Archive for the ‘Clubs & Pubs’ Category

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Make your local advertising work with less words

By Nigel Rawlins | Thursday 9:07pm 04/02/2010 | No comments

Club Newspaper Advertising How many words in an Ad?

Looking through my local free paper last week I noticed three quarter page ads for venues selling meals. Counting the words in the ads I found that Ad One had 40 words, Ad Two 56 while Ad Three had 132. This included phone numbers, any pricing and telephone numbers.

Free newspapers sell advertising space

Free newspapers live and die on their ability to sell advertising space. As a rule they are crowded with ads. Small ads are easily lost on the page. Crowded ads too. So why pay around $5-600+ to put 40 words on an ad. Why not 132?

Standing out on a crowded page

Free local newspapers are crowded with ads screaming for attention. Forty words on a quarter page ad is easier to look at due to the white space – that is, space without words. It had pictures instead. Ad two was more effective again with 56 words. With a better design and more real white space without text or images it had one third taken up with an attractive food picture. Attractive enough to draw your eye to it.

What’s makes a good Ad?

On a busy page the first rule is make it easy to be found. One way is through plenty of white space – not by cluttering up the ad with lots of words because you are trying to get value for money. Relevant, attractive images help. Also a headline appealing to your target group – Hungry? Need Money Now? Save Money Now? What’s On? Looking for delicious food and beautiful views? Cheap Meals?

The ad with 40 words was branding a restaurant in general. The 56 word ad was advertising a Valentines Day dinner at a large resort hotel. The ad with 132 words was a club trying to advertise a mixture of themes (club offerings) using seven headlines. It was mixed up and all over the place with different parts of the club competing for attention. Even if this club took out a whole page with the same amount of words the ad still would look crowded.

Club Advertising

When advertising your club it is important to keep the ad simple and focused. Think about what you are trying to advertise. Focus on one theme only and keep the ad simple with plenty of white space and a relevant headline. If you have several themes to advertise consider separate ads or alternate the ads every week. Use relevant and attractive images. Get professional marketing or advertising help to work with you on your advertising – it should more than pay for itself. Don’t leave it to your advertising rep or you’ll continue to waste money like the club described above.


Posted in Advertising, branding, Clubs & Pubs
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Genuine customer service builds brand loyalty

By Nigel Rawlins | Tuesday 6:21pm 13/10/2009 | No comments
Customer Service

Customer Service

We all recognise good customer service. It is when the wait staff know the menu, or when they have eyes in the back of their heads and know you want their attention. It’s when they ask you if you would like another drink or keep your glass of water full. Maybe they just ask if you need something. Even better if they find out you are celebrating an occasion and do everything possible to ensure it goes right.

Poor customer service
We all know poor customer service. You are ignored.

Posted in branding, Clubs & Pubs, Customer Service
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How to get more customers into your club with letterbox advertising

By Nigel Rawlins | Tuesday 10:04pm 22/09/2009 | No comments

Get more customers into your club
If you want more customers visiting your club you need to advertise. However, if you think that you’ll reach them with newspaper advertising alone, think again.

Club advertising is not as effective as household distribution

Club advertising is not as effective as household distribution

Newspaper ads are cluttered
Take a good look at your local paper and you’ll see that it’s cluttered with advertisements. Most are busy with too much wording and irrelevant artwork. If you want your ad to stand out in the newspapers it will need to be large enough to grab the reader’s attention.

Mistakes clubs make with newspaper advertising
I see a lot of small ads, cluttered with text or just down right ugly ones due to poor artwork, often provided free by the newspaper.

Posted in Advertising, Clubs & Pubs, Costs, Design and Illustration, Marketing
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Top 10 advertising tips for clubs

By Nigel Rawlins | Monday 9:42pm 14/09/2009 | No comments

10 Advertising Tips for Clubs

1. Targetted club advertising using household letterbox distribution gets a better response than local newspaper advertising

2. Response rates to targetted club advertising increases with the more households chosen

3. Advertising campaigns over the year work better than a one-off distribution – be in it for the long term!

4. Branding is about consistency of your communication- not just the same colors with your logo added

5. Prove your branding with attention to detail with genuine customer service, cleanliness & great food

6. Think about what your customer wants, not what you want to sell them

7. If you use local advertising – don’t clog the ad with everything that’s happening in your venue, focus on what’s important to your customer

8. Members are important – they are customers who have chosen to join your club – look after them and spend money communicating with them, give them a reason to keep coming back

9. Get a serious marketing and advertising budget & expect increased club revenue

10. If you are not getting increased revenue or getting the results you want, get help now

Nigel Rawlins
13th Beach Marketing

Posted in Advertising, branding, Clubs & Pubs, Costs, Marketing, Membership

How one club brought in an extra $200 000

By Nigel Rawlins | Thursday 12:40pm 02/07/2009 | No comments

My last article was about how much to spend on advertising. I really didn’t give you a figure because it will depend on your margins – the amount of money left after all the relevant costs are paid for.

