The usual answer is a percentage of revenue, which is useless if you do not know where to put it. Here is the more practical version.
The percentage, and why it is not enough
The standard guidance is 3 to 6 percent of revenue. For a restaurant doing $1.5M that is $45,000 to $90,000 a year. True as far as it goes, but it does not tell you what to fix first, and fixing the right thing first is most of the return.
Where a restaurant should spend first
Fix being found before anything else
If someone within a mile searches for what you serve and you are not in the map box, no amount of content solves that. Google listing, categories, hours, photos and reviews come first, and they are the cheapest part.
Paid social works badly as a first move and well as a last one.
Then fix the looking
Once people find you, the deciding happens in about ten seconds of photos. Bad food photography loses more covers than most owners realise. This is where a shoot pays for itself.
Then buy the quiet nights
Paid social is best used surgically — a slow Monday, a new menu, a private dining room sitting empty. One of our restaurant clients took Mondays from around $600 to over $3,000 doing exactly that.
How to tell whether it is working
Not likes. Covers, takings on the day you targeted, and enquiries for private dining. If your marketing cannot be tied to one of those, you are not measuring it.
The short version: Found, then looking, then filling the quiet nights. In that order, because each one makes the next cheaper.
