Mark McCulloch: 'What have you got to give those enquiring about your Christmas offer?'

Sadly, if you are reading this and you have not started to market your Christmas offer, then I fear you’re cutting it fine. At the time of writing this article it is exactly 10 weeks until Christmas.

Panic not. Hopefully some of the tips and tricks below can help you either get started or indeed improve your current Christmas marketing. I would also be delighted if you would like to share your top tips via twitter and please tag us @wearespectaculr.

Once you have your Christmas offer, menu and pricing finalised, the best approach I find is to look at the ‘size of the prize’. What I mean is simply work out what your maximum revenue could be from the third week in November to end of December. Treat it like allocated slots. So, three slots per day (one lunch and two dinners) x number of covers x number of trading days x expected % of occupancy/take up x average spend will give you your target revenue figure.

Tips to successfully ensure filling all slots then are as follows:

• Who is Mr, Miss or Mrs Claus? Select a point person who is really excited about Christmas within your team to drive the whole project.

• Target local businesses. Look at a map of a five-mile radius from your pub. What local businesses are around you? What size are they and how can you make immediate contact? Get to know the PAs and secretaries and you are halfway to that all important booking. Why not offer them a free meal or night out at your pub for every booking of eight and above. They’ll like that.

• Online bookings. Do you have online booking capabilities and if so are you sending an email to your database regularly to promote your Christmas offer and how good is your website in terms of being found for key terms such as ‘Christmas party Leighton Buzzard’. This is worth looking into, as it is the main way that the world will research where they will go during the Christmas period.

• Hire a salesperson. A few of my clients are hiring a little helper for Christmas so that they can focus on their offer and deliver it brilliantly. This needn’t cost the earth and you can pay low but bonus on high performance (a nice problem to have).

• Invite loyal customers down to try your new menu in October and then get them to commit to you being the venue of choice for their office/personal celebrations.

• Target last year’s customers. Have you called or emailed — or ideally done both — to get last year’s revellers to return?

• Slick looking sales packs. What have you got to give to people who are enquiring about your Christmas offer and do they include all of the relevant information and an order form for larger parties (people still like paper).

• Tell all customers. Personally tell every customer that comes into your pub about your offer and ensure they leave with a Christmas sales pack.

• Residential door drops. A four to six week intense programme of door dropping your offer to residential houses may just trigger a few sales that you would otherwise not have had.

• Use the press. Invite the local press down to a tasting and get them to promote you towards mid November onwards.

• Tweet like mad. How active are you on Facebook and Twitter? A tweet or post a day keeps the budgets at bay, as they say. Bear in mind that people will not be as bored as you think if you post about your Christmas offer often. Just keep the post fresh and show a delicious and enticing image of your offer every time.

• Don’t forget New Year. Target each Christmas booking to promote the next big event, which is your New Year’s Eve party and New Year’s Day dinner.

• Bounce-back for January. Hit the customers with a bounce-back offer for January as this can be a lean period for pubs and restaurants, so help people form the habit of using you immediately post Christmas.

If you have explored all of these, then you should have a bumper Christmas period sales wise. If not, then I hope the list of tips helps you have a very Merry Christmas and a wealthy 2015.