Marketing Mix - Promotion

“The selling concept is the idea that consumers will not buy enough of the firm’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort.” (Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management Corporation, page 65)

There are multiple ways in which a bar can help promote itself to sell more drinks, receive more loyal customers, and ultimately make more money. Whether it be through social media advertising on websites like Twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, or through the strategies at the bar itself.

Through social media, for a low cost price, I can manage and run a campaign, where thousands can see the advertisement and webpages for my bar.

Here are some promotion strategies that are commonly used to increase the amount of drinks that are sold and profit gained.

Drink Tokens-Have one night a week (or month) where tokens are purchased from a non-bar cashier and all drinks must be purchased from the bar with tokens. They can be sold individually or perhaps only in $10 or $20 bundles (at a discounted per drink price or not). Tokens can be printed to indicate they are only redeemable on that night each week, which has many tertiary benefits such as: tokens sitting on dressers at home will build repeat business on a targeted slow weeknight, and the constrained redemption window means more tokens will become souvenirs that never return.

Drink Token Bundles-This can be a periodic special or something that is always available. The idea is a simple volume discount up sell. Let the customer decide between paying $4 per drink one at a time or paying $30 for a bundle of ten tokens (25% discount). While this presents a modest value proposition to an individual patron who frequents the place, it will attract large groups who can take advantage of the shared buying power. Additionally, the larger the increment of the bundle, the larger the unused remainder is going to be that walks out the door (and may never return).

Cover charge includes drink tokens - bundling a free drink or two into the cover charge is a staple value-proposition that many bars utilize today, especially in entertainment venues. Using drink tokens just improves this already profitable souvenir-quality drink tokens where X% will walk out the door as extremely high-margin souvenirs (not to mention the free marketing aspect). Tokens can even be customized for particular events as commemoratives.

Free Drink Token with food purchase - another long standing up sell is to bundle a free drink with your meal purchase. It’s simply upping the value-proposition to the customer while only marginally increase the costs by adding a high-margin product to a low margin one. Give a drink token instead of a forced drink and that benefit becomes more attractive to a good percentage of your food customers as the token is: 1) transferrable to a friend for non-drinkers and designated drivers, 2) time shifting to another time for those that simply don’t want another drink right now, and 3) just a really cool souvenir for tourists and local collectors.

Free Appetizer tokens- tokens, while traditionally used as drink coupons, work equally as well when used as food tokens. Try a 2 for 1 appetizer special where the customer gets one appetizer and one token good for another later that day or on another day. Just like with bar tokens, the portability of a token and its ability to transfer the time of an incentive translate into a huge value add to the customer plus a good percentage of the tokens walk out the door and never return. And if they do return, they typically bring a customer with money in his/her pocket and likely a group of friends in too.