Precision marketing

Now that the quieter months are out of the way, it is time to focus on growing the business. One of the most common questions I get is how to promote, what to promote, and how heavily to discount to attract people. All good questions.

There have been some sad examples of people using voucher offers and being swamped by the success of the offer so that it negatively affected their business.

What you want is enough customers to allow you to service them well, and not so many that it either costs too much or prevents your full paying customers getting in.

It is also important to ensure your customers don’t become reliant on promotional offers. Many people I know won’t go out for a pizza unless they have a two-for-one voucher and it is counter-productive, as in time a sensible tactical promotion ends up devaluing your brand.
Principles to focus on:

• To attract new customers you need a more aggressive activity

• Understand the margin implications of your activity

• Utilise promotions that increase spend rather than substitute spend

• Don’t promote if you are full.

The challenges around promoting are numerous. When, where, what, how, and to whom, all need to be taken into account. An offer that you don’t understand with too many options; an offer that doesn’t represent value; an offer that isn’t communicated until after you have spent the money. And we all have embarrassing stories about the times we messed up. But there is an order to do things.

The order:

1. Communicate what you are doing to as many people as you possibly can
2. Plan ahead and develop an activity programme for the year
3. Inside the building, make sure you use the three Ts — table, team and toilets — they are your key messaging boards
4. Use email, Twitter and Facebook ­— they all work to get your message outside your building
5. Focus on new customers because they grow your business
6. Make the promotions very attractive to tempt newcomers
7. Make sure that you only target new customers and not your existing ones
8. Be clear on your reasons to promote to existing customers e.g. a trial of something new; visit frequency; or higher spend
9. Do a calculation to check that it makes money
10. Make sure that all of it enhances your brand.

• Alastair Scott, one of the PMA’s pub mentors, is MD of Catton Consulting​