Archive for the ‘Revenue’ Category

Falling revenue and clubs

By Nigel Rawlins | Monday 2:58pm 30/05/2011 | No comments

Clubs with falling revenue
‘Falling pokies revenue hits RSL clubs hard,’ by Graeme Hammond in the Sunday Herald Sun, May 29, 2011, details the issues facing RSL club revenue: financial pressures, an ageing membership base & poor management. This was leading to closures, mergers or loans from Anzac House to assist redevelopment.

One suburban sub-branch treasurer suggested that the problem was often ‘the sheer incompetence of the local elected committees… and that unless they get people with business acumen on committees, many clubs would go to the wall.’

Another point made in the article by the RSL State President, Maj-General David McLachlan was that gaming was not the primary focus of  clubs but that it: ‘…provides us with the resources to carry out our primary role of welfare, commemoration and comradeship.’

What to do about falling revenue in the RSL clubs and other clubs?
Attracting committee members with business acumen to help improve club revenue is a good idea. But what sort of business experience would help? How long will this process take? Especially if things are in bad shape? Possibly far too long!

A couple of suggestions for clubs with falling revenue:

Do nothing
The worst thing would be to do nothing and hope that things improve. They won’t. The bluntest suggestion I can make is to close now and pay out staff entitlements while you can, or

Do something
A better alternative might be to take a good hard look at what you can do right now, aiming to halt the revenue loss, start to regain it, plan and implement growth strategies for the future, reinvigorate membership and gain greater support from the local community.

Club managers or board members are welcome to call me on 0418 541 025 or email if I can be of assistance. Another alternative is to sign up for our upcoming webinar showing what a very saavy club competitor is doing to improve their revenue. Have a look at our confidential online webinar

cheers
Nigel Rawlins
13th Beach Marketing

Posted in branding, Clubs & Pubs, Planning Ahead, Revenue

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
Tags: , ,

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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customer obsessed companies

By Nigel Rawlins | Thursday 9:57am 23/07/2009 | No comments

Seth Godin,

Posted in Marketing, Planning Ahead, Revenue, Strategy

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

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