Focus on Nightlife

With the advent of social-networking, blogging, and straight email marketing, the value of physical flyering as a form of advertising has certainly come into question. Is the labor, cost, and time of distributing flyers still worthwhile? Is the age-old method still effective? If you’re a club owner or a promotional manager, you should know that the answer is yes.

Many clubs have embraced technology as the new way to get the masses to their venues. Facebook events have become a staple for effective promotions. Potential customers can get online, RSVP, discuss, and even add photos related to your club’s events. Today, if you impress an influential blogger with your lavish venue, you can reach thousands of people. Just take a look at Down By The Hipster, an NYC nightlife blog run by Scott Solish. Hundreds of daily readers visit the site for info on New York’s hottest clubs and a good chunk of the content is provided by reader tips. You can’t ignore the effectiveness of the net as a promotional tool - but is it the be all and end all of advertising?

The fact is that online communications will never replace the direct method of passing out and posting flyers. Let’s get one thing straight: dedicated clubbers don’t spend their nights on Facebook, chatting (does IRC even still exist? Google thinks so), or scouring Flickr for pictures of digital flyers. They’re walking the walk amongst the nightlife crowd. This fact alone puts value in flyering. You’re target market will definitely be walking past (or hopefully right into) your club tonight.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are some tips for managing your flyer distribution:

• You can use a generic template for flyers if you want to save money and get flyers out on a regular basis. It’s good advertising for slower nights and it gets the name of your club right out on the street.
• For large scale events you should put some money into a good graphic artist. You can’t argue that an attractive flyer won’t attract eyeballs.
• If you manage your own promotions, get your staff to distribute close to the club. It doesn’t take long and can easily be implemented as a regular task for bar opening.
• To extend your flyering radius, hire trustworthy high school or college students. Payment can be a low fee or free tickets to a club event if they’re of age.
• Track flyers. It’s easy to find out if that “trustworthy” kid lives up to his or her description by quickly passing by a random spot you had on their target list.
• Use tracking codes to find out who worked hard at passing out handbills and offer them incentives for keeping it up.
• Stay on good (or great) terms with your neighbors - offer them a free drink at your club. You can’t beat the effectiveness of a big flyer in a nearby storefront’s window.

While the cost of flyering can be a larger marketing expense than free online methods, you should never underestimate how beneficial a well-placed flyer can be.

Systematically reaching your target market, and mobilizing that market, is critical for any industry operator. Mobile phone-driven tools, like that just announced by US mobile phone provider Helio, are going to have a growing role over how venues / promoters drive traffic through the doors.

According to Caroline McCarthy:

Helio’s new service, which is ad-supported, lets people in major U.S. cities search on the mobile Web site–linked from the home page of the carrier’s browser–for bars, clubs, and restaurants. Most of the data will be pulled from Buzzd partners like Flavorpill, TimeOut, and the IAC-owned Citysearch. Added on, however, will be “event feeds” with specific pricing and night-specific details as well as short user reviews in real time.

Helio’s service isn’t quite there yet — it still doesn’t fully link into the ’social networking’ of nightlife guests, but it is a tantalizing glimpse at where we are going. Helio may not be the company to succeed with this type of service, but some operator will sooner or later (likely sooner…).

A key characteristic will be the distribution of user / guest reviews. Imagine the impact on buzz on any given night from only a small number of ‘influencers’ shouting out their opinions of your club that night? Already, informal text messaging among friends is playing a huge role in night-to-night turnout at venues. Take that one degree further and systemize the ability for opinions / reviews to be widely circulated in real time…

This can be a nightmare for venues… or a huge opportunity. Those that figure out how to identify, track, and harness the influencers in their local market will have a huge advantage. After that, it becomes a matter of winning the ’small battles’ — encouraging your guests to evangelize your venue and start that viral spiral going in the right direction.