The End of Pub Marketing

The End of Pub Marketing As You Know It

Most pub advertising and marketing absolutely stinks. Tons of money is wasted by Licensees, and opportunities are lost or worse still, go unseen.

Too many Licensees are floundering, uncertain of even appreciating the difference between ‘good’ pub marketing and ‘bad’ pub marketing.

The Making Time To Make Profit 2 day boot camp is a radical prescription for change.

If and when you ‘really’ get it, you’ll smack yourself around the head for not seeing it sooner, on your own. You’ll be in awe of how much sense it makes.

You’ll never look at an ad, flier, poster, email etc again in the same way.

You will start to make changes in your own marketing – and fast!

Prepare yourself, because when you do, you will be criticised, argued with, and probably laughed at by a few competitors, staff, maybe even your family and friends.

You will however, get such outstanding results that you will have the courage and discipline to ignore them all.

I’ve seen a lot of pub businesses trying to advertise like bigger brand-name companies, they spend (waste) a lot of money on image. But copycatting these big brands is like peeing into the wind. It makes no sense (and you get wet). We need to find successful pub businesses with similar agendas to our own to copycat. Those are DIRECT MARKETERS. You and they share the same ideas:

Spend a £1 on marketing; get back £2 or £20, fast that can be tracked to the £1 spent.

Do NOT spend £1 that does not directly and quickly bring back £2 or £20.

Please stop right there to be sure you get this life-changing principle. Be careful who you copy.

Be careful who you act like.

Be careful who you study.

If their purpose, objectives, agenda and reasons for doing what they do and the way that they do it don’t match your purpose, objectives and agenda, then you should NOT study or emulate or copy them!

Find someone who is successful, who shares your purpose, objectives, agenda, and pay great attention to what he/she does and how they do it.

People in the past have said this is a “blinding flash of the obvious”. Well, you might call it obvious if you like, but then how do you explain the fact that 99% of all Licensees are operating as if ignorant of this obvious logic?

Why Is There So Much Lousy, Unproductive, Unprofitable Pub Marketing?

Well, I’ll tell you. Most publicans are clueless when it comes to marketing and advertising. They are, therefore, often Victims of Advertising, preyed on by salespeople and ad agencies and others who don’t know any more about how to actually produce a customer or make some sales than they do!

Most of the ‘so called’ POS (point of sale) marketing that frequently ends up with you the Licensee has been expensively designed by brand owners who will have a budget that ranges into the Millions. They tend to only assume that you have the customer in front of you. They seldom ever focus on prospects or how to get people through the door in the first place.

Listen friend, I’ve been training Licensees for years and it still amazes me when I ask them to tell me, ‘accurately’ where their customers and sales are coming from, what it costs to get a customer, or what results specifically come from their last ad that ran! More often than not (sadly) they can’t! Do you know? Are you guessing? Consequently, they can often be grumpy and unhappy about the things that they shouldn’t be and also wasting money they needn’t be.

Pub Marketing Incest

When you got into our industry, you probably looked around at what everybody else in pubs was doing and copied it. Gradually, you’ve tried to do it better, but not radically different, just better. So you have everybody in our industry standing in a circle looking inward at each other, ignoring any one or anything outside the circle. It’s incestuous, and it works just like real incest: Everybody slowly gets dumber and dumber and dumber.

Most successful people at some stage did something different. They turned their backs on the circle and deliberately went far a field from who they knew, in search of something different – now you will, too.

So here are a few rules (hate rules don’t you?) that will lay our foundation together. A foundation, that is truly going to help you profit enormously. I’ve studied the great Marketers over the years and I just love this from one of the masters, Dan Kennedy who’s materials I’ve invested in wholeheartedly over the years and then distilled them down into what I call ‘pub speak’.

From now on, every ad you run every flyer you distribute, every postcard ever email every web site you construct, in fact anything you do MUST stick to these rules OK? They are really fair, they are even quite simplistic. For now, sticking to them as rigidly as you can will work. You can experiment later, after you’ve first got rid of all your old habits.

Rule 1. There will always be an offer or offers in you marketing

Rule 2. There will be a ‘reason’ to respond right now

Rule 3. There will be clear instructions on how to respond

Rule 4. There will be tracking and measurement

Rule 5. Whatever Pub Brand building comes out of this will be a happy by-product, not bought

Rule 6. There will be follow up

Rule 7. There will be strong Sales Copy, nothing vague

Rule 8. In general it will look like ‘mail order advertising’

Rule 9. Your Results rule, full stop.

Rule 10. You will be a tough minded disciplinarian and keep your business on a strict DIRECT MAIL diet for at least the next 6 months.

I’ll briefly go through each of these rules in the next few pages.

RULES:

We are all the same really; we tend to think that rules are for others, not me, not you! So let’s face it you’re going to go through my rather abrasive methods (and you may not like some of them). No, in fact I’m really going to get ‘up your nose’ over our time together. I used to be bothered about that. I wanted everyone I trained to think really highly about me. Well I don’t anymore. I just want you to profit; I just want you to get a better life. If that means that I initially put pressure on you to get some outstanding results, and you don’t like it, well that’s just tough! You can always bail out anytime you want.

Once you fully understand the rules and have lived with them for a while, then you can feel free to experiment if you wish. But get good at colouring inside the lines before ignoring them altogether.

