A question on the Q&A site Quora, “What are the KPIs for a Sports Bar in 2017?“, prompted a revisit of the G.E.R.M. model for phasing your success tracking metrics.

Here’s the G.E.R.M. inspired answer:

G = Getting Going

• are we putting on our target number of sports viewing events in the categories we’re focusing on – e.g. # major events per month

E= Engagement

• are our audience enjoying the experience. – e.g. can we count/estimate dwell time, whether they are repeat visiting

R = Reach

• are people bringing friends? how many parties have we accepted each month? is overall footfall increasing?

M = Monetisation

• is spend on food and drinks increasing? are people tweeting and sharing their experience online (this is a form of monetisation as they are effectively doing your advertising for you – “earned media”)

Importantly with any G.E.R.M. success tracking program – it is vital to focus only on the metrics of one phase at a time – there is no point in working on Reach if you don’t have Engagement.

At a recent meetup, I found one e-commerce entrepreneur making that very mistake, this time in a costly way. He was shelling out hundreds of pounds a day for Adwords without first ensuring that his conversion rate was sufficient to make it worth it. Without a good conversion rate (akin here to an engagement metric) on your sample cohort there is no point in growing your advertising spend to reach a larger  group – you’ll just get the same dismal conversion rate but with a larger number of people.