Archive for the ‘Membership’ Category

Why club members are everything

By Nigel Rawlins | Tuesday 4:12pm 17/08/2010 | No comments

My mum keeps her free coffee vouchers and her ‘buy one get one free’ offers from her local club. Then gets together with some of her friends for a lunch and off they go.

Happy crowds
One Friday I went to catch up with her at her local club, the place was packed with people having a great old time. They were happy and a noisy crowd. There must of been a couple of hundred of them. It took me awhile to find her in the crowd, then ages to say hello to all her friends.

What’s the offer?
Another club I visited was as dead as a door-nail. I was hungry and nearby, so went in for lunch. I chatted to the manager and he told me that night there’d be a couple of hundred diners because they were having a specials night. Their members respond to the club offers -so where was the lunch time offer for their members or visitors?

Why are club members everything?
Because they like your club. They like the people, the food, the venue, the staff, the friendly atmosphere. They’re prepared to give the club a go, will forgive the odd stuff-up and more. They visit your club regularly and spend money. They respond to direct mail sent to them by the club.

Victorian clubs in 2012
Come 2012 Clubs in Victoria will change – venues with EGM’s won’t be able to advertise this fact so how do people find out where they are? No more Tabaret or Tattspokies signage to tell them. It’s now pretty obvious what you will have to do and you need to get working on this now – if you want a busy venue, grow your membership base and send them offers they want to use. Think food.

What’s it mean for pubs?
For the pubs this means getting a database up and running and spending the money to contact them. Especially if they are regulars. Members or regulars will respond to offers, so keep them coming back and build up their loyalty to your venue.

Tell me what you think in the comments section below.

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

Posted in Bistro, Clubs & Pubs, direct mail, Food, Membership, Restaurant, Revenue
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What is marketing?

By Nigel Rawlins | Friday 10:51am 04/06/2010 | No comments

What is marketing?
Marketing is the only business of a club or pub. It’s all about attracting customers, retaining them and getting them to return. It’s a whole lot more than just advertising. For a club or pub this might be creating a great atmosphere, a friendly place to visit for a drink or feed, great value meals, a choice of entertainment or interesting events to come along to. Who makes the choice? The customer.




Planning a Marketing Strategy for a Club or Pub
All of the following points need to be considered in planning a marketing strategy:

  • Strategic thinking
  • Competitors
  • Opportunities & ideas
  • Pricing your offers
  • Target revenue, budgets & profitability
  • Determining customer needs and wants
  • Making a promise to deliver to your customers
  • Positioning your venue
  • Segmenting customers
  • Targeting & attracting customers
  • Retention & loyalty building
  • Making it happen

Then you’ve got to keep making it happen, over and over again.

What do you think?

cheers
Nigel Rawlins




Posted in Advertising, Clubs & Pubs, Customer needs, Database, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Membership, Planning Ahead, Revenue, Strategic thinking, Strategy
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Money follows success – Club or Pub Revenues

By Nigel Rawlins | Friday 11:37am 21/05/2010 | No comments

Success!Money follows success
Meaning be good at what you do and your customers will reward you. Chase money and it won’t necessarily lead to success. Worth thinking about. Clubs need lots of revenue to cover fixed costs, variable costs and to provide funds for growth along with community dividends. The more successful your club or pub the more members or customers are attracted and greater revenue generated.

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

Posted in Clubs & Pubs, Costs, Membership, Revenue, Strategy
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Get Serious, Budget for Serious Club Marketing

By Nigel Rawlins | Thursday 10:05pm 22/04/2010 | No comments



club marketing budgets

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

Posted in Advertising, Costs, Graphic Design, Marketing, Membership, Revenue
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Club members are worth their weight in gold

By Nigel Rawlins | Thursday 6:24pm 15/04/2010 | No comments


Members are worth their weight in goldVictorian Clubs and Pubs with EGM’s (electronic gaming machines) are soon to face massive changes in the way they operate and promote their venues. No longer will they have a big sign out the front advertising that Tabaret or Tattspokies gaming machines are inside. New regulations will prohibit any indication that EGM’s exist in the venue.

Clubs with EGM’s- more than just Pokie Venues
Clubs run bistros, bars, entertainment/events and function centres that need promoting and good management. In the past Tabaret or Tattspokies helped with promoting and advertising the venue. Now it is down to clubs. That requires new ways of thinking about how to promote your venue. The

Posted in Customer Service, Marketing, Membership, Uncategorized
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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

Who’s advertising?

By Nigel Rawlins | Monday 12:55pm 27/04/2009 | No comments

The economy may be down but that doesn’t mean people aren’t spending money.
They still make choices about products to buy and the biggest advertisers want them to spend it in their stores.

Take a few moments to answers these questions:
When you’re driving and you feel hungry – which fast food restaurant do you look for?
You want to buy a TV or some furniture – which retailer do you visit?
Looking for shampoo – which brand do you look for?
You’re after some hardware – which store do you visit?
You need internet – what comes to mind?

There’s a big chance you chose products from some of the biggest spenders on advertising.

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Membership, Planning Ahead, Uncategorized
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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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