Zig Ziglar always described salespeople (by the way that’s what you are) who wimped out at the close as ‘professional visitors’, not professional salespeople.

From now on, you will be doing selling in print. But Professionally!

So, your task is to make a direct response offer, which fortunately is simple. An offer is something like ‘buy this and get a second one free’ or ‘tell us what you think of us and you could win a table for 2 on St Valentines Day’.

The more interesting and appealing your offer, the better!

Many just give an implied offer. The ad for a pub business I saw recently gave its name, established since 1895, hours open, and facts about its services.

The implied offer is: when you’re ready to come and dine or have a drink with us, we’ll be here. A ton of pubs run the same kind of ad: Here we are, this is what we do. STOP Doing This! It’s stupid. To finish the example, you can run the same ad, but add the following:

For a Free ‘How to Host the Most Amazing Birthday Celebration’, along with
19 Top Planning tips to make your event a major success, call our free recorded message anytime on 00000 000000000. Alternatively we’ll send your essential Free tips by mail, no cost, no obligation.

So, be firm about this. Nothing, I mean nothing, goes out your door without offers.

Top direct-response copy writer John Carlton, always advises imagining yo 212e49c ur prospective customer as a gigantic sloth, spread out on the couch; loathe to move his sleeping bulk, phone just out of reach. Your offer must force and compel him to move now. Your goal is immediate response. A plain, dull, mundane offer won’t do it.

Two sub-rules: One, confused consumers do nothing. Two, most people do a pretty good job of following instructions. Most Licensees failures and disappointments result from giving confusing directions or no directions at all.

When you put together any marketing tool – ad, flier, web site, poster, - it should be a single, focused path with high sidewalls (to prevent your prospect from wandering off) that leads them to a point of decision and action. At that point, you must tell the prospect exactly what you want him to do next. How, when, and what will happen as soon as they do.

Stop sending out anything absent of such clear instructions.

You need real, hard facts and data to make good, intelligent marketing decisions. Making decisions based on what you or your staff think is happening, feel, guess, have a sense of etc is stupid.

Tracking means accurately collecting all the information you need to determine what advertising is working and what isn’t, which offer is pulling and which isn’t. Tracking leads to knowing what your return-on-investment (ROI) is for each pound you spend.

Admittedly, it can be a bit tricky. Think. Set up systems to capture the data you need; set aside time to do the necessary analysis. It it’s painful and confusing at first, it’ll get easier. It will prove profitable.

Staff can often be an obstacle to accurate tracking: sometimes out of laziness. If there’s been no tracking, there will be resistance to it. So, give clear, simple, firm instructions about what is required.

Then, if need be, follow one of my old coaches Harry Poole’s plan for parenting a teenage girl: “First lad that shows up, I’ll shoot him. I’ll bet the word will get around pretty quickly!” Firing can continue until compliance occurs. You know what always amazes me every time I hear a Licensee say “Oh, my staff won’t do that!” Well, who’s working for whom?

From now on, ye shall spend no pound without tracking the ROI.

Traditional branding is great for giant companies with huge budgets vying for national consumer recognition. But if you are an entrepreneur investing in your own business, then forget about branding and focus on response and sales. If you develop brand recognition accidentally along the way, great. But do not spend a penny on trying to create it.

Brand building is for very, very patient people with very very deep pockets. That’s probably not you.

I hate waste.

People read your ad, call your pub ask a question, a member of staff answer, and that’s it – no capture of the callers name, address, email, etc. and no offer to immediately send a free report, gift, coupons. That is a criminal waste. It cost money to get that call. Doing nothing with it is exactly the same as flushing money down the toilet. Please go and do so, right now, so you can internalise the feeling. Take the largest note from your purse or wallet or pocket – a £5, a £10, a £20 (or preferably a £50) – go to your toilet, tear it into small pieces, let them flutter into the toilet, and flush. You probably didn’t like that eh? Good. Remember how much you don’t like it every time you fail to follow-up on a lead or a customer.

Other waste includes no instant follow-up to get that first-time customer back. No follow-up after people have enjoyed a nice relaxing meal with you or when they are winding down from a great function at your place. From now on, nothing you do will be just one thing. There will be a planned sequence of things completed. Any contact by you with a prospect or any contact with you by a prospect will trigger a series of follow-up steps.

Sales and subtlety rarely go hand in hand. There is enormous, overwhelming competition for attention for attention and clutter everyone must cut through. You can’t send a shy, timid person to go knock on all your prospects doors and beg in nearly a whisper for a few minutes attention. So you can’t do that with a flier, an email, a poster or anything.  Send the Incredible Hulk instead. He’ll walk through the door and be a commanding presence. He shows up, guy drops what he’s doing and pays attention.

The web is full of examples of how to write strong copy, I’ll be sending you examples over the coming weeks. But dive-in, there is tons of stuff available to help you in this area. See the Tool Kit file entitled ‘108 Most Persuasive Words in Pub Marketing’ here’s a simple list of really powerful words to boost your skills at copy writing.

There’s just got to be a first place to start, and this is it. If you want to start bumping up your pub or restaurant sales, then you are on the right page.

I’ve put this section together as it is because you can get lightening start on growing your business.

I’d certainly advise you to read the whole of the materials you’ve either just received or are about to obtain.

The full book entitled Making Time To Make Profit provides you with all the technical aspects of marketing your business professionally. This will really enable you to discover and explore this truly exciting subject.

