In a world where easy, no stress access to information is very much ‘the norm’, the restaurant and foodservice world should be no exception to this. With the ability to utilise powerful tools like Google My Business (Also known as Knowledge Panel) to provide an informative, search friendly header for your business that customers can use to look at reviews, check out your menu and book a table all within a few seconds.
In this guide, we’ll run through the benefits of using GMB and how you can get the best from it to stand out, get bookings and gain long term customers from the wild west world of online restaurant searching. Google My Business is free to use, for anyone. It will give you some key data about how your establishment attracts viewers online, with page views and useful information on what customers look at when they find your profile.
Before we dive into the rabbit hole of GMB, let’s get started by ensuring the basics are completed in full.
1 - The Basics
In essence, GMB is a very well developed and flexible business listing platform, a modern-day leaflet that you never need to print. All your core information should be held in your profile. Look at the list below to make the best possible start to your GMB profile.
Key information for your listing…
Type of business – This will be from a selectable list of types, select the most appropriate
Restaurant Name – Whatever it says on the top of the door…
Type or style of cuisine, European Fine Dining / Speciality Fish Restaurant / Dessert Takeaway
Street Address – Your map link will be generated via this address, you can tweak this in your profile to get an exact location pin for the front door.
Telephone Number - Your booking or customer service line
Website – If you don’t have one, check out our blog on how your food business could benefit from its own website.
How you operate – Dine in, Click and Collect, Delivery etc
Opening times – Keep these up to date whenever possible
Headline Photo – Of either your front aspect view or perhaps an internal view of your establishment.
Your company logo - you can also add this to the profile.
Your menu – Create a PDF of your menu which can be added as a direct link, or alternatively add a page link to your website that contains your most recent menu.
Your menu can also be a section on the google my business panel, with photos, categories and highlights like seasonal specials or signature dishes. This makes for a very visual experience that can entice customers in.
2 - Getting Set Up
The following is a simple guideline for how to get your account set-up from a technical standpoint.
Setting up your account is very easy. Google have created such an intuitive system that even those who consider themselves to be the least tech savvy can get setup in a short while.
You first must navigate to google.co.uk and click ‘sign in’ at the top right corner of the page.
If you do not yet have a google account, you must create one. Once you have done this, you can navigate to the google my business set up page.
You can then search for your business in case it already has a google listing, or if not, you can create one as shown above.
All of the following steps are self-explanatory and will require you to enter your basic business information and contact details into the relevant fields.
Verification
When setting up your GMB listing, you will need to verify your business. To do this, you will need to enter a mailing address where google will send a GMB postcard to. Expect to receive this within 14 days. The postcard will have a one time password you will need to send enter on your google my business profile so that they can confirm the validity of your business. It may sound complicated, but you will find it to be a surprisingly straight forward process.
If you do want an extra helping hand doing this, you can find hundreds of video walkthroughs on youtube.
Once your account is set-up you can manage it adding images and any additional information as you see fit using the easy to use business profile manager.
3 – High quality imagery and video
Standing out online can be the difference between a fully booked Friday night or an early finish.
As people search online, they have a limited amount of time and information that they can take in when they’re making decisions. In the same way that the most interesting and high-quality images and videos get the most interest on social media, your imagery should be as interesting and enticing as it can be.
Take some time to plan out how you want to portray your business, pick a sunny day if you’re a seaside café, pick a clear night if you’re a romantic Italian. Play to your strengths with exciting looking dishes.
Remember, most people look at restaurants via their mobile phone, as much as 77% of the people searching for restaurants will look on their phone. Images that suit the screen size of a mobile device can often be preferred to others in a wider format that would be better suited to a widescreen monitor.
Google themselves say that listings with imagery and video get 42% more requests for driving or walking directions than those without images. That’s a lot of potential business that’s heading somewhere else for the sake of some good quality imagery that might take a day to pull together.
4 - Drive bookings
The entire purpose of this exercise is to drive footfall and bookings to your establishment. Make life easy for your future customers by adding a reserve table button or by pushing them to your website bookings page. You can directly link a GMB profile to many types of restaurant management software. Customers can book available tables directly via your GMB profile with a few clicks and this can then feed into your management system with no interaction required.
If you’re fully booked, GMB can look ahead to see when future bookings could be made and direct your customer to one of these available times.
When it’s active, it should look something like this…
5 - Managing Reviews
Restaurants can live and die with their reviews, reviews trending in the wrong direction can have a real negative impact to your incoming booking volume. 3 isolated, badly timed reviews might be enough to start a downward trend in reviews and could leave your profile looking a little worse for wear.
Positive or negative reviews can both be a positive if you handle them correctly. Nowhere is perfect, even the best restaurants in the world get things wrong. The way they handle the issues and critique is what stands them apart from their rivals.
Respond to all of your reviews, be receptive to feedback and if the customer is dissatisfied, offer to make amends. Responding to reviews shows your engaged in your restaurant and making sure its customers are well looked after.
Responding to reviews gives you the additional benefit of being able to fight your way into the ‘Local Pack’ on google. Local pack is a location specific grouping, collated by google based on GMB profiles and their activity.
When someone searches for ‘Best restaurant in Norwich’ it will show what is known as the ‘Local Pack’. Essentially the three best performing GMB profiles that closely match the search location.
Incentivise positive reviews from your customers, if you know someone has had a great time in your eatery, ask them to provide a review on google. You can offer them something in return for their efforts if you wish but making sure you have a regular, positive stream of reviews coming in will dramatically improve your GMB profile. Take a look at the example below.
6 – Creating Posts & Adding your Events
Google My Business works in some ways like an additional social media platform for your business, you can utilise GMB for various special events and posts about particular topics you want to draw attention to.
These might be special events happening in your restaurant for key times of year like Cinco De Mayo or Christmas Day. They could be about a new kitchen refurbishment or perhaps a new menu launch.
You can add images, define a start & end date, offer links to book or sign up to the event via the GMB profile. You can list ticket pricing for events directly on your GMB profile to make it very clear and easy for your customers to see.
7 – Use Google Q & A
Frequently asked questions about your establishment can often be buried in the back end of a website somewhere, meaning customers have a lot of leg work to do to find out additional information.
Simple questions like what time do you stop serving or are you dog friendly can be easily asked and answered via the Q&A service on GMB.
Allow questions and respond to each one, over time you’ll get a bank of key FAQ’s that other customers will refer to. Responding to questions also increases your chances of being included within the Local Pack search term as discussed above.
Take a look at this example below.
8 – Managing your profile notifications
You can tailor your profile to alert you to all the relevant notifications on your account to ensure you’re always on top of things. Some examples would be someone posting a question or review to your profile, suggestions for your account or updates about new features.
Google themselves have an explainer page dedicated to managing your notifications, take a look here Manage your notifications - Computer - Google Business Profile Help
With these core fundamentals of Google My Business now firmly in your grasp you can begin to work towards improving your online presence, generate more bookings and delight more customers. Share this with your team to get the best from the GMB profile and let everyone know what it should look like.
If you’re looking to find other ways to support your business with interesting tips and ideas for any area of your business visit our main blog page to check out more of our articles.