How to Stand Out In a Busy Market
The bar scene has always been competitive, but it seems to only get more intense as time goes on. The visibility of social media and the heightened expectations of modern customers constantly amp up the pressure to stand out.
If you’re trying to figure out how to differentiate your bar in a competitive market, check out our step-by-step guide below.
Step 1: Do Your Homework
What’s your niche? What’s your ideal customer? Who are your competitors? What do you offer that makes you different?
If you don’t yet have answers to these questions, doing your homework is the first step toward attracting new customers to your bar.
The best way to stand out in a busy market is to pick a niche and commit to it. This automatically gives your bar a personality and a purpose that potential customers can get their hands around. You can’t stand out in your marketplace if you’re just “some bar.”
Are you a sports bar? Are you a cocktail bar? A gastropub? Do you have more of a club vibe? There are so many flavors of bar, each with its own vibe.
If you already have a niche in mind, the next thing you want to drill down on is your potential audience. How large is the market for your niche in your local area? What exactly are the qualities of your ideal customer? Who else is already targeting that persona? What are they doing well, and what are they doing poorly? What kinds of promotions would appeal to your target audience?
If you’re starting from scratch or you’re not yet committed, you’ll need to do a broader survey of area demographics and the bar scene first. Find a population or a need that’s being underserved, and then create a bar concept that will appeal to that audience.
Step 2: Draw People In With Promotions or Events
Everybody likes a good deal or a good time. The best way to attract new customers to your bar is to have stand-out promotions or stand-out events.
The exact details will depend on your ideal customer. Remember, you’re trying to draw in a specific type of person (or two or three), so you have to plan what will appeal to a specific crowd.
Happy hours are classic for a reason; weekday specials are another. If you’re trying to revive an existing business, you probably need to beat every similar bar in the market in terms of prices. If you’re new, you have some leeway on how good your deals have to be to attract new blood. Novelty alone will do some of the lifting for you.
Crowd-drawing events can be as simple or complicated as you want, from theme parties to trivia nights. Other ideas include giveaways, competitions, bartender shows, live music, open mic, viewing parties, singles mixers, speed-dating events, and holiday celebrations, but the options are only limited by your imagination. Think like your ideal customer and consider what would catch their interest. Just advertise responsibly.
When brainstorming ideas for how to differentiate your bar in a competitive market, avoid copying successful bar marketing strategies being used by competing businesses in your area. That doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel, however. Look at the bar scene nationally (or even internationally!) for inspiration. You can even borrow from successful events or promotions run by non-bar businesses in your area – just put your own fun, niche-appropriate spin on it!
Step 3: Treat Your Customers Right
All the bar marketing strategies in the world won’t help your business if you disappoint the people you get through the door, so be prepared to be a place worth revisiting.
Attentive customer service, enjoyable drinks, fair prices, and tasty snacks won’t make you stand out in a busy market, but they will bring people back and encourage them to spread the word.
Not every target audience will have the same priorities for what makes them happy with a bar. Some people want cheap drinks regardless of quality. Some people want craft cocktails and hang the price. Some people want a more laid-back, hands-on staff, while others want fast service.
When deciding how to improve the customer experience in your bar, you need to go back to your ideal customer persona. What are they likely to care most about?
Step 4: Reward Loyalty
You’ll probably never stop your efforts to attract new customers to your bar, but the percentage is really in keeping the ones you’ve already hooked.
Again, your exact strategy will depend on your target audience, but there are all sorts of ways to encourage people to come back time and again:
- A predictable atmosphere. Whether it’s “any night is chill” or “Thursdays are always wild,” you want your customers to be able to anticipate the type of experience they’re going to get when they show up. This also applies to the quality of customer service.
- Keeping everyone’s faves. Someone becomes a regular because they like what you have on offer. Know what attracts people back to your bar – in terms of both menu and experience – and keep your hands off those sacred cows.
- Introducing variety. While some people are drawn in by familiarity, others are drawn by novelty, so you need to find a balance of both. Whether this means new cocktail recipes every month or weekly specials, consider a strategy for regularly spicing things up.
- Rewarding loyalty, literally. You know how your sandwich shop used to have a stamp card? You can leverage digital versions of this with an app now. It’s a well-known promotional concept. People love free stuff, and it gives them a reason to return again and again. You can base it on drinks bought or money spent, or you can make it more complicated and bring out people’s competitive side – like special t-shirts for anyone who tries every cocktail in your signature series.
Step 5: Encourage Word of Mouth
What is social media but word of mouth on steroids?
You can encourage people to spread the word about your business online with strategies like:
- Include your bar’s hashtag or handle in visible places like table displays, the menu footer, or your coasters so that customers can tag you when they upload pictures of cocktails or plates.
- Creating selfie opportunities inside your business – like a special wall display that includes your branding – to encourage user-generated promotion.
- Incentivizing online reviews with freebies or monthly prize drawings – just don’t require people to give five stars. Sites like Yelp are wise to any scheme to artificially boost your rating, but incentivizing reviews, in general, is fine as long as you don’t attach strings.
Of course, you’ll also need to manage social media of your own. You can use it to get the word out about any promotions and events you decide to host. Other ideas include:
- Thanking staff members for their newly invented drink creations
- Sharing fun “behind the scenes” team moments
- Sharing visitors’ posts about your bar
- Put your own spin on trending hashtags
Step Infinity: Evolve and Keep Up
Stagnation is death, particularly if your bar is in a busy market. The truth is that no one can create a successful bar concept and call it a day – your business needs to be in a constant state of evolution.
Pay attention to industry fashions as they come and go – locally, nationally, and internationally. Watch for the latest things in cocktail culture or the craft beer market. Look for new promotional concepts. Keep an eye out for new technologies you can leverage. Study how customer preferences and expectations are changing. Keep your finger on the pulse of social media and take advantage of new trends.
There’s just one area where you should find what works and stick with it: safety and compliance. There’s no room to innovate when liquor licenses and lawsuits hang in the balance.
That’s why using state-approved compliance training from a longstanding provider like us is a much safer bet than trying to meet requirements by yourself. Thousands of bars have successfully used our online self-paced courses to learn how to avoid illegal sales and comply with all relevant liquor laws.