This quick start guide will equip you with a lot of the promotional strategies, know how and techniques to ‘get started today’. This is really going to blow the lid off the traditional way of marketing pubs, and you can crack on with this straight out of the blocks.

It would be a bit of a waste of time for me to spend oceans of your precious time on the really technical side of growing your business. You can study the manual sections of ‘Making Time To Make Profit’ for all that.

I really recommend that you do study it all, but if you’re like me, you get something new and you want to dive straight in and get cracking.

I want to focus here on the actual ‘quick start’ to help get you up and running. The sooner you start to see things happening, the more you will realise just what you’ve invested in. Then you’ll get the passion for studying harder.

I know you’re going to love and appreciate the templates that are available for you to use. (you may need to tweak some of them to personalise them to your pub style, culture or specific brand development you may be working on)

You’ll find them in the Tool Bag Folder. (I’ll either be giving you a CD-ROM Disc with them all on, or via memory stick if you bring your laptop along to the boot-camp) However, before your brain starts dashing off, you really should do yourself a monster favour, and that is to sit down and read this section from cover to cover, page to page.

Its not massive but it is created to maximise how you get started. So, let’s get organised here, let’s take it one-step-at-a-time, follow the flow and you’ll not regret it.

In the main booklet you will notice a section entitled The Formula For Pub Marketing, it’s a massively important section of the book that relates to ‘layering’ your marketing. Take this on board and you are well on you way to improving your profits!

You can really benefit by using this section when you are making decisions on precisely which promotional event or technique to use.

Now you have to remember and appreciate that it’s not all about obtaining a result from one promotion, it’s about getting little results from lots of promotional techniques.

The following marketing principles were for me the most compelling, the most ground breaking I’ve ever discovered. It’s so powerful, it’s so simple, it’s so appealing and it really makes more profit when you apply them all together.

THERE ARE ONLY 3 WAYS TO GROW YOUR PUB BUSINESS:

1. Increasing new customers to your venue

2. Increasing the value of your average sale

3. Increasing the number of times you get customers   to come back

Go back and read this 3 times, read it again until you start to comprehend just how powerful these 3 elements are. I’m not the only one that is blown away by the awesome power of these 3 steps. They are a MBA all wrapped up into a 3 step phrase. However, like all outstanding concepts or strategies, it’s how you operate them; it’s how you comprehend them.

These 3 principles are going to be the bedrock of our journey together. Now think about them again in terms of what you are currently doing in your business.

Not a lot? Well that’s what this programme is all about, you’re going to love what’s coming up?

With this in mind I have placed the majority of these promotions into one of these three categories, some of the promotions can be used in all three categories. Ok let’s get to it.

Your first Giant step .

The very first thing you need to do, if you already haven’t done so is start collecting the names and details from all of you’re customers that frequent your business. (also we’ll show you how to get people to give you their details who ‘don’t’ visit your pub, yet!)

Once you have their information you then have to put it into a simple database such as the one I have provided you. (in the Tool Box folder, or use your computer to fully utilse ‘Contacts’ within your email programme)

I believe that this is one of the biggest failures hospitality businesses encounter, and it is one of the easiest to implement and maintain. The main reason you are capturing your customers onto a database is so that you can ‘stay in touch’ with them in ways that they’ll love you for.

These are incredibly important steps, following them precisely will greatly boost your success factor:

1. Choose one of the data card templates in your Tool Box folder and place your logos and your venues details on it (name, address and contact info, we’ll discuss this fully on the boot-camp if you have any challenges on how to do this).

2. Change any of the other details on the forms such as the type of promotion you should use (see following for examples).

3. Copy the form across the page x 3 and photocopy the form

4. Cut the forms from your photocopies (have an abundant supply)

5. Leave the forms at a work station within your pub/restaurant with some pens beside it

6. Train your staff really well to place the same amount of forms and pens onto each table at the end of their meal or function at about the time your customers are asking for the bill or if they’ve paid up front, they will be preparing to leave.

7. Have you staff let your customers know why they should leave their details on the form (these will how they can benefit through a promotion I mention later, or how they could win a table for two on Valentines Day etc)

8. Collect the completed forms and update your database at least weekly

There that wasn’t to hard was it You will need to update the data cards to have some type of promotion on it to entice your customers to fill in the form. Here are some great ideas to get them to fill in the forms:

1. Pick any from the following, or invent your own! “Free round of drinks on your birthday”

2. “Free main course on your birthday”

3. “Win a 3 course meal”

4. “Free bottle of wine on your birthday”

Now this is where this type of promotion gets really powerful, the best of these promotions is the birthday promotion because every person in the world has a birthday and most people I know love to celebrate their birthday. So this is how the promotion works.

1. You provide a free meal to the birthday person during the month of their birthday.

2. Use the letter template I have provided for you. (in the Tool Box Folder) Send the letter to your customer the month of their birthday, so if their birthday is on the 15^th send the letter on the 1^st or 2^nd of the month.

Now let’s work the numbers on this one, let’s say you are giving away a free meal to the birthday person, now most people don’t come along by themselves to celebrate their birthday they generally bring between 3 and 8 people.

So although you are giving away a free meal you are then also getting another 2 – 7 meals and drinks in revenue from the other guests they bring along with them.

You should see about 20-35% of the customers you send the letters out to come in for a birthday meal so your return on investment should be about 300 – 500% (ie spend £1 get 300 back).

