Hey, Nick Fosberg here with another episode of Bar Restaurant Success. Today, I’m going to tell you how to cash in on the back to school craze coming up in August!
Now, this promotion will work for a bar or a restaurant. This could be targeted to parents or to college kids who are 21 and older. These are two totally different markets which means your marketing message and your offer will not work for both groups. You must target the right market with the right offer.
With that said, if you’re a restaurant you could run a promotion to parents and the marketing message could be, “The kids are back to school and now is time to celebrate your life getting back to normal! Come in on August 10th and get 20% of your tab when you bring in the family!” Now, you could use any offer you wanted, this is just something I came up with real quick.
If you wanted to get real creative, you could say that the first 20 groups in the door are going to get some free school supplies and one lucky winner is going to get a $50 gift card to Walmart or wherever you prefer in your area where kids could get their supplies.
Now, if you’re a bar owner, your Back To School promotion would be much different, more like a party! Get a band or DJ to come in for the night, put some great drink specials together, name them after subjects in school, and if you really want to go all out, have your waitresses in school girl outfits!
Your marketing message would be, “Everyone’s headed back to school and now is the time to have one last big bash with your friends before reality kicks in!” Remember that within your marketing message you always want to use what I call “Reason Why” copy. Tell them why you’re making the offer or doing the promotion and WHY they MUST take action!
What do you think 21-24 year olds are going to think when they hear this type of message? They are going to start thinking to themselves – Yea, you’re right. Everyone is leaving. I’m not going to see them for a while. We should definitely get together again for one last party!”
Now, you’ve just persuaded them to have that big bash at your bar because you gave them the idea and you’ve got the perfect party theme set up for them!
So those are just a few ideas you can run for a Back To School promotion but remember this. This promotion will be a success with any valuable offer because what matters is the hook and time of year. This ties into what everyone is thinking about this time of year – Back to school!
So you’ve got a month or so, plenty of time to take this idea and get it all implemented into your bar or restaurant. With back to school on everyone’s mind, this is sure to be a winner for most bars and restaurants.
Now, if you feel like you’re running out of time but want to run this promotion, I’ve put together an e-mail template you can use and flyers that you can literally just send off to your printer. I also put together a low-cost marketing plan for my private clients for this promotion. You can get instant access to all of this by joining the Bar Restaurant Success membership program. Everything is done for you, all you have to do is pass the information off to your managers to implement for you. It’s that easy! Plus you’ll get 16 other promotional ideas and templates for August!
Just click the banner below to get more information. I’ll see you next week where we will talk about how to start book 10-20 fantasy football parties within a few weeks time!
