Create a customer list

Building and maintaining an internal client list is a critical part of any nightclub, however what I find is that most bars just let people in and out without any effort on the part of the staff to ask for their cards. presentation or other information. This is like throwing money away. Why bother reading the rest of this article and learning strategies to get people to come to your bar if they are only coming once? You want them to come back repeatedly and then tell all their friends about you. However, this requires effort on your part: the effort to reach out and communicate with them about the offers you have in place. This is how you maximize customer value and create repeat customers. But you won’t be able to do this if you don’t have your customers’ contact information.

How much is a customer worth to you?

When you ask a group of nightclub owners to list their assets, they quickly write down items like their liquor inventory, their lease, their lighting system, sound system, and equipment. Many never get to list their customers. This type of thinking often reflects problems in your business.

In any successful nightclub, the customer is the most important asset. To get to the point where you truly have that belief, you need to figure out how much your customer can and should be worth to you.

Let’s use me as an example. On a typical night out, I’ll spend $100-$200 on alcohol, tips, cigarettes, cover, and all other expenses associated with going out. Let’s use $100 as the average spend, to keep things simple. If I go out forty times in a year, I will spend $4,000 over the course of the year. If I go out with friends (and I always do), that expense is multiplied by two or three. That’s $8,000 to $12,000 over the course of a year. Over the course of five years, that’s a bar expense of $40,000 to $60,000. The portion of that total bar spend that your bar captures determines how much you get paid. That’s the way you need to start looking at your customers.

The client portfolio becomes the human capital of your business. As you grow, you will reduce your need to search for new clients. It is cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to find a new one. I’ve noticed lately that when I talk to owners about marketing strategies, most ask me what type of radio commercial works best; others ask for billboard tips and some ask for Facebook strategies. But I always tell them, before you start looking for new clients, you need to start taking stock of your current clients. This has always been proven to be some of the best advice I give, because of the hundreds of industry people I know and have talked to about this, almost no one keeps a list of their clients and works to maintain and build it. This is a mistake you cannot afford to make.

Do everything you can to collect the contact information of the people who already frequent your bar. Every time someone books a party, get their contact information. Every time you meet someone or get introduced to someone new, get their information. And don’t settle for just getting a phone number; try to get as much information as you can.

Know your customers…or lose them

Make a deliberate attempt to regularly mingle with people and exchange contact information with them. People love to meet the manager or owner of their favorite club, so it doesn’t have to be an awkward social gathering. All you have to do is ask. You can even do creative promotions that involve people putting your business cards in jars and filling out forms where they fill out all their information and enter it into a drawing for a chance to win a prize.

I remember a sports bar I recently visited to watch a UFC fight. The bar was busy, but not full. It certainly wasn’t what my definition of busy is. However, from what I observed behind the bar, it was easy to tell that the venue was understaffed for the event. Managers were constantly filling coolers with beer, pouring drinks, and running around doing menial tasks that bartenders and bouncers should have handled. In my opinion all liquor storage should have been handled by a porter, and should have been done before the shift started. Second, managers shouldn’t handle alcoholic beverages at all; this creates a conflict of interest during cash withdrawals and the measurement of liquor consumption. Well, don’t even get me started on all the things that were wrong on this particular night. The point I’m trying to make is that because the staff were so busy trying to keep up, there was no interaction with customers other than taking their drink order, delivering it, and then coming back to try to catch up. At no point was I greeted by the bartender nor did I speak to him, the manager or the owner. Nobody asked me what my name was.

If we had talked, what they would have found out is that I spend a fair amount of money every year going to bars. They would also have discovered that I am an industry professional, a former bartender turned author and nightclub marketing consultant. They could have tried to make me a regular. They could have gotten my business the next time a UFC fight happened. Maybe they could have even gotten my business the next time I wanted to have a party with all my industry friends who spend a lot of money at bars. Instead, they got nothing and missed the opportunity to stimulate repeat business from me and my friends. They didn’t even try to meet me. And you know what’s scary? This is how 95 percent of bars work. No wonder so many bars fail so quickly.

Ultimately, you decided to read this article because you want to learn ways to market and get new customers for your nightclub. But before you can really start learning about new ways to get new customers, you first need to look at who’s already spending money at your establishment and work to keep them coming back more often. If you don’t have a way to reach and communicate with your current customer base, you’re really leaving yourself vulnerable to the ups and downs of the industry, where some nights are packed and other nights are just empty. Getting people to come back and become repeat customers is theoretically easy: all you have to do is ask them to come back. But how are you going to do this if you don’t even have their contact information?