I can’t stress this enough, this is the lynch pin for all your future marketing efforts so it is the most important to make up a database and get your customers on it. As I mentioned before THERE ARE ONLY 3 WAYS TO GROW A BUSINESS:

1. Increase new customers to your venue

2. Increase their average spend 

3. Increase the number of times they return to your venue

With this in mind I am now going to take you through the promotion to tackle the first point of Increasing new customers to your venue.

Strategies to get new customers to your Pub.

INCREASING CUSTOMERS WITH JOINT VENTURES

Joint Ventures would have to be one of the most mis-understood marketing strategies, for pubs and restaurants, firstly, they are hardly ever used in the first place.

However, they can be the most lucrative promotions you ever do, so read this next section very carefully. (you might even need another cup of tea)

So what is a joint venture? Very simply it is where one business uses another (non-competitive) business to leverage its offerings in order to make further sales, in really simple terms it is one business using another other business to get sales. If you like it’s a bit like piggy backing!

What you are trying to do with a joint venture or JV for short, is to obtain new customers by targeting customers that your joint venture partner already has.

You’ve probably come across joint ventures and might not have noticed. Big businesses have been doing it for ages. What JV’s allow you to do is to target a set of new customers who are in the same target market as you require and provides you with leverage over your time and money.

Using a Joint Venture is brilliant for boosting your data base, as these are not built to the numbers you need ‘overnight’, they take a while, even when you collect data on customers every day. Your aim is to get hundreds, even thousands, because it’s a numbers game folks!

The key to having a successful JV is to make sure your JV partner is a trusted business and credible source to their customers. The process of a JV is very easy to understand, have a look at the following steps:

Step 1. You carefully select a potential JV partner; they have a great existing data base

Step 2. You offer them a fantastic deal on a JV. Their customers are going to receive a voucher for £10 (for example) to be redeemed at your place Mon-Thurs when two or more people enjoy a 3 course meal (or starter & main or main & starter, whatever, it’s your call)

Step 3 Your JV potential partner will probably think there’s a catch, let them know that there isn’t any catch at all. All you are wanting to do is to build a data base and to that you’re prepared to give a way to his/her customers a free voucher to eat with you.

Step 4. You will provide your JV with the letter that they will print onto their letter head and mail to their data base enclosing the voucher with it. (letter is in your Tool box folder, please amend to suit your style or offer)

Step 5. They mail them out, in the meantime you have trained your staff to appreciate what has gone out and how to maximise sales when they start to come in (this session will take place on the boot-camp)

Step 6. Customers come in and love your food and service and hospitality. You make sure you get their names and details at the end of their meal to enable them to partake in your other offers that will benefit them. I.e. Birthday club, VIP card etc.

If you fully understand and comprehend this process, you are well on your way to boosting mid week activity that can be your quietest period of the week. You are boosting your data base magnificently. You are getting ahead of your competition so wonderfully well that they will not know what has hit them.

You are also well on the way to increasing your sales overnight.

Just make sure you pick your JV partner really well, they must be credible, their customers must trust and love them to bits, just like your customers love you.

There are two kinds of Joint Ventures, one is faster and more productive than the other, but both work like hell.

1. JV’s with partners that have a database

2. JV’s with partners that don’t have a database of customers

Your approach to both these may differ slightly. Without a doubt you should approach these partners slightly differently as one will certainly can provide you with outstanding results in approximately 30 days. When your JV partner doesn’t have a data base you should reckon on around 60 days.

The JV partner without a data base may well have a lot of walk in customers that vouchers could be handed to from their staff.

It’s important to appreciate that when you are studying who to approach as a JV partner is to ensure that both your customers are as similar as possible as this will help with the uptake on the offer.

See the following list of potential JV’s both businesses are likely to have data bases and those who may not.

JOINT VENTURE PARTNERS WITHOUT DATABASE

• Bookstores,
• Florists,
• Furniture shops,
• Local clothes boutiques,
• Audio/Electrical,
• Drycleaners,
• Music stores,
• Hardware shops,

JOINT VENTURE PARTNERS WITH A DATABASE.

• Car Dealers,
• Estate Agents,
• Removal Companies,
• Hair Dressers,
• Video Stores,
• Travel Agencies,
• Gym’s,
• Builders,

Use these lists as a start point, however the very best way to find JV partners is to just take a tour around your pub locality and see who you think you may want to do a JV with (and they with you). Follow the next steps in order to get your JV’s going for a partner that has a database of customers similar to yours.

1. Identify your joint venture partners from the list above or from your knowledge of your local area.

2. Make a time to meet face to face with the other business owner; this is an important step as you need to build rapport and credibility with your new JV partner. You will also need to explain what a JV is and how it will benefit their business and this really can’t be completed over the telephone or in an email. You will get better results if you do it face-to-face.

3. At the meeting with present the idea and what you are willing to give to his customers (we will go over what to offer later in this quick guide)

4. Once you both decide on the offer then you have to design the JV voucher/flyer/postcard (I will cover the process on designing the voucher and offer later in this guide)

5. Once the voucher is designed show it to the JV partner prior to printing them off, make sure you get his/her approval. Also show him/her the letter which will accompany the voucher. The letter will be printed on their letter head and signed by the JV partner, you will get a clearer idea when you see the sample letter (in the Took Kit Folder).

6. Have your JV partner send out the JV voucher and letter to their database, try and send it via the post as you will get a much better response.

