What Are Your Restaurant KPIs? Here’s How to Get Started!
We talk about tracking your data with your restaurant technology, but let’s talk about other metrics. Is your restaurant sending out emails? If so, how are they doing? Is your restaurant on social media? Does your restaurant have a website? When it comes to your restaurant’s marketing strategies, these items are key performance indicators or KPIs. By definition, key performance indicators are “critical indicators of progress toward an intended result.” Depending on the marketing goal of your restaurant, you can set your KPIs as you choose. Use this article as a guide to track the performance of your marketing strategies using our handy restaurant KPI spreadsheet.
Let’s Start at the Beginning
When it comes to marketing your restaurant, you should pattern your strategy based on your marketing goals. As you choose your restaurant KPIs, create actionable goals by making them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART):
- Specific – What exactly will the KPI measure?
- Measurable – To what standard is the indicator measured?
- Achievable – Is it realistic? Can it be tracked?
- Relevant – Is it essential to your restaurant’s goals?
- Time-Bound – In what timeframe do you want to accomplish this goal?
An example of a SMART goal to create the foundation of setting your KPIs would be to “increase the amount of converted customer traffic from the website by 20% by Q4 2021.”
Quick tip: choose the number of KPIs based on the number of goals you want to track. Don’t choose too many; you’ll get overwhelmed by too much data and no real strategy. Need more of a nudge? Check out these tips to write out your KPIs!
Setting SMART Goals
Let’s say that the team at Danny’s Diner is setting goals for 2021. They’ve decided that they want to track and develop key performance indicators for their marketing efforts. After several meetings, they set their marketing goals for the year. In the coming year, they hope to see:
- A 10% increase in website traffic by 2021 Q3
- A follower increase of 25% across social media platforms by the end of 2021 Q3
- An average CTR of 10% on email campaigns sent through the end of 2021
- 150 clicks on internet ad campaigns by 2021 Q4
- 5% of customer traffic from social media that used promotions in-store or online by Q2 2021
Danny wants an easy-to-read document to track these KPIs every month:
- Social media – Across the eligible platforms, including Facebook and Twitter based on followers and engagements.
- Website – Looking at traffic from pages including menu, coupons, news, and homepage through specific tracking links.
- Emails – Through designated lists to send promos to customers that have provided their data via visits and online orders.
- Ads – Depending on where the ads have been placed and tracking impressions, clicks, and cost per click or impression.
He created a spreadsheet set up with these parameters to track the elements above. Through these restaurant KPIs, Danny examined and analyzed the monthly data and made improvements based on his findings. He strategically revamped his marketing efforts and headed in the right direction towards his marketing goals for 2021.
How to Use The Spreadsheet
Tracking your restaurant KPIs sounds daunting, but you can effectively keep track of your data with a spreadsheet and your social media platforms. Split your spreadsheet into categories. We’ve divided our worksheet into the following categories:
- Social Media
- Emails
- Website
- Ads
Keep in mind that your spreadsheet categories may vary depending on which KPIs you choose for your business.
Section 1: Social Media
Depending on which social platform you use, list them in this section. Based on each of the platforms, how often are people engaging with the account? These are your shares, likes, and comments. How many people are following this account? How many people are seeing this account? These are your impressions, or how many people have seen or can (potentially) see this account.
If your restaurant is on Twitter, make that the first column in this section. Within that column, there will be your rows: impressions, engagements, and followers. On Facebook, you can find your analytics as a business page. On Twitter, you’ll find impressions and engagement information under the analytics tab on the side of the screen when you log into your account. LinkedIn and Instagram also provide analytics with accounts. It’s the easiest to find follower information because that information is usually available when you log into your social account.
For the next columns in this category, each month should be the column headers. Formatting the spreadsheet this way allows the eye to track the data linearly.
Section 2: Emails
In your second section, we suggest splitting the first column into the specific email campaigns. For example, if you’re running a holiday email campaign, then in the first column of your email sent out in that campaign. Separate the campaigns with a blank row for a more efficient organization.
