What is your promotional plan for next year!
New financial year - new promotional plan...
What are you going to push in your club, pub or restaurant in the coming year? Seasonal menu marketing is an obvious start for food outlets like restaurants or bistros in clubs and pubs and targeted promotions around new local events as we come out of COVID restrictions are also an obvious start. What other things will you promote to increase visitation over the next year?
If we do some simple maths and get just a five (5) percent increase in visitation and a commensurate increase in spend per visit, we can increase trade nicely. If your average customer visits are once a week - 52 visits per year - and you can get that 5 percent increase, they will visit approximately 55 times (rounded up). If they spend an average $20 per visit and you can increase that by 5 percent, they will spend $21.
Initially they were worth 52 x $20 = $1,040 per year. With the 5 percent increase in both visitation and spend, they are now worth 55 x $21 = $1,155 per year which equates to an 11 percent cumulative increase. And that will not increase your costs much, if at all, so it is $115 of additional profit!
Here are a few tips to try and achieve just those 2 increases of only 5 percent:
Cycle marketing
Different times of the year offer different opportunities to engage with your members, patrons and guests, often related to the seasons or sporting seasons (footy season for all codes i.e. AFL, NRL and Rugby through most of the year including winter, or soccer - the real football, and cricket and basketball during summer), or time of year patronage which can be especially location dependent (coastal holiday locations, ski resorts or adventure related places).
You need to work out what to promote at which point of the year to generate the additional visitation and how to better engage your customers so that you grab that extra ‘share of their wallet/purse’. Two quick examples for a 12 month period:
X Sporting venue – the cycles for a sporting venue can go like this –
o March to September – Football – NRL, AFL and Rugby
o September to March – Cricket and Soccer
o Peak events – State of Origin game in June – July, Anzac Day games for AFL and NRL, Grand finals in September – October
o Racing – horses and dogs all year round
o Golf – year round with the 4 majors as Peak Event highlights
X Destination locations – the cycles for a seaside location would be closely linked to -
o School holidays, including Easter and Christmas
o Queen’s Birthday and Labour Day long weekends
o Festivals or community events in the specific locations
o Grey nomads all year round promotions
Setting up a simple cycle marketing plan can be done in an excel spreadsheet, identifying the promotion against the time (Month(s), week(s) or day(s)), that will drive the greatest result in increasing visitation.
Rolling 12 month promotional plan
The cycle plan will best be managed with a rolling 12 month promotional plan. I have found doing this on a quarterly basis is the easiest way to go. Depending on your financial year (July – June, January – December or another period) working with quarters is simple – January quarter (Jan, Feb, Mar) April quarter (Apr, May, Jun), July quarter (Jul, Aug, Sep) and October quarter (Oct, Nov, Dec).
With the excel spreadsheet mentioned earlier, it is easy to create the rolling 12 month approach – as a quarter is completed, you cut it off the front of the sheet and paste it to the back of the sheet – see below.
I tend to highlight the periods (as above) in different colours by campaign and you can also put text in the cells that describe the actual promotion – like a specific day or week, or a particular promotion e.g. Fashions in the Field for Melbourne Cup Day.
Once you set this up, your calendar will quite literally roll round with only additions or variations to the promotions you do. Your plan will be in place to minimise your cycle marketing efforts in the future.
Media Channels
You also need to think about your media channels when looking at your marketing efforts, as the different demographics you are aiming to communicate with will prefer different channels to connect with you.
Consider the range of channels available to you and the likely target audience, like my suggested table below –
Market Message
With your cycle marketing programs, you will have different target audiences to talk to, through different channels, so the message generally will not be the same. The promotional message to entice a foodie versus a drinker or punter will be different and then there is of course the channel you use to communicate to them.
A family heading to a destination location will probably want to know there are kids play facilities, a good food outlet (or two) and good location relative to accommodation or the highlight feature they are visiting – e.g. beach, river, or sporting facility. So the message will need to be on your website and Facebook page.
A regular club member who comes in to watch the footy will want to know about promos for grand finals, State of Origin or similar peak rounds and have an attractive offer to bring them to your venue and not your competitors.
In clubs and pubs, older patrons want to know that they can sit quietly and enjoy a quiet meal or drink, without noisy children running round the place and that they can get a smaller, low priced meal that suits their budget and appetite.
These are all different messages for different target markets which will need different channels to communicate them. Once great tip is to code your promotions, so you can track which ones are working. For example –
X FMD-16/6-W – could be the code for a family meal deal on 16 June on your website
X SOO-26/6-S - could be the code for a State of Origin promotion via SMS
Then you can see how many people respond to the messages and the relevant channels, so you know you are reaching the right target audience.
If you need more information or assistance in setting up your new year promotional plan, contact Ron Browne, Managing Consultant on 0414 633 423 or ron@extraprenuerservices.com.au
