Calling all Offline Warriors - First Ever Client !!

Business cards but printed with redeemable offers

Prizes/bonuses/free drinks for spreading offers with trackable coupon codes (yeah, it's affiliate marketing, inn'it)

Contests--largest nightly tab (yes, you're encouraging them to spend more money! woohoo!)

All stuff you can promote on the facebook page and on bulletin boards

VIP memberships (they pre-buy seating/drinks/food for so many months; use it or lose it within a certain time)

Ultimate VIP memberships (champagne, extra-special treatment, maybe their own bartender)

Speaking of bartenders...popularity contests for the bartenders--voting contests...prizes...attention.

I'll have more later, probably...gotta run

I'd go study the operations to see what the problems are.
Survey the students/customers.
Find out what is missing and what is needed, or needs to improve, to get more spending customers.
How long has the current owner owned it?
What changed?
Does he need to offer live music?
Does he need to improve his menu, pricing, or deals?
What is the competition doing?

With respect to theme nights, bar owners tend to stop doing them
too soon. They seem to want ROI faster instead of letting them grow.
Hopefully you can get him to hang in there long enough for them to peak, if they are any good.

Have they been impacted by changes in alcohol and smoking laws as they have been in the USA? In my state, one beer can make someone exceed standards, and you can't smoke in any restaurants and bars anymore.

Dan

Situation is there has been an increase in the "pre-drinking" culture. This means that more students are drinking before heading out and eithier not making it out at all or spending very little when they do get out.This is something we need to tackle.

The nightclub has ran for over 20 years and has changed very little.. up till 4-5 years ago it was packed all the time but that has not been the case latley. There was also a bit of a PR disaster when they raised the entry fee to account for the lowering drink sales which made alot of the students turn away.

The good thing about students though is that there are obviously new ones every year! So this should not be an issue anymore. With the new studetns however the brand awareness seems to be very low.

We are conducting our own online survey which will hopefully provide some more detailed feedback but it is clear the general vibe is that the nightclub is dated and not as "cool" as further away competitors.

By theme nights I meant each week would have its own dedicated branded night that the promotion would build up to. No live music. The main USP is the location of right beside the University. Competitiors are busier despite being a 15 minute taxi journey away and more expensive. The club should really not be in this position at all.

Call of Duty matches on the big screen with pitchers of beer for winners, place will sell out ;-)

Have employees hand out cards and pay them a small bonus for each customer that shows up with one.

Reach out to fraternities, sororities, clubs to host special parties. Offer to split the door or a %of the bar revenue with their charity. They each have one and love to find ways to get them money without doing any real work.

Set up a special area and call it VIP where you have to pay for bottle service to sit in.

Throw a promo party with a booze company, theyll often do the marketing.

Have a beer pong, chugging, flip cup or any other kind of drinking game tournament.

Hire bar tenders who have a large group of friends who drink to much, have them make a vip list that gets their friends in with no cover or with a free drink etc... and pay the bar tender a bonus for each petson that shows up.

I worked for a very savy nightclub owner when I was in college.

Ultimately college students go to a bar because their friends are going. Hire students that are in fraternities or sororities.

Have a ladies night, girls drink free until midnight or whatever. Get the girls to show up and the guys will follow.

Free well drinks til midnight if you get in before 10 might help curb the pre partying.

This stuff works, I was quite a heavy drinker in college. It got me to go out even though I was broke.

Make up your own drink. Blue long island, any other color long island. Well booze is huge money, even at a few bucks per drink the margins are nuts.

Make up your own shot.

All the promo stuff is just to build habbits. We went to the same bars on each night of the week and went bar hopping on holidays aka drink all day days.

Get some decent bands that are liked by students booked-or even DJ's if that floats their boat. give them a reason to be there, make it hip, cool to go to that pub, sub-niche's in the student body, like goths, Gamers, the literature crowd, the law/medicine crowd-attract the ladies and the gents will follow-so yeah, a make over of the image of the pub is needed.

I would say that your problem is two fold. The first side of things is in creating enough buzz on a regular basis that will make people want to come back on a regular basis. Picking themes and bringing in big enough bands are just a start. Give the students a reason to want to show up at your club, and constantly generate social buzz in order to bring more. The second side of things is in evaluating your current profit centers. There are various methods for increasing how much people spend on the inside. Cover charge at the door, drinking obviously, sell t-shirts, offer special drinks only available at your club, or create a special room with an added charge. Be creative in looking at different ways you can create cashflow.

