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Club/Pub Marketing
In the blog-post ‘what is marketing?’ I wrote that marketing is all about the customer and their needs. Looking after those needs is everyone’s business from cleaner to manager in every venue. It starts with a customer promise – the promise you make to your customer about your venue. Great food, great entertainment, friendly staff, value-for-money meal deals, clean toilets, a safe environment, a friendly place to visit etc. Haven’t made a promise? Get some help

Competitors
Every pub or club visitor has a lot of choices. They can eat out anywhere, go out anywhere, stay at home and watch TV, order a home-delivered-pizza, visit friends or have a BBQ. They don’t need to visit your venue. Meaning, your competition is not really the pub or club down the road. It’s the choices your customer is making. That’s why marketing starts with the customer and how you deliver on that promise 24/7.

What do customers see, hear, smell, feel?

External club/pub advertising – newspaper/radio/TV/web/member communication advertising etc give a consistent message hammering home your promise? If you get a new customer does your venue live up to what you advertise?

Internal club/pub advertising – posters, table-talkers, banners, menus, notices etc reinforce the message when they enter or move about your venue? Or do they see meeting notices, out of date event posters, the cheap and nasty posters sent out by some of the entertainers?

Staff -every venue is on show and staff are the front line. Are they attentive to patrons, neat, polite, do they smile, do they know all about the venue and what it stands for, do they tidy as they go and have permission to make decisions to help customers? Does your manager walk the floor, greet members or patrons and model the bahavior they expect their staff to demonstrate?

The following article is still relevant about one of the venues I was working with at the time and what their customers saw as they entered the venue.

sevensteps

1. Marketing is everyone’s business in a pub or club, 24/7

2. The customer is the total focus for the venue

3. Club members, unless you stuff things up, are your best customers

4. Give members & customers lots or reasons to visit

5. Get a serious marketing budget tied to performance

6. There are many ways to attract and retain customers

7. If you are not sure about your marketing, get professional help 6 months ago

8. Don’t copy competitors, it’s already too late

9. Your membership database is worth its weight in gold – use it

10. Don’t look cheap with your advertising, you’ll look like everyone else

11. Think campaigns, not one off advertisements

12. Marketing is sexy, but use professionals who know what they are doing

Did I miss anything?

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

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

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 it that hard to set a target, say an extra $100, 000 pa? That’s about $2000 a week. Another way to look at this is to see it as an average of 200 x $10 meals a week. Roughly 30 a day. How hard is that?

Making it happen
What are you going to do to attract customers? I’d suggest lots, but targeted & budgeted. Think of regular excuses to invite customers and members along to the club. Theme weeks – The Spring Racing Carnival – breakfasts and lunches. Master Chef weeks – cooking demonstrations, cooking gear, recipes, food & wine tastings. Even the Queens Birthday provides an opportunity. Bastille Day provides an excuse to do anything French, the same goes for American Independence Day. Too hard? Certainly is, but what else are you going to do to increase your revenue?

Marketing Budgets
Marketing is more than just advertising – it’s the process of making decisions about how you spend your  budget to meet revenue targets. There’s always a ‘cost of selling‘ to raise revenue. In any club this would include reception staff, promotional costs such as gift baskets for member prizes, members raffles, external and internal advertising and much more. How much would you need to spend to raise an extra $100 000? It depends. Sometimes you might need to spend $10 – $20 000 to raise this, maybe more. Provided it’s thought through it can lead to greater on-going revenue. It all takes careful planning.

Seting realistic budgets & goals
Mission, revenue targets and a realistic plan to make it happen needs money – a budget. Revenue won’t increase without this. Plan out the year, organise what you need and implement the plan. Don’t skimp on things, good graphic design and advertising materials cost money. But, will give you a more consistent branding for your venue than in-house design. It could mean regularly sending out personal invitations to your members or a direct mail campaign into the 10 000 houses surrounding your venue. It’s starts with being true to your mission, setting targets and making it happen. We can help if needed.

Victorian 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  easiest place to start is with your members.

Communicate with your loyal members

Members are loyal, unless you’ve neglected them
Members are suddenly a very attractive proposition. You have their name, address and phone number. You may even have their email address. This means you can contact them directly. Sure, that costs money, especially with several thousand members. Not as much as you might spend trying to attract the same number through advertising in the local print media or radio.Use direct mail to Remember their birthdays, send Christmas Cards, regular member offers, last minute promotions, or unique member offers.