One of my long term clients moved to a new regional venue with a local population of 8000. There was no consistent entertainment on offer, just the occasional show or musician on either a Friday or Saturday night.

This manager decided to take a risk (mind you he’s repeated this process in every venue he’s managed with great success) and put on a really good band every Friday night for free. Luckily there was a circular bar, so it was easy to manage the bar. However there really was little room for entertainment – yet he squeezed them in.

Let’s look at the maths. Before the entertainers came in bar turnover on a Friday was about $1800 for the night. Once the bands started playing it grew to around $6000 – an increase of $4200. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you have about $200 000. The bands cost from $600 – $1000 per week – so remove $30-40 000 for the year. Advertiser – banners, posters and postcards were about $20 000. Extra staff to run the bar – a circular bar – just one more staff member.

The result – spending $50 – 60 000 brought in an extra $200 000 revenue in the bar alone on a Friday night. The club bistro was booked out every Friday night and gaming revenue was up. However, more people joined as members and came to the club at other times. So the risk he took brought in a considerable increase in revenue for the year.

Increasing your revenue is as simple as that but you have to spend the money and make a commitment to the longer term, don’t just give up after a few weeks if you dont get the response. Give people an excuse to come to your venue and they do.

Posted in Advertising, Clubs & Pubs, Entertainment, Marketing, Revenue
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How much to spend on advertising

By Nigel Rawlins | Monday 9:58pm 15/06/2009 | No comments

Advertising is an important part of your marketing strategy. I will cover strategy another time, but it would be the rare club that didn’t want to get new customers or keep the ones they have.

Right now, it is a lot easier to gain market share, if you have the money to spend. If not, the club or pub with the money stands a good chance of gaining market share and keeping it when things pick up.

To figure out how much to spend on your marketing and advertising, look at your turnover.

Specifically:

1. Total revenue
2. The cost of providing what you offer, food, service, recreation activities etc,
3. The cost of selling- to bring people in, promotions etc
4. The cost of administering your venue – insurances, accounting, administration etc
5. Profit/Loss

The numbers involved are found in your profit and loss statement. If you are providing food, entertainment or leisure activities, there are costs involved. Each activity you provide will have costs with variable margins (money left after costs are covered.) Surplus funds (profit) are used to fund administrative activities and other expenses, for example, capital costs are funded out of profit.

There is a direct correlation between what you spend on selling and revenue. The more effective your advertising spend the more revenue it should bring in. Some say spend 5% of revenue, others 25%. But it will all depend on margins and how you control costs. It may be as low as 1-2% depending on the industry.

The venues I work with advertise regularly, most often with direct mail campaigns with attractive offers. They also look to run monthly in-house promotions, giving customers an excuse to visit their venues. The result of their advertising is observable through revenue growth and that’s the biggest reason they keep doing it.

What do you think?

Feel free to call me on 1300 761 780 or email me at nigel@13thbeachclubsandpubs.com

cheers

Nigel Rawlins,
13th Beach Marketing Services Pty Ltd


Posted in Advertising, Clubs & Pubs, Costs, Marketing, Revenue, Strategy

Celebrate with your members and attract new ones

By Nigel Rawlins | Wednesday 10:19am 22/04/2009 | No comments

Celebrations are great opportunities to attract new customers and invite your current ones to join in.

Posted in Advertising, Celebrations, Clubs & Pubs, Marketing, Planning Ahead

members are loyal customers, don’t lose them

By Nigel Rawlins | Wednesday 9:54am 22/04/2009 | No comments

Recently a club asked me to design a campaign to attract new members. Easy to do, but their social membership cost about $30. That’s ok if you get more than $30+ in benefits immediately, but not if it takes over a year. Right now people are being careful with their money and $30 up front is probably just too much without instant gratification.

Why isn’t social membership either $5 or $10? Would you treat them any differently from a member who pays $30? I hope not. If someone pays you $5 or $10 for the opportunity to get them to visit your venue regularly it’s a bargain! Think about it, even if they only come in once a month for a meal and buy a few drinks they’re choosing your venue over another and secondly giving you the chance to retain their loyalty, cross-sell and upsell to them.

We’ve organised many successful letterbox drops to attract new members and visitors to clubs and pubs, they’re affordable and work well over several months, but it is a shot gun approach compared to a targeted offer to members.

Just some thoughts – I’d like to hear your opinion – just add a comment.

cheers

Nigel Rawlins

Posted in Advertising, Clubs & Pubs, Marketing, Membership

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