We have the ability to track our marketing with many free and paid tools.  We can work smarter with our spends and the return on investment for each dollar we output in marketing, with the dollars incoming from those campaigns.

Can you track a billboard ad and how many people viewed the ad, then made a reservation at your restaurant?  Most likely no, unless you are using a call tracking system like Call Rail with special phone numbers exclusively in each billboard to track calls.  Even then, billboards on major highways cost $2000 – $5000 per month, plus $1500-$2000 every time you want to change the ad.

Lets say your marketing budget is 5% of your gross sales.  That $2000 billboard should return 20X in sales per month or $40,000 in sales.  If your average sale is $50, it will take 800 new customers for the billboard to meet your necessary ROI.  The problem is, you’ll never know if that billboard sends 800 customers.  You WILL, however, feel cool when your friends call and say they saw the billboard while speeding down the highway.  You WILL spend lots of money and never be able to collect data or get smarter about your customers and audience.  Unless you are a large company trying to brand like Coca Cola, you will need to focus on results and generating sales.

Above is the formula for 2017 marketing.  Only spend money on targeting your defined audience.  Why waste money on a billboard or radio commercial that broadcast to millions of people over hundreds of miles when your target audience is tens of thousands within ten miles.  Pinpoint your marketing.

Oh, and by the way, you can change your ads any time and as often as you wish.  Unlike a billboard which costs $2000 if you want to change the image or text, your facebook or google ad can be updated almost immediately, at no extra cost.

If there is one thing you need to do with your marketing this year, its tracking and score carding the efforts.  You have to define goals.  Increasing table reservations, party requests, newsletter subscribers, gift card sales, event tickets, etc.  Then set up your system to track all marketing effort and their impact on your goals.  Everything digital can be tracked to your goals.

Want to start getting smarter about your marketing this year?  Contact us to set up all your tracking and digital marketing campaigns to get the best return on investment in 2017.

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