At the end of the month a document arrives with twenty charts and a huge number at the top that says “reach: 84,000”. Sounds good. And it tells you absolutely nothing about whether you've made money.
This is the short translation of the numbers you'll be shown, ordered from the ones that mislead to the ones that count.
The ones that sound good and say little
- Impressions: how many times your ad has been shown. That includes the same person fifteen times.
- Reach: how many different people have seen it. Better than impressions, but it's still people who have scrolled past.
- Likes and new followers: it's good when they go up, but a like doesn't book a table.
- Engagement: a mix of comments, saves, shares and accidental taps.
None of this is a lie or useless: it tells you whether the ad is being seen and whether people like the content. The problem is when the report stops there, because then what you're being shown is activity, not results.
The ones that do count
These four are the ones we look at first when we open a client's account:
- Taps on the phone number or WhatsApp. Someone who taps to call you is one step away from a table. It's the closest number to the till that exists in digital.
- Direction requests on Google Maps. Literally, people who have put your restaurant into their car's satnav. In hospitality, this is worth its weight in gold.
- Conversations started. New conversations: bookings, group enquiries, allergies, opening hours.
- Online bookings, if you have a website or booking system. It's the only figure that lets you calculate a real return.
If your report doesn't include any of these four, it isn't a report: it's a screenshot.
Cost per result, the one that calls the shots
Once you know how many messages or calls have come in, the next number is easy: divide what you've spent by what's come in. That's your cost per result.
If you've spent €200 and 40 messages have come in, each conversation has cost you €5. From there you only need to know one thing that we can't know: how many of those conversations end up at a table, and how much a table spends on average at your venue. With those two figures of yours, in two minutes you know whether the campaign is making or losing money.
You can do that sum yourself, and we recommend you do. It's what turns marketing into a business decision rather than an act of faith.
What can't be measured, and needs saying
Nobody can measure precisely the customer who saw your ad on Tuesday, did nothing, and turned up on Saturday without saying where they'd come from. In hospitality, that customer is a huge part of the return, and they don't appear on any dashboard.
Anyone who presents you with an exact revenue figure generated by Instagram is estimating it, even if they don't say so. We'd rather say it: this is what's measured, this is what's estimated, and this nobody knows.
How your report should be put together
- Comparison with the previous month, always. A number on its own means nothing.
- Ad spend separate from fees, so you know how much has gone on the ads.
- A sentence under each table explaining what it means.
- A proposal for the following month, presented as a proposal and not as a done deal.
And above all: written in your language and in plain words. If you need someone to translate the report on your own business, the report is badly done.