Easter has been and gone, but the legacy of a big weekend remains. Hopefully, Easter helped to introduce hundreds (or possibly thousands) of new customers to your venue, and now you have two bank holidays in May to turn those customers into regulars.
But that’s not quite as easy as it seems. Easter bank holiday weekend was an anomaly – people are more likely to go out for one off occasions because they’re easier to plan for in advance.
All that means though, is that providing a world class experience (which we know you did over the Easter weekend) isn’t enough on its own. You need to work to give those customers a reason to come back.
And that starts with the next event. Get it right and the customers will come back. Get it wrong and the benefits of the Easter weekend are lost.
Study your customers
From our 20 years’ experience in the industry, we think the best way to get your next event right, is to study learnings from the previous one. We’re not suggesting that you suddenly become data analysts over night, but having an overview of the age bracket of the customers who attended the last bank holiday event, what they drank, when they drank it and how much they were prepared to spend, will give you insight into what type of night will draw customers back next time.
For instance, one of our Late Bar clients and partners has organised a cocktail night for Sunday, where cocktails are 2for1 until 9pm. They’ve done this because they realised that the majority of their customers from Easter weekend arrived and left early and preferred to sit down than dance.
Usually, ‘2for1 before x o’clock’ or ‘happy hour’ offers are designed to attract customers at quiet times. But for this particular venue, it’s about giving customers what they want, when they want it.
Increase your marketing efforts
So you’ve got the right event, now you need to let people know about it.
Your standard marketing has been great for establishing your venue and communicating with customers. But you’ll need to do more if you’re to reach all those new customers that came to your venue over Easter.
And that should start with social media. Social media is still the quickest way to reach lots of people. You might need to spend a little bit of money to reach the relevant people, but it’s still more cost effective than most print advertising.
Social media allows you to show off your venue’s personality in different formats (e.g videos, images) and speak directly to your customers.
Lock down your risk management
The quickest way to stop customers from coming back to your venue is by being careless and letting an accident or injury occur. If you don’t get your risk management right, you’re allowing for a high chance of slips and trips, fires, building collapses and other potentially hazardous and harmful incidents.
If risk management and health and safety protocols and strategies are in place, your customers can get on with having fun and remembering your venue for the right reasons.
