Keeping Them In
Rounded Up Pricing – makes it easier for staff to calculate rounds and can help speed up service
Floor/Table Service -give your customers uninterrupted viewing by taking their order and serving their drinks where they are sat
4 Pint Pitcher – saves service time and encourages upselling among groups of customers
Bottle Buckets – you might consider multiple sales of bottles served in a bucket (with ice) for groups of customers
Top Tip – for groups why not offer sharing platters, sliders, tapas, skewer selections, – offer a ‘platter n pitcher’ promotion?
Special Drinks Promotions – ‘golden goal’ pricing whereby selected product(s) are reduced in price for the duration of the tournament (or for as long as your home team remains in play) of course it goes back up in price after the tournament ends. See article on running responsible drinks promotions.
Food Pricing – a limited range of food with simple pricing aids service speed and can still make a good margin as well as increasing the number of dishes sold.
Hand Held Food – burgers, pies, hot dogs, pizza slices and cold pre-prepared baguettes, sandwiches and rolls, popcorn, ice cream, wedges and nachos are popular “light bite” options.
Salty or Spicy Food – will encourage customers to buy more drinks, but don’t go over the top, your customers are no fools and know when they are being manipulated into drinking more.
Top Tip – if you use a lot of potatoes in your menu or serve Sunday Lunches – deep fry your potato peelings and coat them with curry or chilli powder to put on the bar as a freeby, don’t over season them though. (It also works with carrots and parsnips).
Free Food – use this as a reward to your loyal supporters with free nibbles. Great for staving off the hunger pangs and keeping them in your pub for longer.
Table Football – always a popular game in pubs, if you have the room ask your games machine supplier if they offer a table football machine. If you only want it for the football season then tell them it will be a seasonal rental. Perhaps your sports fans might also enjoy a game of ‘air-hockey’ so if you have the room why not get one of those in too?
Bringing Them Back
Try and think of ideas to bring customers back again and again. A loyalty card based upon the numbers of matches viewed at your pub could be a starting point or how about a collector’s card that accumulates your local team’s total goals scored during the season stamped on Saturdays when the results are read, the customer wins a free drink/meal deal if your local team exceeds a set number of goals (but do make it a realistic target, say, the total number of goals scored in the previous season). The more times they come in to get their card stamped the more likely they will feel they have a chance of winning a freeby from you.
Contact your local team and see if they’re willing to participate in some way with their supporters who use your pub… remember ‘ nothing ventured, nothing gained ! ‘
Free Training from SKY
Sky has launched a free online training course called “Making the Most of Sport” , the interactive course aims to help Sky Sports subscribers maximise customer spend and increase dwell time. The course is split into three modules:
- On Your Marks (how to plan events)
- Get Set (how to effectively market events)
- Go (how to execute well on the day)
Sky also have a dedicated website for subscribers to their pub sports packages. Replacing the old PreviewLIVE website, it hosts a range of support tools designed to help licensees reach new customers and boost their business, including:
- New Sky Sports Pub Finder profile: Sky customers’ venues are automatically listed on Sky Sports Pub Finder, which pub-goers visit millions of times each year. Through MySkySports.com, licensees can create and edit their pub’s profile to promote their own events, add a description of their venue and upload photos
- Online marketing tools: Sky has introduced a selection of new online marketing tools with a range of images for use on websites and social media – a great way to help pubs promote themselves as an official Sky Sports venue and highlight upcoming fixtures to help drive footfall.
- Using the new fixture planning tool, pubs can plan ahead and make the most of their live sport offering. Sky recommends key fixtures, but licensees can also select their own to suit their venue – filtering by sport, competition and date. They can also print off schedules to share with staff, making it easier to plan ahead.
- A new marketing ‘hub’ gives access to marketing materials including customisable and downloadable posters, a printing service and a selection of POS including banners and signage.
Here’s SKY TV’s take on what televised football can mean for pubs showing it:
Top Tip – Don’t forget to use all the Sky and BT point of sale and their respective services on their websites… after all you’ve paid for it! For instance customers will be able to use their smartphones to scan BT Sport beer mats, bar towels and posters to activate video content, including sporting highlight clips, using Blippar technology, from the start of the season. They will also be able to vote on the big sporting issues of the moment, research game stats, enter competitions and share content via social media.