Referrals can easily become a reliable source of new customers for any restaurant or caffe. 78% of people find restaurants to try based on their friends recommendations .

When you’re delivering amazing food and quality service, lots of these referrals should happen organically. People like talking about the great new place they discovered and there are many ways to encourage them to do so.

Yet, word-of-mouth marketing can be unreliable at times and relying exclusively on people’s goodwill can lead you to miss out on other opportunities. That’s why having a more formal restaurant referral program can be valuable.

In particular, a referral program can provide the extra incentive many people need to introduce your eatery to their friends and family. There are a variety of ways for you to go about enforcing a restaurant referral program. We’ve outlined seven members of the best notions below.

7 ways to get more referrals

Craft a great offer

When creating any kind of referral program, the key is to incentivize both the person being referred and the person doing the referring. It should be a win-win situation.

One easy way to do this is to hand out coupons with the bill that can be redeemed when a customer returns with a friend whoa s never been to your eatery before. Both the customer and the friend get a discount on a snack and hopefully, you manage to attract a new loyal client.

Send a shareable email

Sending out emails regularly is a great way to connect with your customers and to keep your eatery top-of-mind. If you’re not already sending emails, here are nine types of emails you could be sending.

There are a couple of ways to get referrals from email promotions. One simple way is to send emails the hell is valuable and to encourage people to forward them to their friends. If you send out delicious recipes or secret cook tips-off, for example, customers will share them, especially if you send your email with a call-to-action to do so.

Another way is to send out coupons that apply to parties of two or more and that each client must show on their phone. This will again, foster a user to forward the coupon to their friends.

Run an Instagram contest

Social media has made referring places rapid and easy. On Instagram, it’s as simple as tagging a friend.

To capitalize on this behavior you can run a competition for a free date night, or a knife set, or anything else that relates to your eatery. Then make one of the terms to be entered to tag three friends.

If you offer something that gets people’s attention, this can have a huge ripple effect that gets your restaurant’s name in front of a lot of new people.

Make it special

Another easy way to promote referrals is to make it one of your daily specials. Friend Fridays voices a bit lame, but consider creating a promotion that applies to first-time visitors or to larger parties that would encourage people to bring their friends along.

Engage your staff

If your eatery is awesome, your staff should naturally be a good source of referral business. They should feel comfortable encouraging their friends and family to come dine.

Of course, an easy way to encourage this behavior is to extend a discount to family members or friends sporadically throughout the year.

Another possibility is to run a staff competition to see who can refer the most customers in a given week or month. This can be done by creating coupons with a place for a signature for your staff to hand out. The most redeemed coupons wins!

Post awesome content

Every time someone shares your Facebook video or tags person in your Instagram photo, they’re telling their adherents about your eatery. The key to getting more of these types of referrals is to post great content on a regular basis.

Make posts entertaining or useful. Think about the kinds of things you like to share on social media and make similar posts. Promote people to tag a friend. For some other social media best practices, check out this post.

Ask politely and thank generously

If you want more referrals, you have to ask for them. Whether ita s a coupon with the bill, a Wednesday night special, or an Instagram contest, you have to ask clearly and immediately. It may seem obvious that you want your customers to tell their friends and family about your eatery, but actually asking makes a massive change.

Similarly, when someone refers a friend, make sure to thank them generously. Let them know how much you appreciate their supporting. Even better, when you know someone has referred a lot of their friends, do something special to display your gratitude. Offer them an cocktail or dessert that’s not on the menu. Run above and beyond for customers who go above and beyond for you.

Make your eatery a place people want to come back to and then give them an incentive to bring a friend. That’s how you create a restaurant referral program that works.

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Originally posted by Yelp WiFi