Members are your lifeblood
In reading my articles you’ll notice that I firmly believe that members are the lifeblood of every club. For pubs think loyal followers. Members are loyal, they give you their contact details and visit regularly. They bring their friends, they go along to your shows and participate in other activities. They’re interested in your venue and what’s going on. Is it really that hard to figure out what you have to do to be successful? Getting members, getting them into the venue and getting them to keep coming back is your ultimate measure of success.

Two thing to do
That means all you have to do are two things. Keep your members happy and attract new ones. Marketing is where decisions are made about what it takes to keep your members happy and attract new ones, or for the pubs, customers. Your marketing budget is directly tied to your club or pub revenue and must reflect this.

What’s it worth?
How much should you spend on members? To start with you have to do some simple arithmetic. To keep things simple let’s start with 1000 members. How much do your members on average spend in the venue each year? If they spend for an example, $20 per week, that’s about $1000 a year. 1000 members spending $20 per week is a $1 million. What if they spend $40 or $50 more per week? Now imagine lots more members? What if we get them to buy an extra drink, or come along to a new show or special event like Bastille Day, American Independence Day or any other promotion you use to attract members. What happens then?

Grow
Your marketing budget is tied directly to revenue and should be percentage of this based on your margins. Margins for food, entertainment or other activities vary, so you will have to work out a percentage that works for your venue. Meaning your marketing budget may vary. However, you will not grow, attract new members or keep them if you do not pay attention to the things that make you successful. Your marketing spend is to keep reminding them of your club or pub and giving them all the good reasons to keep coming back.

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

Marketing Budgets

Start with a mission
What does your club stand for? A great place for your members to visit? Delicious food, and great service? Effective fund raising to support community groups? A mission provides direction and motivation to achieve it.

Setting a target
Club revenues can fluctuate according to the season, holidays and other factors. Even so, is

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.

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

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