Pub marketing ideas to promote your local business

If you’re looking for marketing ideas for your bar or pub, you have come to the right place. Breann Zachel, whose family owns The Village Pub in Millbury, Ohio, let us in on all the pub marketing tactics they use to get the word out about their local establishment.

Two years ago, Breann started working in a local pub. Seeing the potential, in August 2021, Breann encouraged her family to buy the bar, which they now run together. Since then, Breann’s approach to marketing has grown the number of customers by about 50%.

We spoke to Breann to get more insight into how her family runs The Village Pub and which promotion tactics work best in building their customer base. She said that though times have changed and marketing has shifted to digital, a solid pub marketing strategy still relies on a mix of traditional and new methods.

Here’s what what works best for her:

1. Find the right mix of traditional and digital marketing by understanding consumer needs

Hi Breann! Let’s get right to it. Please tell us about the pub marketing strategies you use for The Village Pub and how you create an effective marketing plan.

When it comes to marketing a small, local establishment, such as a pub or a bar, the first rule is that your customers are key. You can not succeed without your local community, and therefore the best way for you to promote your pub and establish a presence in the community is by understanding and analyzing your local target audience.

You can also get customer feedback to figure out what you should change or continue doing. Because this actively involves your customers, you’ll see higher engagement with your business, which can lead to more loyal customers.

For The Village Pub, that is exactly what we did. We researched and understood who our customer base consisted of before devising a pub marketing plan. With pub patrons and the target audience generally consisting of an older demographic, it is obvious that a predominantly digital marketing approach would not fare well. However, sticking to a completely traditional approach is not sensible either. With the older generation having an adequate amount of Internet knowledge, particularly through the use of Facebook, a hybrid marketing approach of online and offline pub marketing strategies works best for us.

What online pub marketing ideas do you use for your establishment?

2. Use Facebook marketing to reach locals

Though we have a varied age range of customers who visit our pub, from 21 years to 70+, the average age of the majority of our patrons falls towards the latter end of the scale. This group in particular is very active on Facebook, with almost all of them owning and regularly using Facebook accounts.

Keeping this in mind, using Facebook marketing strategies for our pub was the best approach. For The Village Pub, we maintain an active Facebook page by regularly updating our customers and prospective clients about what’s happening.

Apart from having a regular posting schedule on Facebook, a good strategy to deploy is to hold regular events. These can be karaoke nights, pub quizzes, live bands or performances, themed parties, game nights, and more. You can then create events on Facebook, with customized Facebook cover images, and share these on your business profile to boost awareness and increase attendance at the event being held at your pub.

3. Throw themed parties to spark an active local interest

Holding events, such as themed parties at your pub, will also help increase foot traffic through word-of-mouth. When you’re having special events, it’s likely that your regular patrons will tell their friends and family, helping you spread the word.

To promote these events, you can not only design fun and exciting pre-event posts for social media, but you can also share images and videos post-event, to encourage customers to attend upcoming events.

Themed parties are a great way to market your pub or bar both online and offline as well.

Are there particular offline pub marketing tactics that you swear by?

5. Achieve maximum reach with promotional flyers

While digital promotional strategies are great, what we’ve seen work really well for The Village Pub has been the use of promotional flyers around the pub and local community. We put up posters in different neighborhoods that do a great job of advertising special offers, ongoing events, or educate potential customers about the pub’s offerings.

We customize bar poster templates to create eye-catching flyers for our pub, that we then download and print out. These generate a lot of interest and result in more people heading over to the pub.

6. Stay relevant with seasonal marketing strategies

Living in the U.S. means there’s always something going on – a sporting event, national holiday, or some other seasonal happening. In the hospitality industry, these are all marketing opportunities.

Creating a seasonal menu is the quickest and easiest way for you to implement a seasonal marketing strategy at your pub. Using PosterMyWall’s menu maker tool makes creating customized menus for The Village Pub easy-breezy.

We usually come up with a few seasonal offerings or deals, then customize one of the seasonal menu templates available on PosterMyWall to tie in with the holiday.

Our most recent one was St. Patrick’s Day, where we created St. Paddy’s day themed menus that we printed and distributed–and also shared on Facebook. We crafted green beverages and food items, and planned themed activities, all of which brought many revelers to our pub.

Thank you so much Breann for sharing these wonderful ideas with us and everyone like you who may be looking for unique pub marketing ideas. We wish you best of luck!

Are you looking to get a strong and steady community of local patrons in to your pub? Get started with bar flyer templates on PosterMyWall.