Marketing · 6 min read

Judge restaurant marketing by seated covers, not clicks

Follow each campaign through the booking to the attended visit, and send that outcome back to your ad platforms.

In this article:

A click is not a guest
Choose the deepest event you can trust
Calculate cost per seated guest
Send outcomes back with consent
Look beyond the first visit

A click is not a guest

Clicks, booking requests, confirmed bookings, attended covers, and returning guests are different events. Ad platforms optimise toward whatever event you send them. If you send clicks, you get cheap clicks. If you send attended visits, the algorithm learns what a real guest looks like.

Choose the deepest event you can trust

For most restaurants, the right outcome is a seated reservation or an attended cover recorded by the host. Define it once, agree on who records it, and check for duplicates. A consistent weaker signal beats an unreliable stronger one.

Calculate cost per seated guest

Divide campaign spend by attended covers that came from that campaign. Compare it with your contribution margin per cover. A 3 USD cost per click can become a 30 USD cost per seated guest once cancellations and no-shows are removed. That is the number to take into the budget meeting.

Send outcomes back with consent

Features such as offline conversion imports and enhanced conversions let you return attended-visit outcomes to ad platforms. Share only the fields needed for measurement, hashed where the platform supports it, and only for guests whose consent covers it.

Look beyond the first visit

The best campaigns bring guests who return. Report 90-day repeat visits by acquisition source alongside cost per seated guest. A channel that looks expensive on first visits may be the cheapest source of regulars.

Put this into practice

Define an attended-cover event with the host team
Tag every booking with its campaign source
Report cost per seated guest per campaign
Compare 90-day repeat rate by acquisition source

See where this fits in the guest journey →

Sources

Google: Enhanced Conversions

Journey context

This article supports the Discover stage

Explore the complete journey to see how this decision connects with the guest experience and the next team handoff.

Explore the guest journey →

Guest experience · 7 min read

Guest lifetime value: loyalty that rewards the right regulars

Reservations · 7 min read

No-shows are a revenue leak. Deposits and reminders close it.

See what this looks like in your venue

Talk through the guest moments and signals that matter most to your team.

Book a demo →