Reaching New Audiences With Interactive Marketing

Like many of today’s industries, nightclubs and bars are trying to find new ways to grow their business by staying hip with existing customers and tapping into new audience segments. The fickle nature of today’s typical bar patron has made it tougher to target and market to them.
    One challenge faced by everyone involved in today’s nightclub and bar industry is achieving the right mix of marketing. On one hand, the industry has to deal with the fact that traditional marketing isn’t as impactful as it once was. For example, nightclubs and bars still struggle to create the perfect advertisement. But unless you’re that one Super Bowl ad that everyone talks about, most of the time you are lost in the TiVo clutter.
    Secondly, marketing as we know it is evolving faster than ever. With intimidatingly confusing buzzwords like “user-generated content,” “second life” and “podcasts,” it’s no wonder many executives are playing the same strategies year in and year out.
But change is a good thing. It’s time to find out what newer marketing options are available that potentially could help your brand break through all the clutter.

Online Presence
    The most important thing to understand about today’s marketing is that the Internet is playing a much larger role than you might think. Combined with traditional marketing (print advertising, direct mail, TV commercials, etc.), the Internet provides an integrated approach to reach customers in a variety of ways so that they refrain from tuning your message out.
    Nightclub and bar brands must go beyond just having an online presence. They also must be doing a large portion of their marketing activities through
the Internet as well, since this is where much of their audience spends their time nowadays.
    According to industry statistics, there are more than 100 million people online today — a figure that continues to grow by the day. And according to the Online Publishers Association, seven out of 10 digital consumers (those people using the Internet) have viewed an online video advertisement, with 31 percent of them subsequently visiting the advertiser’s Web site.
    If anything, understand that you should be marketing online for the simple reason that your competitors are going to be doing it. Chew on this: According to an e-marketing industry newsletter, online advertising spending by companies is expected to grow from $16.4 billion this year to around $36.5 billion in 2011.

Ways to Go
    Here are a few areas of interactive marketing that are in use today:
    1. Web Development — All the Internet marketing means nothing if you do not have a solid Web site that is dynamic, clean, easy to navigate and informative.
    2. Content Management — Once you have the right Web presence, you also must have the ability to update the information on your Web site often. Giving you this power maximizes efficiency and cost effectiveness by letting your interactive agency focus on higher strategic initiatives. Plus, there’s nothing worse than going to a Web site that looks exactly the same as it did five months ago.
    3. Interact Online — People remember brands when they interact with them online. Banner ads that expand to online games, flash demos and videos are all examples of how to get someone’s attention and let them get involved by interacting with your brand, which helps to increase top-of-mind awareness, since you are entertaining them.
    4. E-mail Marketing — People arguably use their e-mail more than their telephones now. Having the ability to send marketing messages and newsletters via e-mail is critical today. E-mail is also a great form of viral marketing, which spreads buzz quickly through word of mouth via forwards.
    5. Media Planning — “Build it and they will come” does not apply to interactive marketing. Once you have the right interactive advertisements and banner ads developed, you then must find the right places to put them. Do research to find where you will get the most return on investment.
    6. Online Surveys and Research — Communicating with your audience is a 2-way street. You must find out what your customer is thinking. And the best way to do this is to construct an online survey to find out more about your customer.
    7. Emerging Media — Today’s interactive marketing is even more successful when new technologies such as SMS messaging, videos and user-generated content are in the mix.
    8. Loyalty Programs — Give your customers incentive to purchase from you. Reward them through Web-based offers and special promotions. Develop a way to build loyalty to incite consumers and drive sales. In the end, this will help to build a long-term relationship with your customer.      NCB

Jayson Fittipaldi is president of Nobox Marketing, an interactive agency focused on helping industry leaders deliver universal marketing messages to a variety of audience segments. For more information, visit www.nobox.com.