If cost is an issue for your JV partner offer to pay half the postage or offer to pay it in full as it will be beneficial for you to do it, believe me.

Your second option is to have your partner email the JV offer to their database this it will be cheaper (I.e. No cost) however you will get a lower response as this medium (email) is getting lower responses as the more spam goes to email addresses.

7. Once the JV has been sent out through your JV partner make sure you have all the tracking processes in place. You can see the tracking spreadsheet I have included with the Tool Kit Folder.

This becomes very important as it will enable you to see what promotions are working and which ones are not.

8.Your next step is to send your JV partner a small gift, it doesn’t have to be anything major, it might be a bottle of wine, tickets to the cinema or even a dinner for two at your pub. This is a great way to seal the next joint venture with them, you will know through tracking the JV’s that if it works you can use the same JV partner again in 3 – 6 months time.

9. Nowto complete a JV to the partners that don’t have a database (list one) is pretty much the same you just don’t send it to the customers you let them come and pick up the offer.

So…………

1. Your first step is to use the list of mainly retail businesses from list one and use the same voucher you used for the JV promotion I have just explained.

2. Approach the JV partners from the first list and verbally explain to them to hand every customer that buys something from them a copy of the voucher you have designed.

3. Once the JV partner has agreed to stock your vouchers, design and print as many as they can have. Remember the more vouchers they give away the better response you should get and therefore the more sales into your pub.

4. Track all the vouchers as they come back into your pub on the tracking spreadsheet. Once you have the results use all the JV partners that have provided a good return on investment for you.

POINTS TO REMEMBER FOR JOINT VENTURES:

• Target at least 2 Joint Ventures per month

• Use all the JV partners with databases first

• Thank your JV partners with a small gift

• Keep track of all the results

• Use those JV’s that have worked for you in the future

Using Special Occasions To Generate New Customers

Valentines Day

Valentines Day is a great promotional day to generate new customers as well as to your existing customers. There are many ways to generate and promote the day and here are a few to use:

Fresh roses to all females on arrival

Free glass of sparkling wine on arrival

Free chocolate dipped in strawberries for dessert

Organise an “aphrodisiac” dinner menu (have your chef make up a menu with some of the worlds sexy ingredients (Asparagus, Almonds, Avocado, Bananas, Basi, Chocolate, Carrots, Coffee, Ginger, Honey, Nutmeg, Oysters, Pine Nuts, Pineapple, Vanilla, Wine.)

Mothers Day and Fathers Day

Both are great days to generate new customers for your pub as well as providing a great opportunity to market to your existing database. Some ideas to put on your offer could include:

• Mum or Dad eat for Free (depending on which day it is)

• Mum receives fresh flowers on arrival
• Dad receives a voucher to the local hardware store (do a joint venture with  them)

Launch of Your New Menu

This is a great way to get new customers in the door, as everyone likes something new. (always emphasise the word ‘new’) Here you can offer them many ways to get them in the door such as:

• Free taste test of the items that have a good profit on them, have some free platters on the bar etc.(always emphasise the word ‘free’)

• Special discount voucher to get them to dine (remember we are hoping that your service and food will keep them coming back) We will talk about the voucher later on.

• Free beverage (list a couple) if they order one of the new food items off the menu.

• Receive a Free VIP card if they order off the new menu. We will talk about the VIP card later, (very important person)

• Free tasting of any new beers or wines on the menu, you will in most cases be able to get some free wine samples off your suppliers after you agree to put their wine on your menu.

Using Referrals to Get New Customers

As a slight variance on your datacard, you could make a space available on the back of the card for 3 areas to print: name, address, phone and email spaces where your customer can introduce 3 friends to your venue by writing in their names and details.

The payoff for this one is that you will give the person that referred the names to you three gift vouchers to what ever value you think is appropriate (usually between £5-£10) to give to the three people and give another one to the person who put in the names.

And again on the back of the voucher the three other people will have to validate the voucher by giving you their details to use the voucher in your pub.

And guess what? Now you have another 3 people to put into your database.

(see the Data card back in the Tool Box Folder)

Make up a competition

• People love competitions, so a great idea to generate new customers is to put on a competition. Now it doesn’t need to be a holiday or a car, but it could be something that you as a licensee can buy at cost like:
  
  
• A case of wine
• A meat hamper
• Dinner for two, four, six at your venue
  It could be ‘win our chef for the night’have your chef cook dinner for the lucky winners at their home for say 6 people; you supply the food and the chef.
  You can even put a tremendously high value on it as well. (you should be able to get local press, even local radio or TV interested if you really get your marketing and public relations head on)
• Themed Night Promotions are a great way to get your customers involved with the success of your pub, here your ideas can be endless.
• Christmas Lunch with all the trimmings (in June) and alternatively Aussie beach day in January (get everybody to come in their summer clothing ‘shorts…….and the rest, prizes of course for best dressed’.
• Italian Night
• Sporting events, but well planned and marketed
• Join up with local events like centenary celebrations or anything local
• Any national day from any country around the world, St Georges Day, St Patricks Day etc. Here you could cook a specialty dish from that country as a special on the lunch or dinner menu.

Promote a Well Known Speaker or Local Identity

I’ve seen pubs and restaurants booking out their venues to guest speakers and the way in which they do it provides a beneficial arrangement for both.

