Smile!
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 Or do they see meeting notices, out of date event posters, the cheap and nasty posters sent out by some of the entertainers?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.
