Woody Wu · Marketing Spend Audit for Hospitality · REF WW-MS-01
The Marketing Spend Audit
What your marketing actually buys, from an operator who has paid the invoices.
THE PROBLEM THIS SOLVES
Most restaurant marketing is sold the same way: a new website, a paid social campaign, often radio, and a monthly report full of impressions. It would be the same pitch for a steakhouse, a sushi counter or a dentist.
Part of the reason is structural. Many agencies are paid a share of the media they place, and a website is a project with a fee attached, so the advice leans toward what can be billed. The channels that actually fill a niche dining room now, the map listing, the lists that already rank, the answer a machine gives, the guest who tells a friend, are the ones nobody can mark up. So they rarely come up in the pitch.
WHAT I DO
I put every dollar of your marketing spend next to the evidence of how your guests actually find you: bookings by source, map listing activity, what your reviews say, and what your host stand hears. Then I tell you what to stop, what to keep and what to start.
I work from counts, never from your guest list. No guest's name ever leaves your building.
WHAT YOU GET
1. The spend map.
Twelve months of agency, media, production and website spend by channel, including the agency's share of each.
2. The evidence map.
Bookings by source, map listing searches, calls and direction requests, how guests say they found you in reviews, and how-did-you-hear counts where you keep them, month by month beside the spend.
3. Stop, keep, start.
What to cut and what it saves each month. What is earning and the evidence that says so. What to start, which is usually unbillable and usually cheap.
4. How each recommendation was paid for.
For every channel, how your agency is paid on it. Descriptive, never an accusation. You should know what shaped the advice you were given.
5. What this audit cannot tell you.
Some channels, radio and print among them, leave no trace in booking data. For those I never say stop. I give you a holdout test instead: switch it off for six weeks in a comparable period, and the number that would change your mind.
WHAT I DO NOT DO
I do not sell media, run campaigns, or take a percentage of anything you spend. I take no referral fee from any agency, platform or vendor I mention, and if you ask who should replace your agency, I will say so plainly or not at all.
I will never name your agency in public, and no case study ever identifies a client.
If you are a restaurant in my own city, I will tell you so and point you toward someone good.
THE FEE
One venue: $1,500 CAD, fixed, about one week.
With Findability, so the start list is done properly: $2,000 CAD for both.
As part of a Service Audit: an additional $1,000 CAD.
WHY ME
I have been the client. When I ran my own restaurant I signed the retainers, read the monthly reports and sat through the pitches. I run dining rooms now, so I know what a Tuesday looks like when a campaign did or did not work, and I build the tools that read the evidence, including the one that reads your reviews, with its error rate printed beside it.
THE RECORD SO FAR
The first audits are running now. Anonymised results will be published as they come in. No client and no agency is ever named.
TO COMMISSION AN AUDIT
Tell me roughly what you spend on marketing each month and who does it. That is enough to start.
DIRECT ANSWERS
How do I know if my restaurant marketing agency is worth what I pay?
Put what you spend on each channel next to evidence of how your guests actually find you: bookings by source, your map listing's searches and calls, how reviewers say they found you, and what your host stand hears. Channels with no trace get a six-week holdout test rather than a guess. The Marketing Spend Audit does this in a week, for $1,500 CAD, from an operator who sells no media.
Should a restaurant advertise on radio or Meta?
Sometimes, but most niche restaurants are found through a map listing, a friend, a list article or an AI assistant rather than a broadcast ad. Radio cannot be measured through booking data, so the honest test is to switch it off for six weeks in a comparable period and watch covers and average check.