What is restaurant marketing ROI? Learn the formula to calculate the ROI of your restaurant marketing strategy & find tips to increase your restaurant sales.
How To Calculate The ROI On Restaurant Marketing
Over 89,000 restaurants and mobile food service enterprises are operating in the UK.
The restaurant industry is crowded with food startups, and the only way to get ahead is to create brand awareness through powerful marketing strategies.
Most restaurant marketing strategies would cost thousands of pounds a month.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to calculate the ROI on your restaurant marketing expenses.
Effectively understanding the restaurant marketing tactics that are leading towards conversions can help marketing managers determine the priorities.
In this article, we will learn to calculate the ROI on restaurant marketing and also discuss some tips to maximise the restaurant promotion strategy.
Let’s begin with the basics first.
What Is Restaurant Marketing ROI?
ROI stands for returns on investment.
Restaurant marketing ROI is the return on investment from the amount a restaurant spends as marketing expenses.
ROI is also referred to as return on marketing investment or ROMI.
Restaurant marketing ROI measurement is one of the best ways to determine the returns or profits generated from the restaurant marketing campaign.
As a business or marketing professional, you should always calculate the ROI of every restaurant marketing campaign, such as SEO marketing, PPC marketing, Email marketing or social media marketing.
Why It Is Essential To Calculate Restaurant Marketing ROI
- When you calculate marketing ROI, you can easily keep an eye on your marketing budget and see how your marketing funds are performing.
- It aids in business decision making because you can easily increase or decrease your campaign investments depending on the ROI they are generating.
- You can determine which restaurant marketing strategy or channels are the most effective for your business and identify the tactics or channels that are not performing as expected.
- It is easy to optimise your marketing efforts when you measure your marketing ROI. You can compare the progress of your marketing strategy and apply strategies to keep your campaign performance positive.
How To Calculate The Marketing ROI
You can apply many formulas to calculate the marketing ROI for your restaurant business.
Here are the steps you should follow to calculate the marketing ROI of your restaurant business:
- Step #1 – Determine the restaurant’s sales growth for the period you were running the marketing campaign. How much is the increase or decrease in your sales for the period?
- Step #2 – Calculate total marketing investment. The marketing investment can include things like the cost of the PPC campaign, ad buys in the local magazine or hiring a digital marketing agency to manage the social media marketing of your restaurant.
- Step #3 – Get the difference between the sales growth and the total marketing investment. Subtract the two values to get the difference.
- Step #4 – Find the marketing ROI by dividing the value obtained in step 3 by the total marketing investment. You get the marketing return on investment (ROMI) percentage by multiplying this value by 100.
ROI = (Net Return on Investment) / (Cost of Investment) x 100
ROI = (Final Value of Investment – Initial Value of Investment) / (Cost of Investment) x 100
Another easy way of calculating the marketing ROI for your restaurant is to divide the gross profit by the marketing expenses.
If you get a value like 300%, it means for every pound spent on the marketing campaign; you get 3 pounds in profit.
As a restaurant manager or a marketing professional, your goal should be to keep the return greater than the investment.
Every business wants to be on the green side when investing in marketing.
If the net gains are less than the investment, your food business will be at a loss.
Restaurant Marketing ROI Example
For instance, if your restaurant has spent 1000 pounds on the marketing campaign, and your restaurant gains 3500 pounds at the end of the marketing campaign.
The marketing ROI percentage will be 3500/1000 = 3.5. This value means that your business gained 3.5 times the money you have put into the restaurant advertising campaign.
How A Good Marketing ROI Looks Like
How much returns you get from marketing your restaurant will often vary from one marketing medium to another.
For instance, your restaurant PPC campaigns might get a 400% marketing ROI, but your email campaign might attract a 200% ROI.
Several factors affect the restaurant marketing campaign ROI.
When you choose a marketing strategy for your restaurant, you should focus on an ROI of not less than 200% to remain on the green side.
You can also consider a breakeven point for your marketing investment.
In most cases, marketing professionals aim for a 500% ROI to get the best value on their investments.
Tips To Maximise The ROI On Your Restaurant Marketing Strategy
After calculating the marketing ROI, not all restaurants will find themselves in the green.
If you realise your business is in the red, you don’t have to worry. This can happen most of the time, especially when your restaurant faces stiff competition.
Here are some tips to maximise the returns on investments on your restaurant marketing ROI:
Tip #1 – Leverage The Power Of Data
Make use of data to understand customer behaviour. Track the user actions on your website, check the reviews left by your customers, and identify crucial insights to revamp your marketing strategy.
The most reliable source of data is your customers. You can conduct surveys and market research to find out more about your audiences. The analysis should also consider the ways to target them.
Your goal should be to maximise the campaign ROI by getting the correct data and using it to perfect your restaurant promotion strategy.
Tip #2 – Keep Your Customers Engaged
For restaurants and food businesses, the value of repeat customers is crucial.
