How To Leverage Reviews To Increase Sales And Profits In Your Indoor Playground Or Soft Play Rental Business

According to HubSpot, 90% of consumers reported reading or at least glancing at online reviews before visiting a business. Furthermore, 88% of consumers will trust online reviews on Google or social media, as much as a referral or recommendation from a trusted friend, family member, or coworker.

This is what makes the topic of online reviews and how they impact your sales so important. When you've worked hard to get a glowing five-star review, it’s crucial to understand how to maximize it as much as possible for your profitability. 

We want to capitalize on the reviews we are receiving and make sure they are appearing before the eyes of as many potential customers of your indoor playground business as possible. I am going to share with you seven quick ways to repurpose your current outside of posting that initial screenshot. 

1) Curate social media graphics for both Instagram and Facebook. 

In episode four of my podcast, “Profitable Play”, I talked about how to batch an entire year's worth of social media content, prompts, and topics. Additionally, we talked about all of the different “pillars” of our business. For example, your business may include a cafe, retail, birthday parties, and/or memberships. These are each considered a different pillar inside of your business. We want to be sure that we're creating content around each of these pillars.

A great way to do this is to share online reviews related to that pillar. You can take different snippets of a review to support your different topics. For example, let's imagine you received a five-star review from a birthday party client, and she shared how excellent your cafe was for the adult guests, as well as how clean and organized your space was and how friendly your staff is.

You can take different pieces from her review to create graphics for multiple pillars inside of your business from just one review. In this case, it would be the cleanliness pillar and the cafe pillar– values and features of your play space you want future customers to know about!

By taking bite-sized pieces of this review and batching content from it, you can both utilize the review for positive sales AND maintain the practice of consistently highlighting each pillar of your business. 

2) Share on your website booking page.

 If you go to michelecaruana.com/playcafeacademy, you'll see that I have testimonials and reviews sprinkled throughout my booking page. I do this because I know that when somebody is thinking about purchasing my course, they're subconsciously going through their mental list of questions and one of those is likely, “Has this course gotten people success in the past?”.

Credibility, authority, and proven results are some of the key factors people consider when they're looking to make a purchase or booking at an indoor playground or play cafe business, especially a bigger ticket purchase– like a birthday party. They want to feel confident knowing that people have had positive birthday experiences at your play space. Therefore, I highly recommend sprinkling reviews and testimonials throughout your booking page to quell any uncertainties they may have ahead of purchase.

3) Share on your website checkout page.

Again, if you go to playcafeacademy.com and you hit any of the checkout buttons, you'll see that I also have reviews on my checkout page. They're essentially the same reviews I have on my Play Cafe Academy booking or sales pages, but they're in written format. So while on my sales page there may be a 10-minute-long video review, for the checkout page I take the most standout line and write it in long form. This is placed intentionally for anybody feeling hesitant, and to make them feel assured that this program is exactly what they need. 

You can do the same thing on your booking checkout page. Right when somebody is making that buying decision and entering their purchase information, it's really helpful to increase conversions when you have written reviews waiting for them there. 

BONUS TIP: I recommend having your reviews in multiple formats if you can. If you have a bunch of video reviews, transcribe them and take pieces to make graphics, and share them on your website and social media. People like to digest information in different mediums.

4) Place your reviews on your birthday brochures or any printed advertising materials. 

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's considering your venue for their event, or starting a membership - they're checking those boxes in their mind as they're going through your brochure. Having positive stories or reviews in those marketing materials can help to reassure any hesitations and increase the probability that they’re going to take the next step in the booking process.

5) Set up retargeting ads with reviews. 

Now that you've visited my Play Cafe Academy sales page, you'll probably notice that you're going to start seeing retargeting ads in your social media feeds- in graphic form, video form, and written form. This is because I have installed my Facebook Pixel which gets triggered by anyone who visits my sales page and does not purchase. If you haven’t already, I would go and listen to my Play of the Day from Episode 14 of my podcast, so you can implement this as well and put this tip into practice!

These ads only spend about $1 per day but are an extremely effective tool in recovering “abandoned checkouts” or reminding customers to come back and finish their booking or purchase.

The key here is to stay top-of-mind for those considering you for a booking or for a membership or whatever it is that you're selling. You can reuse the social media graphics that you already are creating from tip number one, and use them as retargeting ads to continue reassuring those who are considering your venue.

6) Add reviews to your email nurture sequence. 

Now, you don't need to create an entire email just to share a review. You can simply sprinkle them throughout your email naturally and organically. So for those of you like myself who struggle with writing email sequence content, including reviews and stories is a great way to add content that increases conversions. For example, if you’re emailing customers about a new service you’re offering like balloon garlands– you can share a review that stated how easy it was to walk into the room and have the entire place decorated– without the parents needing to DIY anything or stop at multiple vendors for decor pick-up along the way.

7) My final tip is to do the same thing throughout your blogs. 

Again, this is a way to provide real-life examples and anecdotes for whatever topic you're talking about. For example, if you're writing a blog about favors, this is a great opportunity to sprinkle in those anecdotes from somebody who loved the favors that you put together. You don't have to use reviews to brag (though we DO love a good humble brag here)– you can also use them to give tips on what worked for your specific topic. For example, you can say that “so-and-so found that handing out themed favors at the end of the party helped the children transition out of the play area and she was amazed at how easily the party flowed!”, then follow up with a direct quote from the review to substantiate that claim. 

If you are in my Book More Birthdays blogging membership-- you will see that the templates I provide have several prompts to insert reviews for this reason. It works!

And as a bonus, I also want you to think about how you can create a process for asking your clients and customers for video reviews.

You can do it right on the spot, as they're leaving their party– or right after they pay. Or, if you have a member that is coming in day in and day out, you can just kind of tap them on the shoulder and ask, “Hey, next time you come in, I'd love to just take a really quick video that we can use for our website and on our social media, simply sharing about how you like to use our space and what your child's most favorite things are to do when you visit.” Video testimonials can be just as powerful in terms of assets for your business than Google and social media reviews can.

I would encourage you to take these seven tips and implement at least one of them today. I truly believe in the power of using the reviews that you have already worked so hard for and leveraging them to their fullest potential to increase your sales.

Have any questions or want to learn more? Visit my YouTube Channel with over 200 videos or my podcast with over 130 episodes at the time I’m writing this!