Your other columns are the data from those email campaigns. The second column lists the Click Through Rate or number of times recipients clicked the emails’ links within a campaign. The third column shows the Open Rate or number of people that have opened the email. The fourth column is the Unsubscribe rate. How many people have unsubscribed from receiving emails? Finally, the fifth column is the list size or the number of people who received the email.
Section 3: Website
When it comes to your website, there is no question of whether you should have one. In this section, it’s all about traffic and time spent on the page. The first column should list each page of your website, including the homepage, menu, contact page, etc. The second column should list the number of users that visited that page. Next, list your page views. In your fourth column, track the bounce rate, or the visitors that looked at only one page on your website and then left without viewing any other page. The fifth column in the website section is time-on-page. How long have visitors spent on these pages or viewing your website?
To track this data, we recommend Google Analytics or using the analytics on the platform used to create your website. These platforms can include WordPress and Wix.
Section 4: Ads
This section is highly contingent on whether or not your restaurant is paying for advertising. For this template, we’ve split the first column to include different categories: social media, internet, and television. Between each category in the first column, leave rows of space for the number of ads in that category. Moving to the second column, list Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or how much you will be paying when someone clicks on your ad. PPC can be found on the ad platform, like a search engine. In your third column, list clicks or the number of times people clicked the links. In the fourth column, views consist of the number of times people have seen your ads. Your fifth column would list conversions, or the number of people that clicked on your ad and then performed a specific action, like calling to set up a demo, from that ad. Lastly, your impressions are in your sixth column. Impressions are not to be confused with views. Impressions are the number of people that have the potential to see your ad as it sits on the screen.
You can track your ad data using channels like Google Ads for PPC. For social media ads, when you create an ad on the platform, you’re also able to find the analytics for those ads within the social platform.
Remember, our worksheet is simply a template. You can customize each section based on the needs of your business and your SMART goals. Do what works best for you and your business!
Take Your Data Further
You’ve compiled all of your data, and you’ve created your spreadsheet, but how can you take it further? Chart your restaurant KPIs monthly to create a larger picture and give yourself more room to make changes. Since you’ve created the basis of your tracking for your spreadsheet, you can create tabs for each month or each quarter.
For better visualizations of your data, we recommend using charts. Bar graphs allow for efficient, high-level comparisons and can be used to see your data breakdown by months. Your email campaigns may be the best way to display emails per campaign based on the number of emails sent per campaign. Line graphs show change through increases or decreases over time. Since social media includes different factors, line graphs are effective. Pie graphs show portions of a whole. Therefore, your ad tracking may be best illustrated with a pie chart since there are different pieces of ads. Make it a little more granular with each ad category within the first column.
Put Your Restaurant KPIs to Use
Monthly KPI tracking is great, but what do you do with that data? Apply your data to the SMART goals you set and improve your marketing strategy as necessary. Keeping track of your data every month allows for a clear picture over time. Maintain focus on your SMART goals and progress from there. Beginning your look at your data in February may not bring anything to light, but you may see a negative or positive trend in your marketing efforts in September.
Over five months, you’ve seen your Twitter followers grow by 15 percent. That’s great! However, your engagements have been remaining steady at a few likes per post. What do you do because you want to see your engagements improve by 10% by the end of the year? Put your data under the microscope. Take a hard look at your top-performing posts within the timeframe. What kind of content performed best? What content had the highest engagements? Are you posting content regularly? Use that content as a model and revamp your strategy. Try to add in similar content for the future and post more regularly. Keep an eye on your engagements and tweak as necessary. Your data should push you into action to improve and reach new audiences.
In Conclusion
When it comes to your restaurant KPIs, they are not “one size fits all.” What are your marketing goals? Remember to make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART). From there, decide which KPIs you want to track and determine when you want to check your data. Your KPIs are dynamic data points or data that is constantly changing and can be improved regularly once you reach your goals – set more of them! Just like Danny’s Diner, your KPIs need to fit your marketing goals. Be specific and intentional in all of your business efforts. Marketing your restaurant is a process.
Subscribe to the blog for more interesting restaurant content!
Leave a Reply