Make it easy to become a club member
How much is a loyal club member worth? Do the maths – a member visiting once a week for a meal and a drink is worth how much over a year?. If they bring family members along to ‘their club‘ then it’s worth a whole lot more. Multiply that by a couple of thousand or more club members and you start to get the picture. How much is that worth? $40 a member per year in direct mail advertising? Maybe a bit more. It’s easier to target club members because they will open email or direct mail from their club.

Looking after your club members
Value them. Discounts and offers are a natural cost of attracting customers. Reward members with special treats, member’s only events or functions. Communicate with them – tell them what’s coming up with promotional posters or table talkers to advertise other events or activities. Then make sure you talk to them, greet them, and guarantee that they’ll have a great time. Every time. Lastly make it easy for them to join up. Don’t charge an arm and a leg to become a social member, make it $10 or $11 and give them back that value as quickly as possible. Don’t string this out by penny pinching or they’ll go elsewhere. Membership is not a means for raising club funds, it’s a legitimate part of attracting customers and a big part of your, new, and urgent, marketing effort for clubs.

Here’s your challenge for the next two years – Double or triple your club membership and keep them. If you need help give me a call.

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

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.

What customers want

There are two ways to think about customers. Your way and their way and what this means to your venue.

If your club or pub bistro serves lunch and dinner 7 days a week chances are you are attracting a  different crowd to the different days and times. What does each group want? It may be a cheap meal offered as a lunch time special or a Pot & Parmi night with their mates. That’s easy.

But do they just want a pot and parmi? Or do they want something more? At this point you need to consider their needs. Do they want a comfortable location, a good view, a safe place, somewhere they won’t get bothered by troublesome people, to be part of a club they are proud of, considerate service, a clean environment, to be greeted with a smile and treated well or more? To find out it’s worth asking them.

Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights attract different needs – maybe they want something a bit more informal, more romantic, more relaxing, casual, a lighter meal selection, or maybe somewhere where they can watch people go by such as Southbank in Melbourne. Have a think about wants and needs. You already know that it’s more than just a cheap meal that will brings customers back. That’s what you want, customers that keep coming back.

Got any tips you’d like to share on this?

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

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.  The wait or bar staff have their back to you and don’t know you’re there. You ask a question and they don’t know the answer. The food is not right, for all sorts of reasons or takes too long without any explanation. Staff are not interested in you.

Competing for customers
Pubs and Clubs compete for customers, but not just from each other.  On a week night it could be the local fish and chip shop. On a Friday or Saturday night it could be a little restaurant a couple of suburbs away, or maybe a home cooked meal. It could even be the movie theatre or a favorite TV show. If you are smart you’ll forget about competitors and concentrate on what you do best, including your own brand of customer service. There are plenty of competitors and they are all chasing customers.

Building an ongoing relationship with your customers
Genuine customer service is in the way you communicate your point of difference. It’s an opportunity to assist customers have a positive experience and build an ongoing relationship.

Customer service training
Customer service needs training and monitoring. This includes role playing and dealing with the range of interactions typical staff would have with customers in every part of the venue. This means dealing with disappointments and critical incidents. Teach staff about the menu, the drinks and how to deal with problems or how to call for help if needed.

Watch this video from Zappos, a web business and just imagine how some of the ideas might work in your venue.

What do you think? Please add your comments.

cheers
Nigel Rawlins
13th Beach Marketing

Effective advertising campaigns are internal and external advertising
Effective advertising campaigns include internal (in venue) and external advertising to reinforce your difference. External can include press, direct mail to your members, letterbox distribution into your community, radio and possibly TV. This will depends on your timing, budget and target audience. Internal advertising consists of displays, promotional banners, promotional posters, table talkers. A weekly advertisement in the newspaper is not a campaign.

Campaigns need time to work
Campaigns need time to work. The message needs to be clear and focused. It needs to be repeated and seen by a large enough group. It also needs to be reinforced within your venue. It also requires a realistic budget. More in later blog articles.

What do you think?

cheers

Nigel Rawlins
13th Beach Marketing