SPECIFIC METHODS OF COMMUNICATING

‘A’ boards

‘A’ boards are a simple but effective way of promoting your business. An ‘A’ board is a free-standing, double-sided chalkboard that can be put outside your pub to advertise products, events, offers etc. It can be positioned to help pedestrians and motorists find you, as well as to advertise offers and events. There are restrictions on where you can locate them and your council may object if your ‘A’ board infringes any regulations.

Flags

Not normally thought of as a method of communicating, flags are very good for attracting attention as they flutter in the breeze, and are therefore good for building awareness. Rural pubs on busy roads can make good use of flags to catch the eye of passing motorists and distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Banners

Banners are frequently used by pubs to promote satellite TV, special events and food. They can be made in a variety of sizes by local suppliers and can be effective at communicating to customers and potential customers. Unfortunately, banners can suffer the ravages of the weather and quickly become discoloured or damaged. Banners also lose impact when they have been displayed for a while. Tired and tatty banners make the outside of the pub look untidy. Use them occasionally for specific periods of time then take them down, to make the best use of them.

Road signs

Rural pubs and pubs in tourist destinations are sometimes able to have road signs made and positioned to direct the public to them. If this is something you are interested in, you should approach your local council. Planning permission may have to be applied for, together with an arrangement fee and the cost of the sign itself. They are permanent fixtures and can be very effective in helping the public to find you.

Chalkboards

Chalkboards can be used for menus, promoting ‘beer or wine of the month’ and forthcoming events. Simple white chalk on the black background can look very effective, as can displays that are more colourful. Whichever style you decide to use, it must look professional. Make sure that the writing is neat and legible and preferably use someone with artistic talent for any illustrations. Strategically place your chalkboards where they can be seen and don’t overdo it; too many can spoil the effectiveness.

Menus

Menus should be clean, professionally presented, and have mouthwatering descriptions of the food you are offering. Many food suppliers offer free design and printing of menus for their customers and are worth considering. Menus can also be used to promote drinks by recommending wines and beers that compliment the dishes. (See Chapter 17, Pub Food, for more information.)

Wine lists

Wine lists are excellent tools for promoting your wines. They too, should be professionally presented with a brief, enticing description of the wines you have available. Wine suppliers, breweries and pub companies are often able to help you put together a wine list and suggest a range of wines that may be suitable for your pub. Some companies also have a facility to print wine lists for you.

Staff shirts

Staff should always be smartly presented and staff uniforms are a means of doing this. Staff shirts can also be a way of promoting products and events to your customers. Messages can be displayed on the shirts: an unusual but effective way of communicating with your customers. This works best if the shirts are used for only a short period of time, rather than the staff wearing the same shirts, week-in, week-out. You can have different ‘campaigns’ over the course of the year, with different messages promoting different things. Badges are another way of doing this, though being smaller can be difficult to see.

Bar displays

Your bar servery should be regarded as your ‘shop window’ and is therefore your primary place for promoting your products. Your back bar area is the perfect place for product displays. These can be used to launch new drinks and ones with high profit margins. Try to make your display a little more interesting than simply stacking up a few bottles together. This will add enormously to the impact of the display. For example, displays can be enhanced by adding the following:

• dried hops;
• good quality imitation vines;
• imitation ice;
• photographic backgrounds;
• humorous props and images;
• lights;
• movement;
• colour.

You can also tie in displays with seasonal changes and major events. Being creative with your displays will increase their success significantly. Displays should be changed monthly, as they will not be noticed by your customers after that. It is also advisable to limit the number of products you are promoting in this way to no more than one or two at any one time, otherwise your back bar can look too cluttered. You need to invest time to keep your displays fresh and creative. You can ease the burden by enlisting the support of some of your bar staff to help you with these. Make it fun by running competitions for the best displays created by them.

Point of sale material (POS)

Point of sale material (POS) are items like drip mats, bar towels, ice buckets, posters, tent cards and glassware. Most of these items are provided by breweries, pub companies or other suppliers, and tend to promote their big brands. These provide another means of communicating with, and influencing customers. Linking in point of sale material with back bar displays adds to the overall impact.

Be aware that point of sale material quickly becomes tatty and needs to be discarded. Displaying poor quality point of sale material has a negative impact on your image. Try to make sure you have sufficient supplies by regularly asking your brewery, pub company and other suppliers for new stocks.