Find or contact someone in your local area that you think may be interesting to hear them speak, this could be a local sporting hero or businessperson. Approach them and ask if they would like to speak at a pre-arranged lunch or dinner at your place, generally they will say yes as its good PR for them as well.

Don’t offer to pay them but if they ask just offer to do a ‘deal’ with them. The deal could be that they will be able to eat at your place to a specified agreed amount and in return they will speak at your event.

You then charge a set amount for customers to hear them speak usually this will include a starter, main course and whatever drink you may want to offer.

You can use this strategy to fill slow periods during the year when you may not be as busy.

How Do I Reach New Customers?

There are many ways in which you can reach your target market; these include using any of the following:

• Flyers (letter or A4 size) for a local letter box drop
• Advertising in your local paper
• Advertising in a Local Magazine
• Advertising in local shop fronts
• Using your joint venture partners to advertise with
• Signage, banners outside your pub
• Radio promotions (they are often asking for ‘whats’ on’, let em know you could get if for free. Don’t forget Radio is a very powerful media)
• Fax blitzes (be careful though if not done tastefully you could get complaints, but if done tactfully, featuring how you benefit local businesses and the community you’ll prosper)
• Newsletters from local businesses or local councils. Put your advertisement in their newsletter.
• Press releases to the news media in your locality
• Billboards
• Farmers Fields
  
  

Of course you don’t have to use all of these however it is best to use a minimum of at least 4 of these to make the impact you need. Don’t forget you never advertise using one vehicle, use multiple advertising methods to make sure your message to market gets through.

STRATEGIES TO GET YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS COMING BACK MORE OFTEN

A number of the following strategies involve using your database, so as you can see, collecting details of your customers is paramount for your pub to be successful. The basis behind database marketing is to keep in contact with your customers to ensure that you are always in the front of their mind and to let them know of any upcoming events held at your pub venue.

There are two types of generation strategies to ensure your customers come back again and again. And they are:

1. INTERNAL MARKETING

This relates to any marketing that you provide internally within your pub

EXTERNAL MARKETING

External marketing relates to obviously any marketing that is done externally from the business like sending out newsletters to your customers.

Internal:

Toilet Advertising:

This is probably one of the most under utilised advertising areas in your pub venue. Advertising in your toilets is a great way to tell your existing customers what is coming up in the future.

All you need to do is to buy some letter or A4 sized picture frames (or lager if room permits), you will then attach these frames either above the men’s urinal or on the back of the toilet doors in the girls and boys.

Just think about it, you have a captive market when someone is going to the toilet so why not give them something to read whilst they are ‘spending a penny’.

Some promotions you can promote are:

Any of your special occasions (mother’s day, father’s day etc.)

You could place your newsletter in the picture frame

You could also sell the space to outside businesses for a sum of money or a deal with products or services.

The main point here is that you keep changing the picture frame information at least monthly.

Hard Peg Club

If you sell great cask ales you could encourage members to sign up to a ‘Hard Peg Club’ here they meet weekly, or monthly to discuss and taste latest ales and anything that goes with beer drinking.

These members would appreciate information in your newsletter to keep them informed of upcoming new ales and beers, plus tasting notes etc.

VIP card or frequent customer card

This promotion is a great way to build loyalty with your customers and it is a great way to get them back more often. The concept behind this promotion is to get your customer to spend more by enticing them with discounts and offers, so the more they use their card the more they get back.

You can produce the cards to either just be presented by them on arrival or a card that can be stamped. There are a few ways you can run this promotion.

1. Produce a credit card type, this is a little more expensive to do however it gives the best impact to the customer, this is great to use if you just have a straight discount off your products.

2. Have printed business card size cards that can be hole punched or stamped each time they use the card

3. Print the cards yourself and then have them laminated.

To run this promotion follow these steps:

1. Decide what type of promotion you want to use, do you want to give a discount, give them free products or run a points system for prizes. Here are some examples: “Receive 10% off all food purchases”, “Receive a Free coffee after buying 7”

2. Design your cards to match your promotion (see the examples)

3. Promote the VIP card to all your customers on your database; you can use a VIP card launch as a promotion itself. You can promote the VIP card by letting all your customers know that they are eligible to receive a FREE VIP the next time they dine with 2 or more people.

4. Have your customer fill out the application form and either send out the card to them or have them come in and pick it up.

Bounce back Offers

A bounce back offer is quite simply a special offer you send out to your customers just after they have bought from you. This strategy works extremely well soon after a customer fills out the data card.

You can either send out the special offer via the post or via email, keep in mind my previous comments about the responses you will receive. Please look at the bounce back offer letter I have included with the Toolkit Folder it will give you more information on what to say in the letter.

Be sure to put an expiry date within the next 30 days because the whole idea of this promotion is to get your new customer back as soon as possible. The type of offers you can give could include:

• Free main course on your next return

• Free bottle of wine with form or more people

• Provide a £? Voucher

When sending out your letter be sure to attach or print on the letter the offer details and how they can claim their special offer.

Lost Customer Letter

Once you have established your database it is important to keep it up to date with the current details of your customers. What you will find is that you will get a percentage of customers that always come to your venue and then there is a group of people that have only come once or twice.

It is these people that we will targeting in this promotion. This promotion is very successful during your downtimes in your business as it invigorates some of your old customers to come back again.