Hence, it is essential to keep your customers engaged so that they keep coming back to your restaurant or its website to place orders.
You can use social channels to engage with your customers and keep them informed about the latest offers.
Similarly, you can leverage email and SMS marketing to bring customers back to your restaurant by sending them irresistible offers.
The idea is to keep your customers engaged so that your restaurant always stays on top of their minds.
Tip #3 – Note The Vanity Metrics
Vanity metrics are numbers that look good on paper but are not action-oriented.
For instance, your advert on Facebook could be getting thousands of likes and comments, but customers might not visit your restaurant to taste the smoothies you offer.
The likes, in this case, mean little in terms of marketing ROI. When you measure marketing metrics, you should ensure it is actionable, accessible, and directly tied to marketing success.
Tip #4 – Know Your Ideal Customer
If you want to improve your marketing ROI, you should know your customers.
Having an ideal customer persona is vital to your restaurant marketing success.
Here is what an ideal customer persona looks like for a coffee shop business:
The only way to attract guests to your restaurant is to know what they like and dislike.
As a restaurant operator and marketing professional, you should know the customer’s age, gender, education level, location, and income.
When you know more about your customers, it is easy coming up with a marketing strategy that can best attract them.
Tip #4 – Calculate Average Order Value
The Average Order Value is another important metric that every restaurant should determine.
To find the average order value (AOV), divide the total revenue by the number of orders. This is the amount spent every time a customer places an order.
Ideally, you should keep your average order value to the maximum.
Tip #5 – Optimise Your Website
Your website is an essential tool for marketing your restaurant. Most people will probably search online for reviews on your restaurant before visiting your business.
The majority of customers that go online when looking for the best restaurants will read reviews and look upon the menu.
Some will also go through your website to find out if there are any offers and deals worth grabbing.
Therefore, optimising your website positions your restaurant before the customers, increasing your marketing ROI.
Tip #6 – Streamline Your Sales Process
A streamlined and customer-friendly sales process for restaurant owners is vital for higher ROI.
Analyse your sales process to find the current bottlenecks that make you lose customers.
For example, your website might be too slow to load, or when your customers try to reach your restaurant via phone, your sales reps don’t pick up the phone.
Another most pressing issue that restaurant owners face is long queues and no proper arrangement for table booking.
You can add a table booking option on your website to make it easier for the customers to book a table online at the preferred slot.
Similarly, you can hire a customer-friendly sales team to handle the restaurant traffic in a smoother and friendlier manner.
When you take steps to improve your current sales process, your restaurant marketing ROI is bound to improve.
How Much Should You Spend On Marketing Your Restaurant Business?
There is no exact amount of money you should spend on marketing your food business.
If you are setting a marketing budget, it all depends on the marketing strategy, target market, campaign goals, and campaign duration.
So, how do you determine the amount of money you should set for your marketing budget? This is what you should do:
- Determine your total revenue.
- Track your marketing spending for the past 12 months.
- Create a list of what you anticipate doing and why.
- Harmonise to come up with a value that is comfortable to spend.
Once you have set your marketing budget, you should monitor the marketing campaign performance metrics.
How To Create A Marketing Strategy For A Restaurant
When forming a marketing strategy, most restaurants use the old norm of “throw it all and see what works.” This is not a good strategy because it can often undermine progress and other critical elements of a successful strategy with proper direction and set objectives.
Restaurant marketing strategies combine the marketing activities your business will engage in and everything you have planned for the year.
When you develop a marketing plan for your business, these are some of the information you should outline clearly.
- Marketing channel: What platforms do you expect to use to market your restaurant and reach out to most customers?
- Customer intel: When you develop a marketing campaign, you should know who you are targeting. Do you know about your customers’ tastes, preferences, and shopping behaviour?
- Marketing message: What is the marketing message for your campaign? You should establish why this marketing campaign matters to the customers you are targeting. What is your call to action (CTA), or what do you want your customers to do once they see your marketing message?
- Campaign goal: What are the objectives of your campaign? Are you looking forward to increasing your followers on social media? Do you want to create awareness of your restaurant via different Facebook marketing strategies for restaurants? You should outline your marketing goal early and ensure they are listed on your plan.
- The campaign duration: How long will the campaign run? Is it for a quarter or a year? Your campaign duration depends on your budget. You should carefully select your channels based on your campaign budget and duration. For example, PPC ads often run for a shorter duration since they are costly and require a good budget, while SEO campaigns run for longer periods because they acquire a fixed monthly cost and are affordable for longer periods.
- Marketing performance metrics: How do you intend to measure the success or failure of your marketing campaign? You should set your primary and secondary KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to determine the success of your campaign.
Final Thoughts
When you adopt the most effective marketing strategy for your restaurant business, achieving a positive marketing ROI is easier than you can ever imagine.
Follow this guide to calculate your restaurant marketing ROI and take your restaurant business to the next level.
Remember, a winning restaurant marketing strategy is essential to reach your target audiences at every stage of the buyer journey.
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