General Promotion Strategy

Bar Promotions are essential for most bars to stay open these days. They can make your bar go from empty to full, but coming up with new bar promotion ideas is not always easy. Before getting into some ideas for different bar promotions, lets examine the main reasons for holding these events in the first place (aside from the obvious ‘making more money’)
  • Increase Customer Traffic – bring in new customers and keep current customers coming back.
  • Get Customers to Come in Earlier and Stay Later – fill those empty afternoon or early evening hours.  By entertaining customers with different bar promotions and bar contests, people will stay longer and spend more.
  • Create Buzz- by putting on cool new bar events, people will talk, resulting in more customers on non-event nights.
  • Match or Beat out the Competition – stay ahead of your competitors by doing something a little more fun / wild / crazy / cool than they’re doing.
  • Reward Regulars – bar promotions give the bar a chance to give back to their regular customers.
  • Creates a Lively Atmosphere – without regular bar promotions, its not only your customers that are getting bored, its your staff as well.

There are several different types of mobile campaigns that can be used for bars, restaurants, and night clubs. The basics for mobile marketing are covered with SMS messaging, Google Ads for mobile, Social Media Marketing, responsive web design (mobile optimized site), paid reviews & directory listings, and a personalized mobile app. The video below was done to show bars and restaurants what mobile marketing could do for their business. 

Promotional Videos

I think that a video campaign can help to bring more life into Doogans. There are two video styles that I have in mind that will work together to bring in new clients, retain customers, and build a stronger staff.

Overview Video - 
This video will be a quick outline of your bar. I have some footage saved to my computer that I can use, but will have to take additional shots to complete the concept. Additionally, one of my guys has an RC plane that he uses to get video and for a big event, we can get overhead shots. Once completed the video can be placed on the front page of your website, then marketed through Facebook & Google and can even be run as a TV campaign. Below is a video for a bar in canton that one of my partners made that we can use as a reference. It was played before movies at a theater near the bar.
Below we have some stats from the company that places ads with the Cinemark next door to Doogan's. It shows that advertising with the theater can be more productive than advertising on Facebook, because it is a lot easier to get movie goers to go to a restaurant, than it is to get a Facebook user off of their computer and into a restaurant. The rates for ads in the theater and their estimated returns are: For a 13 week contract for a 15 second video playing before the movies, the cost would be $280 per week (3,500 views / 8 cents per view) at a 26 week contract, that drops to $180 per week. There is also an option for a 30 second commercial. For lobby placement ads, the cost is $10 per week. There is a $250 production formatting fee in addition to their weekly costs. 

​This is a simple video I did to promote my Halloween party this weekend. Simple videos like this can help bring awareness to events like trivia night. Or have people checking the social media to see a recap of the season. If we have a large catalog of patrons' photos, we can play them on one of the TV screens which will keep people entertained. 

Website Redesign

Your website is missing the catch that would bring people in and could use some work. I would like to restructure the menu, so it is not just a picture of the menu, but has a list of items and more pictures. Additionally, navigation could be enhanced to give information that people want up front, but make it easy for them to stay on the website longer. I think the website could also have exclusive deals that people would have to continue to look at in order to receive. 


Some of the websites in my portfolio are:


CMI-Talent.com


RoyalCheerAthletics.com


RachaelLust.com


SteeBax.com


BlackStonePropertyMaintenance.com


KurbAppealLandscaping.com

Many people are using phones and tablets to visit websites these days. On a phone, the Doogan's website is simply a smaller version of the desktop website, which means, it will not show as high as the competition on Google mobile.

In addition to creating a website image, I include SEO services to increase rank on Google by embedding keywords into the coded data and can run advertising campaigns to get paid clicks.  

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is a way that a lot of people try to organize their extracurricular activities. That being said, people are often times turned away from blatant advertising. When using a strategy that displays information with a non aggressive approach, we can make our way into the hearts and stomachs of our locals. People respond to images and videos the most on Facebook, as long as they have text that describes the image. Creating little fliers to promote each special can help more than simply writing out that it's crab leg night. 
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Additionally, Facebook provides a medium for paid ads to reach new and existing customers. Facebook provides an opportunity for higher return on investment in that it provides digital targeting. Restaurants can filter users by location information so that only users near locations will see the ads, demographic information such as gender, age, or age, interests, and behaviors. To advertise on Facebook to locations within 10 miles of Aurora, you can set the budget that you would like to spend. The estimated results look like this:

$35 / week = 10,000 views
$150 / week = 28,000 views

Pricing

As I had mentioned, it is difficult to determine a price without knowing what our campaign is going to look like, but you can see what I charge other clients on my pricing page. 
I think it would be more realistic to have a weekly salary added to my check to run the marketing campaign. To efficiently build the business of the restaurant, I would spend 5-10 hours a week dedicating my time to marketing. This would consist of creating online fliers, scheduling social media posts, revamping the website, creating promo videos, taking pictures of food and patrons, and creating & monitoring paid advertisements. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss marketing with you. I look forward to continuing our discussion.

Matt Tyrrell

330-671-5354
[email protected]