Evening and Late Night happy hours

To get people in, I would run an ad in in the college newspaper paper....that's if the college has one and put out some Ugly Yellow Signs with an offer. Theme nights are good: glow stick party, 80's night costume party, mechanical bull(you'd have to rent it) ect.. Then I would have some bowls of free popcorn.. and make sure it's are extra salty. Salt = Thirst = More Drink Sales.

Tell them they don't get laid pre drinking at home.

To be honest though, from what I hear of your economy, you're facing a battle to make people spend anything, anywhere!

I have assisted with some bar and restaurant marketing in the past, so perhaps I can pass along some direction that might help. We need to examine the situation from the top to the bottom to identify the best way to reach our target market and bring them in to generate revenue.

So, my understanding from the original post, the owner has brought you on as a consultant to come up with a marketing campaign for them to draw a crowd using tools like social media. It sounds like more of a Promoter type gig as opposed to a Marketing Consultant type gig. If they want you solely for promotion, unless you have lots of experience being a Promoter or are looking to get into that business, I'd sign up a good Promoter onboard and give them a share of the gross and call it a day. If we're going to examine this from a Marketing Consultant perspective, it's a lot more in depth and the owner should be prepared to hear facts they might like or might not like.

Before doing anything like that, however, there's a fact finding mission I would go on first. I would then evaluate the findings to see if the bar can actually bring in customers or if we need to make major changes before trying to reach our target customers.

So let's start with the facts:
- we have a nightclub/bar that doesn't draw like it used to
- we've been doing the same thing for 20 years
- lack of success is a recent problem
- we're sitting beside a college that houses about 10,000 students
- our primary draw, subsequently, is students
- these students don't spend a whole lot while they're there
- our competition is viewed as a superior choice to us
- we have a negative perception because of some bad public relations

Now let's look at the bar/nightclub venue:
- what is the name?
- what is the brand?
- who are our current customers?
- what is the message we're trying to convey?
- is the message being conveyed attracting the right customer?
- what customers do we want to draw?

Let's look a little more in depth:
- what does the venue look like?
- is it helping or hurting our draw of ideal customers?
- do we have a drink menu?
- if yes, does it encourage customers to buy premium beverages (your money maker)?
- if no, would introducing a drink menu encourage more spend?
- what is the music situation in relation to drawing our ideal customers?
- do we have a kitchen / would food help the draw?
- what nights are our busiest?
- what areas (door cover, beer, spirits, etc) generate the best revenue and profits (if applicable)?
- what areas do we need to improve?

The competition:
- what are they doing differently than us?
- what is influencing our customers decision to choose them?
- how do they market themselves?
- how do they reach the target market?


Having all of this information is your starting point. Once we can understand the situation a little more clearly, then I would show the information to the owner and see what they want to do with it. If the facts say the place needs a refresh, tell them that. And above all, focus on drawing women. Men (your primary bar revenue source) go where women are.

To address some other concerns mentioned:

- Pre-drinking, or "pre-gaming" as we used to call it when I was in college, has been around forever. It's not something that is going to go away any time soon. When I was in college, there were bars/clubs we pre-gamed for and ones that we didn't. If your customers are having a warm up before they hit your venue, that's saying something about the crowd you're drawing, the venue, the entertainment (or lack of), the booze selection or bartenders, and/or the pricing.

- From experience, theme nights at failing bars/clubs are just a band aid solution - they don't address the core problems with the bar or nightclub. Successful bars and nightclubs draw consistently - they don't need theme nights to draw. Special events can be held once in a while, but successful venues don't bank on them being their saving grace.

Hope this helped even a little bit!

Nah Call of Duty isn't that big here and would actually turn more people away then anything..It would be a "student" city so smallish city with a few Universities around. We also don't have a fraternity culture here

I like the girl friendly idea and that's definitely something we'll work for

Find a local gym and get them to offer free workout sessions or reduced price membership to a limited number of people. Then give these coupons away for free to the first X number of people who come to the bar. If you do it right, you can charge a fee from both the bar and the gym because you will be sending people to both businesses.

This method can also work well by giving away free tanning sessions...it'll drive women to the bar, followed quickly by the men. Of course, you will still need to use your marketing skills to publicize these deals.

We got the gig anyway guys thanks for all the help! We have basically been given full license to do what will work best for the club/bar regarding opening times,gigs,drink promotions etc so it is a little daunting. We have also been mandated to raise the age profile of attendees so there is a lot to get done! Its our first ever "real" client so we want to really deliver!

helpinghand182,

How are things going now???

Are you guys running smoothly or encountering a few kinks with marketing and getting feet through the doors?

I would love to see how things are going and have you share what's working.

Thanks,

ijohnson