This article aims to help you answer the important question: How can I assess the performance of your social media tactics, both free and paid? The answer is quite simple – you need to use KPIs (key performance indicators). These are some of the restaurant marketing KPIs – key performance indicators – that marketers, managers and owners should keep an eye on! #onlinecustomercare

And, there are 5 main categories of restaurant marketing KPIs that you need to consider when assessing your performance online:

1. Engagement
2. Reach
3. Leads
4. Conversions
5. Customer Sentiment​

1. Engagement

Engagement is perhaps the most important restaurant marketing Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for your campaigns. Why? Because while the size of your audience can be less important for restaurants where you’ll usually be targeting a smaller area, what really matters is whether or not your audience is engaged.

Engagement measures the number of shares, likes, subscribers, retweets or comments that your updates receive. By having a high reach, but low engagement rate, it means that your marketing message does not resonate with your audience. Reaching thousands of people is pointless if they are not able to visit you, or are interested in what you have to offer.

Because restaurants are mostly local, with a few exceptions, a small audience that engages with you is much better than a huge audience that does not share, comments or likes your posts.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social media platforms perceive engagement as a sign of popularity and quality. Thus, the higher your post engagement, the higher the chances to rank high in the social media SERPs. Some posts may even appear on the first pages on Google and Bing.

The actual restaurant marketing KPIs you can measure in the engagement category vary by social media platform, but typically include the following:

• Likes: This KPI is important for your restaurant’s success online. New restaurant many users will naturally gravitate towards restaurant pages that are more popular, likes increase their attention and boost your overall performance. Moreover, pages or posts with more likes are perceived as being more important by social platforms.🚀Resto Pro-Tip: Try to get more likes by developing a smart social media strategy and by crafting a great page, posting high-quality content, hosting Facebook contests, running Facebook ads and using the Facebook algorithm in your advantage.
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• Clicks: Link clicks show the relevancy of your images and call-to-action messages. While raving fans will click on everything you share, the vast majority of new people who see your posts will only click on really interesting stuff. Resto Pro-Tip: To get more clicks, fine-tune your posts and ads, including relevant, high-quality images and catchy titles and call-to-actions.
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• Shares: Social media shares are a very important part of the social restaurant marketing KPIs to follow. They are more important than likes because they show that a user is so interested in what you provide that they are willing to share the post on their own timeline. When someone shares your post, or for that matter retweets or re-vines it, they are personally recommending it to their peers. That says something about the quality of your posts.
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• Comments: The whole point of social media is to get people to interact with you and to talk to you. The best way to do that is through comments. Relevant content always sparks a new conversation. Sometimes, even a critical comment is better than nothing. Getting comments is a strong signal that you are hitting all the right points of interest in your target niche.
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• Brand Mentions: A brand mention is a tag which shows how many people are having a conversation about a certain brand. Twitter is famous for this, but you can also find brand mentions on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you are starting a new campaign, create a new hashtag for your brand and use it to measure your impact on social media. A high number of brand mentions show that you are capable of maintaining top-of-mind awareness in your niche.
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• NPS: The Net Promoter Score or NPS is an old metric that is slowly making its way into the restaurant industry. NPS measures how many detractors you have and why they’re not happy with your services. NPS could still be useful, especially for businesses that want to invest in their long-term growth & development.

2. Reach

Although reach might be considered an old-school metric, it is still quite important today. This indicates how far your messages are reaching, and also how fast they travel. In the hugeness of social media world, reach is very important at keeping track of your efforts.

• Followers/fans: the total number of people who are following your brand on social media might indicate your actual reach.
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• Impressions: The number of impressions for your paid ads and organic posts is also very important. You need to reach as many people as necessary if you want to be relevant and to boost your brand awareness. With impressions, it means that a certain number of people had a chance to look at your ad. The engagement rate comes next, representing the number of people who took an action versus the total number of views.🚀Resto Pro-Tip:To boost impressions, you need to craft high-quality messages and select visually appealing photos. For Ads, you have to bid for CPM (Cost per One Thousand Impressions). This will ensure that your ad will be showed to as many people as possible.
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• Traffic Data: Now this is the fun part. You need to use Google Analytics, together with other Social Media Analytics tools, in order to track how many traffic you get from social media. If you are investing a good amount of time on SMM (Social Media Marketing), you are probably willing to ensure that the traffic data reflects that.

3. Leads

Now that your social media account is getting traction and you are getting good reach and engagement, it is time to move to the next step and think of how your business can make a profit out of this. In order to ensure you are getting the highest ROI (Return on Investment) from your social media efforts, you need to take a closer look at your leads.

Measuring lead generation is most easily done via Google Analytics. In case you are not making any leads from social media efforts, you are either focusing on the wrong platform, or your content is not as engaging as it should be to the end-user.

4. Conversion

The last step of the funnel is to transform your leads into customers.

So, while most of your social media posts should be focused on providing value to your prospects and having a conversation with them, sometimes you need to ask something in return. When that time comes,  Facebook ads and especially Lead Ads, are your best bet.

In the end, sales are all that matter. Pay attention to which social media channels bring in the highest number of customers and invest your budget in those channels, rather than creating campaigns on all social media platforms.

Once you know who you want to target, you must reach out on social media, with flyers, through promotions, with radio spots – however, you want to make it happen, you have to reach new customers and attract previous guests back into your location.
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5. Customer Sentiment

The way your customers see you is one of the most important factors in determining how well your restaurant is performing. Monitor all your reviews on the different online sites – Facebook, TripAdvisor, Google My Business, Yelp, etc. and other relevant platforms, like OpenTable, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Takeaway.com – essentially anywhere your customers are talking about, and potential customers are reading about you.

Consider leaving feedback cards on the table – perhaps with a small incentive such as a five per cent discount or a free drink on their next visit – if you’re not getting enough feedback.

Customer feedback is a great one, out of the restaurant marketing KPIs bundle, because it allows you to go straight to the source. Your patrons will let you know what they like and what’s not up-to-scratch so you can play to your strengths and look for ways to improve.

It can take a lot of work to pull that data out and it can be difficult to quantify sometimes, but if a customer isn’t satisfied with service and they ordered, you need to know that. And, this is where AreTheyHappy can help you.

Hope you found this useful! Let us know what are your go-to restaurant marketing KPIs when you start your day. Also, if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions… or just feel like a chat, we are here!

Send an email to [email protected] or click on the little support chatbox on the lower right side of your screen. 🙌  Thank you to the AreTheyHappy community. We appreciate your feedback! 😎

See more:

• AreTheyHappy 101: Essential Restaurant KPIs every Business Owner should know!
• 14 Facts and Figures about Online Reviews every Restaurant Owner should read
• How to Respond to a Positive Review?
• What is the Online Reputation Management Cycle and why does it matter?
• Major Google My Business 2020 Updates. Why should restaurants care?