Marketing Your Pub: Building trade

Marketing is a relatively new idea for the independent pub sector. Usually it's a matter of encouraging licensees to be a bit more active in positioning and promoting their offer.

But the latest advice from tenanted chain Greene King Pub Partners urges restraint. Rather than persuading pubs to go the whole hog to capture their audiences, it stresses the need for a gradual build-up in marketing their pub, believing it to be more beneficial in the long run than a 'big bang' approach.

Its Activity Guide aims to help licensees position their marketing to connect with the right audience at the right time. Set at three levels, depending on their experience and category of venue, it steers licensees into the right activity to gain customer interest.

Suggested activities at each stage give licensees the tools to develop their own ideas.

"Every day we see licensees trying to promote their pub to everyone, wearing themselves out in the process," explains Sue Thomas-Taylor, commercial director for Pub Partners.

"The Activity Guide avoids this and helps them plan a series of events to encourage customer interest and repeat visits.

"We know from past experience that it's important for licensees to get to know their customers gradually and fully understand their needs, rather than take a 'big bang' approach which can alienate customers just as much as bringing them in.

"Word-of-mouth is the biggest, most effective way to promote your pub, but you have to get customer loyalty to set this in motion. The Activity Guide enables licensees to do this by establishing a very loyal customer base who will take on the role of promoting your pub in the long term."

The guide also provides licensees with useful tips on the 'customer journey', emphasising the need for high standards and quality messaging both inside and outside the pub.

It's designed to work alongside the Pub Partners Promotions Store. Also launched this summer the Store provides licensees with a whole range of product promotions and tools to support the planned activities at the pub.

Both the guide and the store are integrated with the company's licensee extranet so licensees who are online can maximise the marketing and promotion materials available to them.