Ovation Bistro & Bar meets new meat fans with Adentro

Ovation Bistro & Bar is a three-location, family-owned smokehouse. Their fall-off-the-bone ribs and in-house smoked meats earned them the title of “Best Smokehouse in Central Florida.” The staff always leaves customers with the feeling they’ve been dining with friends. It’s exactly the vibe you want when you’re enjoying legit Southern barbecue.

Owners, and brothers, Joel and Fernando Rodriguez opened the business after spending several years as managing partners at an Australian themed steakhouse. Their focus is on creating a quality dining experience, but they are also versed in what it takes to market and scale a business.

Challenge: trimming the fat from marketing

Even with the best food, drinks and service possible, getting new customers into a restaurant can be a struggle. For many businesses of Ovation’s size, marketing is either an afterthought or a mystery. Joel’s background gave him a leg up on strategy, though. He runs Yelp ads, print ads, radio and social media campaigns to compete with other chains in the area. His total marketing budget is about $10K a month for all three locations. 

The goal for that budget is simple: bring in new customers. The problem was that Joel wasn’t able to see if any of his marketing programs were actually working, or how well. To spend his budget as effectively as possible, he wants to direct spending to programs that bring in customers at the lowest possible cost. 

Solution: pairing ad spend with results

Joel started using Adentro to attract new customers. He wanted to have a way to bring more discipline to his budget and accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) of his ad spend. He started at a single location with a budget of $1K. The campaign he ran was a happy hour promotion featuring “The Best Happy Hour in Lakeland.” They followed this with campaigns at their other locations. 

With Adentro, success is measured by looking at the Walk-Through Rate™, the number of people who walk in after seeing an ad. Joel was able to calculate campaign ROI to know if they had made a good investment because the Walk-Through Rate is a trackable metric that ties ads to visits. With it, you can see your investment walking in the door.

“I’m a busy guy, but I’ll take time to promote this product. It works. It has the highest ROI of all my marketing programs.”

Joel Rodriguez, Owner, Ovation Bistro & Bar

Results: nice to meat you

Ovation’s first $1K campaign drove in 245 new customers in one month. Thanks to the Walk-Through Rate, Joel can count on this number. The cost to acquire each new customer was just $4.08. These customers spent an average of $29, which translates to a return on ad spend (ROAS) of more than 6x.

Joel’s happiness with the program is best summed up by a short email he sent our way: “I’m a busy guy, but I’ll take time to promote this product. It works. It has the highest ROI of all my marketing programs.” Soon after, he expanded his Adentro spend to more than 60% of his total budget because the program performs so well.