Newsletters

Newsletters are a much underrated method of communicating with your customers and potential customers. They can be used to keep your customers up to date with activities at your pub. You can include news of new offers, entertainment, promotions and competitions. They are best written in a friendly, light-hearted style and produced on a monthly or quarterly basis. You can also include photographs. They can be easily put together using inexpensive computer software.

Newsletters can be distributed in the following ways:

• From central points within the pub – for example, ‘The Barking Dog News-stand’.
• Posted to addresses of subscribers.
• Posted generally to homes in your catchment area.
• By email to the email addresses of subscribers.
• In other places by agreement – for example, hairdressers, shops, libraries etc (make sure they are places used by your target customers).

Direct mail

Direct mail is using leaflets or letters posted speculatively to homes in your catchment area. You can buy lists of addresses from marketing companies that can target particular types of people. They will provide the entire service from putting together your leaflet/letter to addressing and posting them. The cost of this service can be expensive and a 3% response from this form of marketing is regarded as very good. Newsletters, as described earlier, tend to be better received by their recipients, as they seem less like junk mail. They can also be sent in this way. Rather than using the professional approach, you can put together your own leaflets and pay someone to deliver them. You can also arrange for leaflets to be inserted into newspapers by your local newsagent for a fee.

Websites

The dramatic increase in internet users over the last few years is set to continue. Having your own website constructed is relatively inexpensive and can be an excellent way of promoting certain kinds of pubs. Your target customers will dictate whether a website would be useful. Having a website can attract new customers and be a means of your existing customer keeping up to date with activities at your pub.

If your target customers are internet users (and this figure is growing every month) they may use the internet to look for the products, services and activities that you offer, thus your website may be effective in attracting new customers. The key is to think about what your target customers may use the internet to search for. If your pub offers what they are looking for, then having your own website will help them be directed to you. Having a website is particularly useful for pubs:

• providing accommodation;
• offering regular entertainment;
• serving meals;
• located in a tourist area;
• offering specialist activities;
• with historical connections.

These are the types of subjects that are likely to be searched for by internet users and therefore these types of pubs may benefit from having a website. A word of caution: websites are ranked by ‘search engines’ (Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista etc) based on how relevant the content of your site is to search terms used. A good web designer will help optimise your website, but there can be no guarantees where your site will be ranked.

You can also promote your website address via any of the other methods in this chapter. This enables your target customers to find your website directly without searching for specific subjects. To maximise the number of visitors your website gets, you should display your website address in every available place.

Once people have found your website you can encourage them to interact with you by collecting feedback, obtaining email addresses and entering competitions. This can provide you with information which enables you to contact your target customers directly by email and electronic newsletters etc.

Internet advertising

Coupled with having your own website is internet advertising. This is where you pay for your pub website to be advertised on other parts of the internet, such as other websites and search engine results pages. This can be an excellent way of attracting visitors to your website. The two main providers of this type of service (with their website addresses) are:

Google Adwords	https://adwords.google.com
Overture	http://www.content.overture.com

These work by displaying the advert for your website when particular search terms are entered into a search engine by an internet user. This system differs from normal search engine results that are displayed for free. Your advert will be displayed at the top or side of the normal search results. They are also displayed on other relevant websites. You pay only when a user clicks on your advert and is directed to your website. Advertisers bid for their position: the more you bid, the higher the position of your advert.

Directories and guides

Directories and guides provide another means of promoting your pub. Examples include Good Beer Guides, accommodation and food guides, tourist guides and pub directories. These are produced by a range of individuals and companies. Some will include your details free of charge, while for others there will be a fee payable. To decide whether to pay for this form of marketing, you should check whether there is any potential for your target customers to read it and how many copies of the guide or directory will be produced and circulated.

Club and society newsletters

Often local clubs and societies have their own newsletters in which you can place inexpensive (or free) adverts. This may enable you to reach potential new customers in a low cost way. A trip to your local library will often uncover a large number of these groups. Supporting clubs and societies is also a good way of attracting new customers, especially where you allow them the free use of your function room, or provide them with a few sandwiches for their meetings.

