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Who said promoting your bar was expensive?  It’s just a case of good 'Barketing!'

        " hey did you hear about that new bar that just opened, I herd it's very good!"

Walk down any busy street on the Costa del Sol and you will see several bars and several more restaurants. If you’re one of the ten million or so tourists who grace these shores every summer with a pocket of hard earned cash ready to be spent at the drinking establishment of your choice, then you’ve got every reason to smile. There are literally thousands and thousands of bars to choose from and the problem is that to the non-discerning tourist or indeed resident, most of the coasts bars are indistinguishable from one another.

If you’re one of the coasts ever increasing number of residents the decision as to which bar to frequent is often no easier. As we, the consumer, become more and more spoilt for choice, the dilemma for the bar owner becomes harder and harder. How do you stand out from the crowd? How can you promote yourself? Can you successfully market your bar without spending huge amounts of cash?

Many believe marketing to be a hugely expensive business. Thoughts of pricey yet tiny adverts in the local papers, expensive music licenses and live bands and the financial commitments of seeking professional help put many off. Yet marketing need not be expensive nor difficult. Marketing your bar yourself can be cheap, easy and lots of fun. In fact barketing, the art of marketing your own bar for very little cost, is the bar owners essential guide to survival in today’s over busy market.

Marketing is an ongoing process and is just as important within the day to day life of your bar as cleaning, accounting and hiring staff. Marketing begins from behind the bar. It’s all about promoting the hospitality of your bar and the personality of the host. The host with the most is the means to long term success. Being a good host doesn’t cost a penny and yet a little personality goes a long way with regards to securing return custom and more importantly new custom!

Think back to the popular 80’s sitcom Cheers … ‘’where everybody knows your name’’….. Becoming your neighbourhoods local friendly bar could be a smart move. And even if you don’t know everyone’s name, a few lines of friendly conversation, a smile and even a suggestion as to what to drink will all help to endear the customer to you! Promoting your business from behind the bar is all about being a friendly host. The most successful hosts often find they act as confidante, adviser and news service as well as bar tender! Never forget good service and friendly staff are worth far more than an advert in the local paper.

Everyone loves an establishment where the service is smiley, fast and accurate. Happy employees will promote your bar for you … without even realizing it. Treat your staff well, pay them fairly and make the workplace a happy place. Your staff in return will look forward to coming to work, will enjoy interacting with the customers and more importantly encourage their family and friends to come down while they are working. The result is classic barketing, free promotion via word of mouth… in other words … free marketing!

Marketing in general is a long process. It’s about creating a buzz. Word of mouth is very important. Your aim as a bar owner is to get people talking about your bar. Happy employees will promote your bar and so will employee’s wearing T shirts featuring your bar’s logo or name. Printing a batch of T Shirts or flyers is a fairly inexpensive way to market your bar, and these can then be distributed to friends and customers who in turn can distribute them to their friends. The same can be achieved with smaller cards. And if you T shirt design becomes particularly popular you might even be able to sell your own T shirts as a holiday souvenir!

Another buzz word of marketing is Promotions. Promotions needn’t be expensive but they can be very effective. Without a music license you are limited in terms of live bands and acts and these can sometimes be pricey anyway. A much cheaper but no less successful way of drawing in the crowds is to host a quiz night or something more quirky such as a beauty contest, comedy evening or demonstration evening. A quiz night costs nothing more than the prize, which could be a bottle of bubbly or meal for two in the bar, and can be a lot of fun for the question writer! Plus if you make it a regular occurrence you start to secure a regular re-attendance. Don’t forget to always schedule prize give-away’s and entertainment to run throughout the night so customers are encouraged to stay until the end of the evening.

The idea behind a demonstration night is to invite a ‘guest’ to your bar who will demonstrate something exciting and new to the customers. This might be a hairdresser, local artist, chef, local fashion shop holding a fashion show or even an aromatherapist. As the host of the event you get to promote your bar and the guest and secure a number of customers who are likely to stay in the bar for a length of time. The guest has an outlet to show off their skills and promote their sales and the customer has a great time! In the event that the guest makes a huge profit you could agree beforehand to split any takings.
Again if you make this type of evening a regular occurrence you start to secure ‘word of mouth’ promotion and yet your initial outgoings are minimal.

Supporting local entrepreneurs can also reap long term rewards. Let’s take our local artist for example. After his successful demonstration evening at your bar he decides to leave three or four works of art on your walls …with a price tag attached of course! Suddenly you are a mini art gallery! More than that you are a hip bar where local artists choose to display your work. This of course creates a talking point, something that people will tell their friends about and more importantly it’s something the artist might talk about … on his own website, on radio shows and in his own promotional material. All this of course means that you get some free promotion and everyone’s happy!

Another way of promoting your bar and helping others at the same time is to support a charity. By donating a percentage of the takings from your quiz night to a charity you immediately become affiliated with that charity and they may well mention your donations in their own promotional material. You could go further and stage a monthly event in aid of the charity meaning that both yourself and the charity will promote each other during the run up to the event and you are getting the chance to help out a good cause.

It’s worth remembering that local newspapers and radio stations will usually give a charity event a mention for free, so in terms of media promotion both you and the charity are winners.
If you fancy taking your involvement out of the bar itself and therefore promoting your name outside of your neighbourhood, then you could take a stall at a charity event. All you need is a big banner announcing the name of your bar or a few T shirts and a prize to raffle. The proceeds will of course go to the charity but remember it’s all about the buzz, all about being seen out and about and all about letting people know who you are and where you are, plus of course there is the personal buzz you will get from helping out a local cause. 
Going to local events in your customized T Shirt is a great way of getting your name banded about and you could even go further. Start up a bar football team or jogging group and you’ll have several people wandering around at the weekend in your T Shirts!

If all these theme nights and promotions sound a little hectic there are plenty of other things you can do to raise your profile which don’t require a lot of planning and certainly don’t require a lot of cash. Table games for example can be a great talking point and have been know to keep people glued to their chairs for a lot longer than they originally intended! So have a rummage around in your attic and put your old Connect 4, Trivial Pursuit, and Scrabble to good use. If you fancy a more highbrow activity then why not hold chess tournaments or domino competitions!
Creating your own website can be expensive and is not always profitable or necessary for a bar, however getting your friends to mention your bar on their own websites would certainly be a more economically sound move!

Make a feature of your location. A story springs to mind of a little bar that was stuck at the far end of a deserted alleyway in a small town in America. The bar owner, fed up with the lack of passing trade, got permission from the local town hall to ‘dress up’ the alley way and make a feature of it. Some pretty new lighting, a few well placed signs and some quirky street decorations later and the bar was heaving.
If your bar is in the middle of nowhere then play on this fact making it a welcome haven for weary travellers on their way home. If your bar is in a busy street then try and make it look a little different to all the other bars, offer different food and drink… you could even create a house cocktail! …And schedule your promotions for the quiet nights such as Monday’s, Tuesday’s or Wednesdays. Overall make your bar look welcoming. Improving the outside needn’t break the bank but could save you a fortune in terms of marketing. A few candles, some nice table cloths, a few plants and some fairy lights could transform the outside of your bar and encourage just one or two of those ten million tourists to venture inside!

And finally our top tip, celebrate everything! Everything that deserves to be celebrated should be celebrated, the smallest occasion is a great reason to bring out the party decorations and pop open the bubbly.  So from the Big Brother final to the Wimbledon final, the General Election to the World Cup, Christmas Day or just your birthday … it’s never too small to celebrate! A happy bar is often a full bar and what better means of promotion is there than a bar full of happy smiling people!