Marketing is a critical component to your venue’s success. From basic promotions to grand events, your marketing and messaging is what lures guests in and keeps them coming back. Yet, marketing is the area that tends to get the least amount of strategic attention and oftentimes acts alone in a silo. And when a department is in a silo, your venue significantly suffers.
Most clubs look to promoters to act as their marketing personnel. They’re the ones who keep an eye on trends, create a loyal following, and bring new guests through the door. What most clubs don’t do is loop their promoters in with their overall business. You wouldn’t bring in a server and not train or integrate her into your operations, so why would you do this with your promoters? Here’s how to get them more involved and set them and yourself up for success.
1. Train them on your operations.
It’s important for your promoters to know how your business operates and how all staff members fit together to create a successful venue. This helps them understand how they fit into your club and what they need to do to further your success.
2. Inform them of your business goals.
Every marketing activity must align with your business goals. What’s the point of hosting an event if it’s not going to achieve your desired results? Your promoters are more easily able to identify marketing opportunities when they know your goals and vision. They know what trends match your vision, what performance acts align with your brand, and what messaging to use to get guests excited about coming to your venue. The more your promoters can talk about your club in the right away and create innovative marketing campaigns to propel you forward, the more you will see long-term success.
3. Provide them with the right tools.
Now that your promotes are ingrained in your business, they’re able to go out and bring the right people in on a consistent basis, build relationships to keep them coming back, and create top-of-the-line marketing campaigns. But what could help them excel even more is providing them with a system that allows them to make transactions right from a mobile device.
There are systems available that give all staff members – including promoters – a personal login to handle guest management and point of sale. Through this type of system, promoters can add guests to the guestlist, create a VIP reservation, or even sell a ticket to your event. It’s an easy solution for your promoters to sell in real-time and generate instant sales for your club.
4. Measure and reward
Without tracking measures in place, it’s nearly impossible to truly understand how well your promoters are working for you. The same technology mentioned above can track the referrer of an individual customer, VIP reservation, or guestlist party. Once these customers are in the club, the technology can continue to track spending habits, such as product type and amount. This makes it easier for you to identify not only who’s bringing in the most traffic, but also who’s bringing in the best traffic. And when you know your promoters are doing a job-well-done, you’re able to incentivize and reward them accordingly to keep them performing and maximizing results.
Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.
