Searching questions
A strict policy to only carry the most up to date info is the secret of the success of London pubs website Citypublife.
It's a powerful marketing tool, all right. It must be. But how do you use it, exactly? That's the problem pubs have been grappling with since the internet popped up on our computer screens and progress has been slow. Pub websites litter the world wide web. They look nice, but who's going to find them? How do you get the pub-loving internet surfer to land up on your beach?
The most obvious answer is through web portals, sites which give people a chance to search for a particular kind of pub in the part of the country they happen to be in. These have come and gone. For one thing it's difficult to prove that a customer has chosen to visit your pub because they have seen it on the internet.
But some websites have stuck at it, and they seem to be getting somewhere, positively helping pubs win new business.
Perry Mayer is one of those who spotted a clear opportunity for a pub search website back in 2001. He quit his job and launched Citypublife.com for London - to a lukewarm reception from pub operators in the wake of the dotcom shares crash.
For three years Perry plugged away with little to show for it. Then Peter Linacre, head of the Massive pub chain, asked for a meeting. He thought the site could be used to promote his function trade in the capital - and he was right. With the help of Citypublife the company made around £500,000 on its functions over the following year.
Up to date information
Now armed with proof that it could work, Perry was able to attract other operators to put their pubs on the site - but that's only the start of getting the internet to work for you.
Key to Citypublife's success is not only a user-friendly search engine that allows pub-goers to search by sports and other events, by type of food, by function facilities and by other features, it's the sheer hard work involved in keeping the information on the site up to date.
Two or three times a week Perry emails licensees to tell them to update - often in quite forceful terms. If a pub neglects this duty for too long it is taken off the site.
Exactly half the 710 pubs that have joined Citypublife at some point have been deleted, a measure of Perry's tough tactics.
"It costs us a lot of money to take pubs off but it's what we have to do, it's what makes us different to everybody else doing this," he says. "When people come onto our site they are there to get information. If that information is out of date, it's useless."
And by making an average of 800 page changes per week, City- publife goes to the top of the list on Google, the world's most popular search engine.
Pub operators that have been most disciplined about updating their entries have also been the most successful at internet marketing. London brewer Fuller's has just been named Internet Pub Company of the Year by Citypublife, pipping Barracuda, Laurel and last year's winner, Massive, to the title.
Fuller's has 80 pubs listed on the site and managers are not only hassled by Perry to update events but helped by the brewer's marketing executive Kiran Pal to make the most of the listing.
"As with all marketing it must be relevant, factual and up to date and Kiran makes sure whatever appears on Citypublife is exactly that," says Fuller's retail marketing manager Elton Mouna. "It is a priority for our managers, not a desirable extra."