Use this template I have provided for you in the Tool Kit Folder, this promotion is easy to start so follow this process:

1. Identify those customers that have not dined with you in the past 6 months or so.

2. Decide on the offer you want to promote to get your lost customers back.

3. Adjust the template letter and add either a voucher or some type of offer

4. Send out the letter

Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are a great way to extend your revenue potential by having them available for customers to buy for presents and special occasions.

You can present your gift voucher on some good quality paper with some decorative fonts. You should promote your gift vouchers in all the mediums that we have spoken about so far and include it on your website, toilet advertising, newsletters and bill folds.

Bill Folds

Bill folds are part of the internal marketing strategies for your pub; this is a little used but very effective strategy.

A bill fold is a small flyer or is placed with a customers receipt when paying for meal. The bill fold can be used to promote any of the upcoming events you are holding in your pub.

The bill folds should be changed every month according to the future event you have on. There are some important notes we need to explain to make it an effective medium:

1. Ensure you print on the bill fold “Please take me with you” or “Customer Copy”. You want to encourage your customer to take the bill fold with them.

2. It must be small enough so that it is easy for your customer to take home

Your staff must alert the customer when they present the bill or clearing tables about the future events you have on the bill fold.

You can use the bill fold template found in the template folder in your Tool Kit Folder

Newsletters

A newsletter is an important form of communication with your customers, not only can you use it for internal use in the pub you can also send it out to all of your customers on your database. You can either email out the newsletter or print it off and send it in the post.

When writing your newsletter be sure to include about 80% of the content directed to your customers I.e. what’s in it for them. Show them what is happening in your pub and what deals or special events are available to them.

The other 20% of the content can be about your pub. Some of the ideas you can put into the newsletter include:

• Profiles on your staff
• Educational material like how your crafted beers are made
• New staff starting in your business
• Employees of the month
• Community work you are doing
• Events happening within your local area
• Promote your VIP card programme
• Announcing winners of your competitions
• Giving some of your chefs favourite recipes
• Providing some local information about customers i.e. at long last, Jean had her baby, both doing well. Followed with a few lines of appropriate comments. (from you, alternatively your copy writer, could be a member of staff or family)

Strategies To Increase Your Average Customers Spend

The real hard work is getting customers to your business, so once you have them sitting in your pub now it’s about refining the process and to get your customers to spend more with you. This can be done in several ways:

• Important important important! Your staff must be ‘superbly’ trained. If they are not, then basically forget the whole of this programme as so much depends on the ‘appropriate talent’ you have working for you.
  
  
• Only staff that can live up to your new standards can hope to have a place in your team. They need to know this too!
  
  
• Get your staff to up sell, teach them the most appropriate phrases to use. This is a must!
  
  
• Engineer your menu (more details on this technique on the boot camp)
  
  
• Put in incentive programmes for your staff (see incentive examples in the Tool Kit Folder)
  
  
• Entice your customer with table cards and advertising and merchandising

The process really must start with one of your main marketing pieces.your menu and your staff. A lot of professionals forget that it is their menu which can be one of the best marketing pieces they have.

Just think about this for a second, regardless of who come in I would say about 99% of ‘diners’ will look at some type of menu or specials chalkboard.

With this figure in mind you have to make sure that your menus are ‘engineered’ to make more money for you.

Menu Engineering

Menu engineering is the analysis of your menu looking at the Retail price, sales history and the cost of each item of the menu.

From the collected data, engineering refers to the calculation of the profit of each item in relation to all the other items on the menu for a period of time.

Menu engineering is an integral part of hospitality management in today’s competitive market. Each of the items, once calculated, will be classed into one of four categories which then allows you to make an informed decision about changes to your menu.

Menu engineering is really about two vitally important processes:

1. Finding high profit items

2. Placement on your menu

When I talk about the psychological elements I am referring to the way in which humans take in and process information based on the menu you have provided them with.

These elements or processes will allow you to position items on your menu to ensure that they receive a better chance of being sold.

The way we do this is simple but very important in the overall structure and layout of your menu.

Depending on your menu and how it is designed eg on A4, letter, A3 or double folded, triple folded, will depend how you layout the menu items. Try and categorise your menu by placing as many items as possible into their own categories like starters, healthy options, snack, pasta, Salads, pizza, grill, seafood, desserts, starters, and main courses etc.

This will give the customer a sense of greater variety on the menu. Place a
minimum of 3-4 items up to a maximum of 8-10 in any one category.

The first step is to position the menu items based on the following page diagrams.

Page Positioning

On the following page is a representation of how customer’s eye movements will read your menu depending what layout it is set in.

When designing your menus it is important to place the highest profit categories into or as close to the 1, 2 and 3 areas of your menu as this is where the customer will be drawn to first.

Also put your lowest profit items near area 6 as this is the last area customers will see and generally a lower performing area.

A3 and A4 Single Fold

Single Page A4, letter, A5 or A3

Tri fold Menu

Let’s just say for an example that you had a category that had a lot of high combinations items in it (grills etc), what you would then do is to try and place your grill category as close to area 1 and 2.

Now.That’s not always going to work because desserts should be traditionally in section 6.

This is where menu engineering is part science and part art, you have to have a level of understanding to know you just would not put your grill section in area 6, you would, however, put it in 1 or 2.

Single page designs are a little easier to arrange as apposed to the
tri-fold menus, just have a go and then look at it from a technical point and then from a general look and feel point.

You have to balance the two areas together.

