Your Marketing Plan
Mark S. Elliott has spent 25 years working in various management roles within the tenanted and leased divisions of the UK's largest breweries and pub companies. His extensive knowledge and day-to-day involvement with pubs and publicans make him well qualified to know what is required to run a successful pub. He shares his knowledge and many 'insider tips' with you in this book. Mark is based in Cockermouth, Cumbria.
YOUR MARKETING PLAN
Like any other business activity, marketing is more successful when it is planned. Your ‘marketing plan’ focuses your marketing activity on your target customers. Your plan does not have to be overly detailed but it does need some thought and time to prepare. It forms part of your overall business plan for the pub. It should be used as a working document to monitor your progress and not simply completed then filed in a desk drawer. Marketing is too important to be left to chance or be done in an ad hoc way. Planning your marketing and displaying your intended activities on an annual year planner is a good way of making sure you keep on track.
Your marketing plan should include the following:
- Your overall aims for the business.
- Your image of how your successful pub will operate.
- Your overall marketing objectives.
- Your target customers and their needs:
- — existing clientele;
- — similar types of customer;
- — new types of customer.
- How you will ensure their needs are met:
- — premises;
- — drinks products;
- — food;
- — licensee and staff;
- — people;
- — entertainment.
- Other marketing activities:
- — events and activities;
- — calendar of planned activities and events.
- Changes that need to be made:
- — purpose and objectives;
- — timescales;
- — cost;
- — who will make them?
- Communicating with your target customers:
- — objectives;
- — methods of communicating;
- — frequency;
- — budget.
- Your main competitors:
- — what types of customer they attract;
- — what they offer;
- — what they charge;
- — what recent changes they have made;
- — what they do better than you;
- — what you do better than them.
- Feedback and review:
- — what has been achieved?
- — what has worked?
- — what can be done more effectively?
- — what still needs to be done?
- — what changes still need to be made?
Your marketing plan draws together all your planned marketing, helping you coordinate and clearly target your activities as well as evaluating their effectiveness. When putting together your annual marketing plan, you may benefit from taking a day away from your business, which may help you to think more creatively about it. It is better to invest time planning your marketing than to throw money away on methods that require little effort but are ineffective. Good marketing is one of the keys to success.
