It’s a challenge to open a bar and sustain it. You need to come up with innovative marketing and promotion ideas that will augment diners and maintain a steady influx. A brilliant ambiance and awesome food are just the fundamentals. In order to keep your diners coming back to your bar, you must have something special.
The altering taste of millennials has caused a major deviation in sales figures. This has subsequently resulted in elevating the preference for innovative and experiential drinking. In a consumerist culture, you need to have some eye-catching marketing strategies to keep them hooked to your den.
A great example is Dineout’s Gourmet Passport programme that provides complimentary offers on not only buffet food but also on drinks. The best thing about this exclusive membership programme is that a member can order both food and drinks and enjoy complimentary services. And furthermore, no annual subscription fee is needed either. This kind of marketing idea will make the diners come back to your bar.
Here are some bar marketing and promotional ideas to increase the diner base and sustain the same.
1. Social Media Advertising
Social media is the most important tool in the digital age when it comes to marketing your brand. By hyper-targeting your audience, you can reap great benefits from various social media sites. Popular sites like Facebook and Instagram can reach your targeted audience through sponsored advertisements.
It’s important to select the potential diner base. For e.g. if you find men between the ages of 25 – 35 liking pages or posts related to vodka, then you can hyper-target them setting a location radius of your preferred choice.
Advertisements need to be attractive and witty. They could also be need-based. If footfalls on particular days are low, then you must provide some added benefits like exciting discounts and offers that will entice diners to your bar.
Affiliations to restaurant aggregators and dining out platforms also help your restaurants garner more popularity and recognition among diners. Dineout, India’s largest dining out platform provides exciting offers and promotes their partner restaurants and bars through emphatic promotions and campaigns. Thus, it is no surprise that Dineout can reach to a larger mass of audience through their social media platforms.
2. Accessible Online Menu
Literally speaking, everything happens online these days. Well, almost everything! But one thing is for certain that diners scavenge the internet when they look for restaurants or bars. Usually, the search is based on location. For e.g. people generally search for something akin to “bars near me”. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that your bar’s website pops up when people forage the search engines. This method of adding your website to the endless lists of search results is known as indexing.
Thus, the online menu must be easily accessible and should always be kept updated especially on aggregators like Dineout. This will be beneficial for your diners to have a quick look at the menu items. At the same time, your website must be appealing to the youth brigade. Engaging blog posts and social media campaigns are a good way to increase footfall at the restaurant.
3. Easy Location Search via Google Maps
As mentioned above, everyone is searching online. Just like looking for websites on search engines, people use Google Maps very often to find the direction to their preferred destination.
Google has its own analytics tools to find the location of businesses. To have your business location on the map, you must open a Google My Business account that is free to create. This account lets you handle the basic data that diners look for online like restaurant address, contact information, timings, etc.
4. Diner engagement through Games and Fun Campaigns
You cannot rest on your laurels, now that you have diners coming to your bar. The difficult job lies in making them come back for more. Your guests must be kept engaged and entertained. That way, word of mouth publicity will ensure more diners in the future.
Games and related campaigns are a fun way of engaging your diners. The principal reason is that games entail the participation of more than 1 person. Guests are more likely to come in bigger groups and immerse themselves in addictive games like darts, pinball, foosball, pool, etc. At times, you can opt to charge for some games also, especially if diners are madly addicted to them. Many bars levy charges for a game of pool. Another way of gaining popularity is to host events on special days or maybe once a week (especially on slow nights). You could give diners a complementary game for free on such occasions. “Free to play trivia nights” are also popular among the diners. But the rewards must also be exciting enough to keep the guest interested.
More the diners, better the sales for that day. Keeping a diner longer ensures a fat bill.
5. Host Live Music
This has become almost mandatory for any bar in the world. The choice of music is key. You can mix the current chartbusters with some classic rock ‘n’ roll at times to keep a balance between different genres. To play live music, you must meet the licensing compliances. To get the best bands in your city, you can approach the right event coordinator. There are talented solo artists that can be as effective as a band. Local artists can evoke a community feeling that sits well with diners who, in turn, will stay loyal to your bar.
It’s important to highlight such events on your website and social media pages. Even advertise and update on the aggregator websites like Dineout and bookmyshow to draw more footfall. Artists or bands who already have a huge fan following will ensure brilliant promotion for your bar.
6. Partnership with Local Businesses including collaboration with artists
A joint venture is always welcoming. Temporary events such as special cuisine night or musical night help businesses flourish. It not only depends on what type of business you’re forming a partnership with but also on the desire and will of the business owner to join hands together for mutual benefits. So, you must be ambitious and careful at the same time.
Collaborating with the popular and upcoming artists is a good idea too. You could just give out space for workshops during the non peak hours. This will not only give them a platform but also add a taste of diversity to your diners.
7. Bar Blog
Blogging is a tested way of reaching out to people. Brand building has always relied on effective blogging in the past. Moreover, blogs can be linked back to a reservation page or social media pages by a simple effort. You need a set team that will regularly post on social media pages. Interesting topics will keep your diners hooked. Witty posts including a famous cocktail recipe and trivia about cuisine and liquor is sure to allure the audience. Such posts can also become viral on the internet. Additionally, subscription to newsletter helps generate substantial potential diner databases. Thus, you can notably boost your business up.
8. SMS and email marketing
Restaurants can conveniently create their own database using the tool of SMS and email campaigning. Thus, a massive pool of clients could be targeted at a go. Subsequently pitching to the interested ones could result in qualitative business. This smart marketing tool is sure to be effective.
Thus, following the above-mentioned marketing tools can be instrumental in building and further hooking a trustable diner base. The idea is to reach out to diners in a comfortable manner. Further catering them their taste complementary items could make the process much simplified.
