In the market for good ideas

What’s your marketing manager up to? What do you mean you haven’t got one? Even if you’re an independent publican with only one or two pubs you’ve got a marketing manager. It just happens to be you.

And unfortunately there are no short cuts to a marketing strategy. You’ll have to work out for yourself what kind of customers your pub is aimed at, what you’re going to do to get them in and how you communicate that.

But within that you can steal ideas from others — especially the managed-house pubcos with their fancy marketing departments.
Really you should be getting out and having a look at what they’re doing, of course, but to save you time we’ve put together six of the best marketing initiatives from the past year or so.

Keep it ethical​

It’s the ethical dimension that’s worked so well for pubs in the Orchid Group.

“Without doubt, I’d definitely say that marketing campaigns linked to corporate social responsibility bring the greatest rewards — and are also usually low-cost too,” says Katherine Sparkes at Flamingo, which runs the pubco’s PR campaigns.

According to Sparkes, the benefits include:

• High visibility and more column inches of press coverage

• New customers and an enhanced reputation. Surveys suggest 83% of people will trust a company more if it’s socially

  

  responsible

• Increased footfall at key times

• The chance to convey key messages about your business

• A feel-good factor for your team, inspiring enthusiasm and making it proud of your pub

• Forging links with your local community.

Recent examples from Orchid include a ‘suit amnesty’. Customers frequenting the Living Room bars were invited to donate their old suits. These were cleaned up and donated to homeless jobseekers — for that all-important interview.

Over two months, 1,800 suits were reclaimed, 22 charities benefited and an ‘interview success’ workshop helped 42 people hone their interview skills, resulting in two of them — so far — getting a job.

Another success was Edible Playgrounds, where Orchid chefs visited local schools, planting vegetables and teaching the kids to cook up some nutritious dishes.

The company estimates that 786,000 people had the chance to read about it in local papers —
worth £13,670 in advertising space.

‘Dine with Wine’ deal​

Simple discounting is perhaps the default marketing practice when your customers’ disposable income drops. But if you can resist that temptation you may get better results, as London pub company Young’s has discovered.

Its ‘Dine with Wine’ promotion invited customers to choose any two main courses from the menu plus a bottle of house wine for £20, from Sunday evening through to Thursday in January and February, and then again in October and November to introduce the new winter menu.

The 100 pubs involved accepted, on average, 150 deal vouchers creating 300 covers at times they would normally be quiet. Sunday nights have gone from being notoriously quiet to one of the busiest nights for the group.

“We needed to compete with supermarkets that were offering a meal for £10, and remind customers of the value of eating out,” says marketing director Gillian McLaren.

“It’s an offer that adds value to our premium product rather than being an ad-hoc promotion that could be seen to cheapen the Young’s brand. We wanted to create repeat business. People would know that if they returned when the offer wasn’t available they would still get the same high-quality food.”

The initiative also gave the Young’s pubs an opportunity to drive additional sales of starters and desserts and enabled the company to increase its database as new people signed up for the offer.

Building a relationship with your customers takes more than a loyalty scheme, of course, but there’s no reason why your pub can’t emulate the big players by creating a fun mechanic.

Brewer Fuller’s has had success lately with a personalised loyalty card called ‘1,000 thank-yous’.

When the customer buys a drink the barperson writes their name on the card — and their favourite drink. Each time they buy their usual the card is stamped.

When the customer has collected eight stamps they can claim a free drink.

It builds on the personal recognition that’s at the heart of a pub’s relationship with its regulars.

What we’ve found is that random acts of kindness work particularly well, where customers feel they are being appreciated purely for their custom without the overt pitching of any particular idea, product or event,” says retail marketing manager Elton Mouna.

Mystery shoppers ​

Plenty of pubs use mystery-shopper schemes to keep an independent check on whether they’re delivering what they promise a customer. But have you ever thought of also using them as a marketing tool?

Be At One, the dozen-strong London bar chain, was using an external company for the anonymous visits but decided to change

that when the guests that were sent along turned out not to be the bars’ target market.

A mailer was sent out to the company’s database of regular customers inviting them to be the mystery drinkers.

“The feedback we received was much higher quality because it came from people who care about the brand and know our values,” says Be At One’s communications manager Sarah Swaysland.

But there was a bonus spin-off, as members of the ‘mystery drinkers’ club’ are sent gift vouchers. This gets them back in the bar, spending more, and it boosts customer relations.

“They appreciate the fact we are buying them drinks in return for their help,” adds Swaysland. “We don’t really overtly market the business, but as long as something is centred on our customers like that we are willing to give it a go.”

Televised sport​

Your TV screens might score with customers when it comes to football and rugby, but with the Olympics coming up you might want to think about how you can extend the interest to other sports.

Pub group TCG is encouraging its managers to make better use of their screens by marketing alternative events to customers, and luckily it has an expert on the team.

Lee Hazell, who runs the Famous 3 Kings in London’s West Kensington, believes the TV can be a pub’s most under-used asset.
“We know customers love to watch football at the pub, but if you have satellite TV there is sport shown 24 hours a day, seven days a week — and there’s an audience out there for just about everything.”

While other pubs may not match the Famous 3 Kings’ provision for sports enthusiasts — it has the capacity to show 14 different games with six different commentary areas at any time — Hazell is working with other managers across the group to help them maximise their potential in this regard.

“A pub can easily double wet sales on a typical night by becoming ‘the’ place to watch a particular sport,” he says.

“Whether it’s rugby league or American football, the key is to find out what has a following locally and make sure the fans know you show it. You can use Facebook, Twitter and comments on sports websites to attract customers.”