Marketing for a sports bar would seem to be a reasonably easy task for someone not familiar with bar marketing. After all, the sports you air do your marketing for you, right? But that's only partly true. The other part is creating an attractive customer experience that persists before and after your patrons arrive. Maintaining a healthy atmosphere means appealing to all of your customers and ensuring a healthy mix of patrons. So, now that you know it's more challenging to do truly effective sports bar marketing, how can you do that? Well, there are the traditional marketing methods: radio, newspaper, signage. But marketing automation can mean even more avenues for marketing and communication with your bar patrons. So, what are some specific marketing strategies you can take advantage of to create a dedicated base of sports fans and customers?

We'll start by offering a bar loyalty program. There are a lot of sports bars. Regardless of the city, there are at least two or three. So how do you stand out as a unique sports bar? Offering incentives to generate a following of loyal customers via a loyalty program makes your customers feel like part of a community. That community benefits them the more they support it, so they're more likely to keep coming back. That's the sort of thing that will stay with them when they leave. Here are some other examples of things to do to stay with your customers and keep them wanting to regularly visit your establishment.

Five sports bar marketing ideas

• Social media: Maintaining a social media presence that is both engaging and relevant is hugely important This is especially true since social media is the biggest word of mouth presence you can possibly get in today's communication scenario. You'll see returns not all at once, but over a long period of time with effective social media marketing.
• Use our event planning application: Designed with real-world events in mind, a sports bar can make efficient use of our application. It can be used to help plan events for large matches or tournaments, or even for ticket-based events specially for loyalty club memberships. The event application will help you build and publicize your event, plan it out, and track its effectiveness.
• Set up a mailing list for your special events and holiday specials: This more or less speaks for itself. After all, your bar patrons will appreciate you keeping them up to speed. They will love the ability to track whatever sports events you're showing without needing to come in only to be disappointed.
• Keep your finger on the pulse of the local preference: What sports are most popular in your area? What do your customers prefer out of a sports bar? Are your other marketing communications being well received? Try putting out a survey once in a while. You're able to track that data, keep an eye on the opinion, and see the demand for certain events or sports in your schedule. This allows you to market your events more specifically based on the preferences of your customers.
• Have non-sports nights: Not everyone wants to be all about sports, but they want a bar with good food and a good atmosphere. Have a poker night or other sports-free events that fall in line with local laws. Some places don't allow actual gambling, for example, so perhaps the winnings for the poker are a coupon or gift certificate. Appeal to potential leads who don't want sports events. This is good marketing for obvious reasons, but it also generates competition for free stuff. That's something that will keep people coming in for the chance to win next time.

These are all things that can be facilitated with marketing automation, and will help you build a persistent customer experience that lasts after the customer leaves the bar. Sports fans and ordinary folks alike will appreciate the extra effort your sports bar marketing takes, and the results it brings.

Sign up for a free interactive SimplyCast 360 demo to check out what else marketing automation can do for you! as well as our page dedicated to bars and clubs!Contact us today if you are interested to see just how SimplyCast can improve your sports bar marketing efforts.