Once you have the general outline of where you want to place the main sections of your menu, your next step will be to arrange the individual categories of the menu.

You will be arranging all the menu items into a set formula so to speak. When placing and arranging your menus items follow these steps:

Item Placement

Arrange all your high contributing items to the top and bottom 20% of items in the menu category. Have a look in the following examples, see how I have the higher contributing items highlighted near the top and bottom of the menu.

This is one of the most important steps you must do, it is the psychological elements that are at work here, people will generally remember either the first or last thing they see, hear and feel. You will also notice that all the lower contributing items of the menu are grouped in the middle section of the menu; this is so you can hide the lowest profit items in the bulk of the writing of the menu.

BREAKFAST MENU

	Dieters Delight – sautéed tomato, fresh basil & Spanish onion, topped with cottage cheese on wholmeal toast (no butter)
	Special Florentine – toasted muffin topped with English baby spinach, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce (with either ham or salmon)	Highest Profit Items Lowest Profit Items Highest Profit Items Shading
	Health Combo – bowl of fresh fruit, low fat yoghurt & wholemeal toast (no butter)
	The Whole Shabang – crispy bacon, two fried eggs, mushrooms, grilled tomato, hash brown, baked beans, toast (£0.50 extra for poached or scrambled eggs)
	French Toast – traditional French toast served with grilled banana and lashings of maple syrup
New!	Toasted Stuff – your choice of fruited tea cake or plain toast, all served with butter and jam or honey
	B&E Roll – crispy bacon, egg & BBQ sauce in a fresh roll
	Warm Muffins – Blueberry, Banana or Chocolate
	Feel Good – Crispy Bacon, tomato, egg, cheese, Spanish onion & chili sauce or a fresh roll
	Smoked Salmon Scramble – creamed scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and chives on toast
	The Grill – crispy bacon, two fried eggs, grilled tomato and toast (add £0.50p for poached or scrambled eggs)
Column Highlights	The Hikers special – two fried eggs, hash browns, baked beans and toast (add £0.50p for poached or scrambled eggs)
	Pancakes – two fluffy pancakes topped with fresh fruit and maple syrup
	Popeye Omelette – baby spinach, bacon, tomato & tasty cheese
	Classic Omelette – ham, tomato, herbs and tasty cheese
	Vegetarian Omelette – Spanish onion, tomato, spinach, peppers, mushrooms & cottage cheese

Shading

Shading forms an important aspect of your total menu look and feel, it also plays an important part in drawing in the customer to certain menu items.

The items that are shaded should be the items that have the highest profit items. You should only have 2 – 3 shaded items in each of the menu categories or about 20%.

You don’t want to crowd out the menu with too many items shaded so only shade your top contributing items. Shade the menu items in a light shading colour and with a shading effect (transparency) of between 5 – 15%.

You only want to draw in your customer and catch their eye to the shaded item not blow them away or confuse them.

3. Column Highlights

Use column highlights to outline a new dish or to highlight your pub’s specialty dish, make sure you only use 2 column highlights per menu category. This is a good way to mark a menu item if you don’t want to have shading on the menu but still have some items marked.

Use items in the column that represent your pub or restaurant, it could be a tiny chef’s hat, your logo, a food item like a chili, or a star to mark the high contribution item on your menu.

What you are trying to do here is merely catch the eye of your customer and show a signature item.

Boxing

To highlight any item you can also box it, very simply put a box around to highlight that item.

Just one final note on the shading of you menu, don’t go over board and shade too many items because all you want to do is get the customer to buy only your high profitable items not all your items.

Once you have prepared your menu layout, your shading, and positioning you can go and get it printed. You will notice that using colour is far more effective to attract your customers to buy the higher profit items.

Price Rounding

When pricing your menu based on your cost price and then adding a mark up percentage you are always left with an odd looking Retail Price like £1.23 or £5.38 or £12.52. What you want to be doing is to round up your menu pricing to the nearest £.50 or £0.90 this will give you just that little bit more profit.

Table Tent Cards

By using table tent cards you will be able to increase your average spend per customer as you will be able to place onto the tent card any of your high profit items from you menu.

The table tent cards should be small enough to fit on your tables and on your bar and any other areas that customers can view.

Your Next Steps.

Your next step is really to make sure you have read and engaged in the full boot camp manual ‘Making Time To Make Profit’ and fully participated in the exercises designed to sharpen your skills even further.

This has been your quick start; the two days we will share together are going to be wonderful for your business and your life.

Then we have the follow up coaching days, the teleconferences, the 1-1 sessions and all the rest that I’ve got in store for you.

Then it’s just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. You’ll have the systems, the techniques the ‘know how’ to work effectively.

Let me leave you with a few quotes that have kept me going through the design and production of these materials I do hope you enjoy.

• Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present. Eleanor Roosevelt

• I like things to happen; and if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen. Winston Churchill.

• A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. Brian Tracy

• Now is the only time there is. Make you’re now wow, your minute’s miracles, and your days pay. Your life will have been magnificently lived and invested, and when you die you will have made a difference. Mark Victor Hansen.

Until we meet up, get ready, we are off and running.

Cheers

Sammy

What’s On Your Mind?

Had a ‘blinding flash of the obvious?’ Write it in here, then consider your successful outcome, then finally put your next Action and don’t forget to put a date for when you’ll complete it. Remember, a goal without a deadline is simply a wish!