From PR to Eternity

This weekend I attended the closing down party at the Underground night club in Southport, which is one of my all-time favourite haunts. Like many closing down sales and farewell tours it was very busy. It showed what potential the club had, and how popular the place is with its customers.

If every night was like Saturday night I very much doubt the club would be shutting down. So why is it shutting down? I put that down to mediocre marketing. Although the club has built up an impressive level of brand loyalty with its customers, by providing a good quality service, it hasn’t taken advantage of this. The club could have easily and cheaply used social media to interact with its customer base.

Here are a few ways that the club owners could have engaged more with their customers.

• Invite clubbers to get involved by voting for what music should be played or what drinks should be sold
• Provide an online space for customers to share their photographs and videos
• Issue a regular newsletter informing customers about changes to the night club
• Write a blog to provide information about bands that will soon be performing, recommend new artists to listen to and songs to download, and talk about changes being made to the club
• Invite the public to review music

The Underground did run a Facebook group that regularly issued messages about what bands were playing each week. But this can quickly be seen as spam and the message is lost. Nobody wants to be told the same thing each week. It’s boring and it could actually harm your brand.