Why It Absolutely Pays To Pay For Customers
The simple sum that makes marketing stop feeling like a gamble.
You won’t run the ads. You resent the commission the booking platforms take. You knock the midweek offer on the head before it even starts. And every time, the reason is the same: it feels too expensive.
The operators who are growing aren’t braver than you, and they’re not made of money. They’ve simply worked out one number, and that number turns the whole thing on its head. They’re not spending money on customers. They’re buying profit, usually at a hefty discount. Once you see how, you’ll struggle to see it any other way.
The question you should actually be asking
Most operators ask themselves: “Can I afford to spend £10 to get a booking?” It’s the wrong question, and it’s the reason the spending feels frightening.
The right question is: “If that booking lands after I’ve already covered my fixed costs for the week, what’s it actually worth to me?” That’s a completely different sum, because a sale you make once the rent and wages are paid is nearly all profit. You’re not paying the bills again. You’re just taking money on top of them.
Say your average table spends £100, and you keep 70p in every pound once your costs are covered. That table is worth £70 in profit to you. Which means you could spend £20, £30, even £40 to get that table through the door and still walk away well ahead. Suddenly “spend £10 to get a booking” isn’t frightening at all. It’s one of the best-value things you could possibly do with a tenner.
And that’s only counting one visit
That £70 assumes the customer comes once and never returns. But a regular isn’t one visit. They’re a stream of visits, month after month.
Say that same couple comes back once a month and spends £80 each time. At 70p in the pound, that’s about £56 of profit a visit, roughly £670 a year. Suddenly the £20 or £30 it took to win them in the first place looks like nothing at all. The operator who only counts the first visit will never spend enough to grow. The one who counts the whole year spends confidently, because they know what they’re really buying.
Be honest with the numbers, of course. Not every first-timer becomes a regular, so don’t treat them all as if they will. But the point holds: value a customer at a single visit and you’ll always undersell what you can afford to spend.
Why the growing venues spend without flinching
This is why the operators who grow, year in year out, run the ads, pay the platform commission without blinking, and fill their quiet midweek slots with offers. They’re not throwing money around and hoping. They’ve done the maths. They know what a customer is worth to them once their costs are covered, and they know that paying a fraction of that to get one through the door is simply good business.
The commission the booking platforms take stings a lot less when you see it for what it is: a cost of getting a customer who’s worth many times more. The honest question isn’t “how do I avoid paying it?” It’s “is this bringing me people I’d never have reached otherwise?” If it is, it’s earning its keep. If it’s just charging you for regulars who’d have walked in anyway, that’s a different story.
One honest thing worth saying
None of this works if the business underneath it doesn’t. If your venue is struggling because the food isn’t right or the service is slow, marketing won’t save it. All it’ll do is fill the place with people who leave disappointed and never come back, and you’ll have paid for the privilege of showing more people your bad side.
So get the basics right first. Then, and only then, spend to fill the place, knowing that every customer you bring in is worth far more to you than it costs to get them. Marketing stops feeling like a gamble the moment you know your numbers. It just becomes buying profit, at a price you’re happy to pay.
Want to know what a customer is really worth to you, and what you can afford to spend to win one? Talk to Truli. No sales pitch, just an honest run through your numbers.
truli.co.uk | 01580 231 880
