yelp is a great way to spread word-of-mouth marketing about your business- good or bad. Here is a 5- pointer guide to how to use Yelp to earn customers trust and build brand image.

1. Build a Great Profile

Having a great profile on Yelp is the first and foremost thing any restaurant or hotel must do. Go and search for your food outlet or hotel on Yelp if you are a new one and claim your free business page.

Having done that, build a strong profile for your business on Yelp. Go through the business profiles of your local competitors- be it a 4 star to a 3 star or below. Try differentiating the points that attract traffic or drive it away by comparing all kind of competitors.

Your profile must have all kinds of details like name, category, detailed address and phone number, link to your website and menu, info about your business and a strong photo gallery with quality images.

2. Respond to Reviews

Recognize the value of customer reviews and respond to them. By responding to both positive and negative reviews, you show your customers that you genuinely care for their feedbacks and would run from the sky to the ocean to improve their experience.

Positive reviews on Yelp add a tremendous amount of social proof for the quality of your services or food quality or staff behavior. Not to forget, they add to the all-star rating of your business on the platform.

While negative reviews are unwished for, but they present an opportunity for you to improve those elements of your business that you might have overlooked. Take it in the spirit of constructive criticism and work towards improving those shortcomings. Also, handle negative comments politely and softly.

3. Embed Yelp Reviews Widget On Your Website

Customer reviews can be leveraged for more than just improving your rating on Yelp. You can handpick some of the best customer reviews and embed them on your official website through a social hub. This gives you an edge over the others when people take extra efforts to visit your website. You could try Taggbox Widget for embedding Yelp review widget on website.

Not just on Yelp, but integrating positive reviews widget on your website also helps to increase the vibrancy of your website UI and social trust of your business. It also improves the dwell time of users on your website. Displaying these customer reviews drive your users towards making the final reservations or booking decisions at the end.

Also Read: Embed Yelp Reviews Widget On Website

4. Display Yelp Customer Reviews on Digital Signage

Digital Signage, a sub-segment of signage which displays multimedia images, videos, web pages, streaming media, and information. Many restaurants and hotels successfully employ digital signage to generate social trust among it’s customers by displaying user-generated content.

Customer reviews on Yelp also act as user-generated content for your restaurant or hospitality business, if displayed on digital signage. You could employ a social media wall for that purpose. You could add Yelp as a source for your social wall feeds and easily display customer reviews as a part of your digital display.

Displaying customer reviews given on Yelp to your business earns you social trust, builds your social profile strong and encourages even other customers to give reviews on Yelp. This further strengthens your business brand image.

5. Use Yelp Metrics

Yelp helps you have an insight into behind the scenes metrics to improve your restaurant and hotel business. It gives you details about the amount of traffic your profile receives or how many times you appeared in search results on Yelp.

It also allows you to track users’ actions that lets you know how users are engaging with your restaurant or hotel business on Yelp. You can use all this information to decide your restaurant marketing strategy, your customers’ preferences, prices and discounts you could offer accordingly.

You get insights like click on websites, mobile check-ins, photos uploaded on your profile, your business performance over a particular time period, Yelp organic searches, calls to your business, requests for direction to your food outlet or hotel, and many more.

Final Thought

Not just the hospitality industry, but Yelp finds it’s application for other businesses too, like dentists, retail stores, salons, mechanics, and so many more. Customer reviews are the most powerful form of marketing today.

Utilizing customer reviews and feedbacks and making a strong UGC marketing strategy using a social wall on your website or digital display is a great way to build social trust.