Public relations to obtain media coverage

Public relations, or PR as it is known, is a superb way of marketing (though little used by licensees). It should be at the top of your list of ways to promote your pub. It is little used by licensees only because most of them think it is more complicated than it actually is. PR done well can generate media coverage free of charge, which would cost you an equivalent of hundreds or thousands of pounds in paid advertising. Two ways of obtaining free media coverage are:

• issuing press releases;
• building relationships with journalists.

Newspapers, magazines and radio stations are always looking for stories. By contacting them and providing them with details of something of interest about your pub, you can often get free coverage. To do this, send a press release to the editor or telephone their news desk. To stand a chance of getting coverage you will have to inform them of something that will be of interest to their readers or listeners. You will stand a better chance of publication if your news item is:

• weird;
• unusual;
• funny;
• frightening;
• linked to local issues;
• linked to local history;
• very important;
• about awards you have received;
• about famous people or celebrities;
• about animals.

When planning any events for your pub, try to add a twist to them in order to get them publicised. Run-of-the-mill happenings and events will be of little interest to journalists. For example, a worm-charming competition is much more newsworthy than a karaoke competition!

You have the option of notifying the press and local radio before the event is due to take place, in the hope that they will come along, or you can notify them afterwards. In which case you should include some good quality photographs for the press so that they can use them in any article they publish.

It is quite possible to ‘manufacture’ your own news stories, but you will have to be very convincing. Make sure you are not seen making the crop circles in your beer garden!

Sponsorship

Licensees frequently sponsor sports teams that use their pubs; providing shirts for the football team or sponsoring the annual fishing match are typical examples. As a licensee, you will regularly be approached for sponsorship, which can be expensive. If sponsorship is something you wish to consider, set an annual budget and stick to it. (You can fend off any unwanted enquiries by telling them that your budget is already allocated.) Think whether the type of sponsorship you are considering is the best use of your money. There may be other kinds of sponsorship that are more appropriate to your target market or that you can gain some useful media coverage from. For example, the local media are likely to be interested in you sponsoring the children’s ward of the local hospital, but not interested in you paying for your domino team’s tee-shirts.

It is good practice to review your sponsorship each year to ascertain if it has been of value to your business. For example: paying for an expensive football strip for a team whose members rarely use your pub, may be of limited benefit to you.

‘What’s on’ guides

Most local newspapers and radio stations feature a guide to ‘what’s on’ in your area. Events and activities are normally listed free of charge. It is worth finding out the name of the person who compiles these and keeping them regularly updated of anything that may be of interest to them. It pays to plan your events and activities well in advance in order to give you time to properly advertise them.

Newspaper and magazine advertising

Paid advertising is often the first choice for licensees wishing to advertise their pubs, mainly because it takes little thought or preparation. However, the results of paid advertising are often disappointing. Your advert can be buried amongst several similar adverts and may not even be noticed by your target customers. If you are considering this form of marketing, here are some pointers:

• Follow the AIDA principles and clarify your purpose (see the earlier section, ‘Purpose of your marketing message’).
• Check whether the publication will be read by your target customers (the advertising staff can provide you with their readership information).
• Ask for the publication’s circulation figures.
• Negotiate the price of the advert (don’t pay what is initially quoted).
• Don’t commit to a run of adverts before evaluating the impact of advertising in the publication.
• Have an eye-catching headline (not your pub’s address).
• Make the advert simple and distinctive.
• Ask for it to be positioned on a right hand page or the right hand side of a page (the human eye notices adverts more effectively if they are positioned in this way).

If you are considering paying for advertising make it a small percentage of your overall marketing budget. There are many other effective ways of communicating with your target customers.

Radio and television advertising

The cost of advertising on radio or television prevents many small businesses from promoting themselves in this way, and pubs are no exception. There are less expensive ways of advertising on radio and television such as running adverts at off-peak times: (advertising at 3am will cost you much less than at 3pm). Smaller local radio and cable television stations also provide a less expensive means of advertising. In each case though, the prices will be lower because audience numbers are smaller.

Unless you have a pub with a very high turnover that justifies advertising in this way, you will need to use other marketing methods to reach your target customers. Rather than paying to advertise, try to obtain free coverage through the PR methods mentioned earlier. Interesting or very humorous news items about pubs are occasionally broadcast on national television and much more frequently on regional television. Don’t be afraid of contacting the big radio and television stations if you have a great story. It can lead to some excellent publicity for your pub.