5 Marketing Strategies for Bar Owners to Dominate 2025

Ready to elevate your bar's marketing game and dominate 2025?

January is slow for most of us, making it the perfect time to plan. Most bars struggle with consistent marketing, but a simple strategy can boost customer visits and loyalty, ensuring a strong year ahead.

• Discover five actionable ways to grow your bar’s presence and guest engagement.
• Learn how to leverage social media, loyalty programs, and email campaigns without breaking the bank.
• Explore innovative partnerships and the power of data-driven decisions to maximize your ROI.

Don’t let 2025 catch you off guard—listen now and transform your bar’s marketing into a powerhouse strategy!

Learn More:
Email Chris
Schedule a Strategy Session
Bar Business Nation Facebook Group
The Bar Business Podcast Website
Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'

Thank you to our show sponsors, SpotOn and Starfish. SpotOn's modern, cloud-based POS system allows bars to increase team productivity and provides the reporting you need to make smart financial decisions. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software using AI to help you make data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.
**We are a SpotOn affiliate and earn commissions from the link above.

A podcast for bar, pub, tavern, nightclub, and restaurant owners, managers, and hospitality professionals, covering essential topics like bar inventory, marketing strategies, restaurant financials, and hospitality profits to help increase b...

Transcript

Chris Schneider (00:01.174)
With the new year comes a lot of changes. So today we're talking about optimizing your marketing strategy for 2025.

Chris Schneider (00:12.494)
Today, we're going to talk briefly about optimizing your bar's marketing strategy for 2025. It's a new year. January is slow. So now is the time to start planning that marketing strategy to get in place a marketing plan if you don't have one. And when I say marketing plan, a lot of folks think back to college and writing these detailed 50 page marketing plans. And especially if you went to business school, I'm sure you've done that more times than you care to remember.

and did not find it very enjoyable. Well, here's the fun part about owning your own business. Your plan could just be a detailed outline. Like you don't have to produce a 52 page paper to have a marketing plan, but you need a plan to reach your guests, to increase your customers, to increase your visits.

as we go through 2025. So here are five things that I would challenge you to either implement or to plan on how you're going to increase your guest utilization or increase the amount you post in 2025. Number one, build a strong social media presence. So, I mean, that sounds like...

The stupidest thing ever, but I don't know about you guys. My social media presence is not always as good as it should be because I freaking dislike social media. I think it's stupid.

Chris Schneider (01:41.784)
But marketing your business is never stupid. So have a strong social media presence. If you don't like social media and you're like me, you probably have somebody that works in your bar who does social media all the time.

Utilize your team. You don't know how to reach 22 year olds. Go talk to the 22 year old that works for you that knows how to use social media and ask them to do it. Now when I say ask them to do it, let's be very clear here. Pay them to do it. Ask them if they're willing and then offer them something for managing your social media. Just having your bartender manage your social media for free. A is not a great way to.

make sure that they're actually spending time and effort and doing it right. And B is a great way to erode your corporate culture because now, well, they just think you're throwing extra work at them for free and they're not getting any benefit for doing work that's helping you grow your business, which is bullshit. So not only build your social media presence, but if you're going to outsource it to somebody on your team, make sure you pay them, reward them, take care of them properly.

Our second way to optimize your marketing strategy for this year, implement a customer loyalty program. That can look like a lot of different things. A lot of POS systems have this built in, so it doesn't require anything else on your end. You know, a lot of them now work with credit cards. So as long as the customer is using the same credit card every time they visit, they're racking up points and there's no issue. It's all in one system. It's easy.

So if you're using Toast Spot On, a nice POS system like that, has loyalty built in? Great. As a matter of fact, funny story, Spot On, for those of you that are new, started as a customer loyalty program.

Chris Schneider (03:31.754)
I had SpotOn in my bars for customer loyalty before I think they even thought about making a POS. So get a customer loyalty program, get a POS that has it, or implement something. I mean, it can be as simple as printing out business cards on business card paper on your printer and punching them, right? Having a punch card system or ordering business cards from VistaPrint for a punch card system. You can go low tech, you can go high tech.

but have a customer loyalty program.

Because the thing we always have to remember is one visit does not create a regular. Three visits creates a regular. So make sure your regulars, or make sure your new guests, are incentivized to come in two, three more times so that they become a regular.

The third thing I want you to think about for 2025 and optimizing your marketing strategy is to create targeted email campaigns. Now, I know email marketing sounds old school, and it is, and a lot of times you'll send emails and your open rate won't be great and it won't feel like you're doing anything. But if nothing else, your guests have to go in and delete that email. Sometimes they're going to open it and read it, but they at least have to

delete it and to delete it, they're gonna look at your name. Because I don't know about anybody else, but I have to make sure at least through the subject lines and who sent it, that every email that I'm deleting isn't something I need. So targeted email campaigns work. If you're not doing that, start doing that. If you don't have an email list, then we better figure out how to get you an email list. But get an email list together and use it in your marketing.

Chris Schneider (05:16.354)
for 2025.

Chris Schneider (05:20.684)
The fourth strategy I will give you for optimizing your marketing in 2025 is to develop partnerships with local businesses.

And when I say local, I mean small, right? Small local people that you can get things from. Do you have a great company that does spices in your town? Great. Use their spices at your restaurant. Put it on your menu. Build community. Not just community among your guests, but build community between yourself and the businesses in your area by purchasing from them and then marketing them on your menu.

That may seem weird because people, well, then they're going to go spend money at these other businesses, but it builds community. It helps you out. And when you have partnerships like that with local businesses, OK, somebody goes in the spice store. And maybe you had a special spice made up, you know, like a fry and burger seasoning that's unique to you. Great. So they're going to see that with your name on it and think, well, maybe I should go to this restaurant too. It will work.

And not all those partnerships have to be.

The simplest? You can think outside the box. For example, let's say,

Chris Schneider (06:39.584)
You know the person that has a salon in town and that salon does a lot of weddings.

And you can partner with them and give, okay, everyone that comes in or schedules hairstyles or hair appointments, however you would say that, for a wedding.

Give them this coupon or give them this thing so that after the rehearsal dinner, they can come to my bar and have drinks and they're getting a little something because they also were your customer for a wedding.

find out-of-box ways to get not only deeper in your community, not only to work with the businesses around you, but to work with the businesses around you to send business back and forth to each other, which helps everyone.

And the fifth thing, and this is something that you guys are probably tired of me hearing, but use data analytics to track the effectiveness. Gather the data, analyze the data, and then make decisions based on that data.

Chris Schneider (07:48.846)
So for 2025, five ways to optimize your marketing strategy. Build a strong social media presence. Implement a customer loyalty program. Create a targeted email mailing campaign. Develop partnerships with local businesses. Think outside the box on those. And then whatever you do, even if you do one of these four things, track data, get the data, analyze the data, use that to understand the effectiveness.

where spending money works and where spending money doesn't.