How To Successfully Run Photo Promotions at Bars and Nightclubs
If you’re a bar owner or manager, you are probably looking for new ways to market your business, make your establishment stand out, and give people extra reasons to visit your location.
You may think you have tried everything. But, have you tried photo promotions?
What Are Photo Promotions?
Photo promotions are a marketing and customer engagement tactic that puts a professional photographer in your location at peak hours or during an event. The photographer walks around takes photos of your guests having a great time.
This promotion allows guests to feel like stars. They get to pose for a professional photo with their friends and capture their awesome night.
It’s easy to see why this is fun for guests. Now, let’s look at why it is also a smart marketing tool for bar owners and managers.
The benefits of running photo promotions at a bar are as follows:
- Provides fun experiences for customers
- Promotes authentic, enjoyable customer engagement
- Builds brand awareness
- Triggers lead generation
- Creates remarketing opportunities
- Supports retargeting strategies
Photo promotions support strong marketing initiatives while engaging and pleasing guests. So if it’s a strategy you haven’t yet tried, it’s time to start.
How To Use Photos Promotions as a Marketing Tool
The way you turn from merely taking photos at your bar into a solid marketing strategy is in the way you execute the promotion. For a photo campaign to work, it must be directly tied to an approach that captures leads, re-engages your audience, and remarkets your business.
This process is how to launch a strategic photo promotion campaign.
1. Bring in a professional photographer. For your guests, the allure of having their photo taken lies in the high-end presentation of the photographer. Guest won’t get excited by a photographer who is using an iPhone or low-quality camera. If you want to impress customers, you need to use a photographer who has professional equipment that looks sophisticated and can capture high-quality, editorial-style images.
2. Pass out cards to guests when their photo is taken. When guests have their photo taken, they will want to know where they can view the photo. So, arm your photographer with cards that give directions for where the guest needs to go online to find their photo. The best cards are business card sized so people can quickly stash them away in wallets and purses.
3. Add a deal to the back of the card. The purpose of the card is not just to lead guests online to view their photo. It should also be used to promote the bar again. On the back of the card, include a deal for your business (such as a free drink, free admission, two-for-one discount, etc.) that will encourage the guest to revisit your location. This is the first way to remarket your business through a photo promotion at a bar or nightclub.
4. Advertise your bar on the photo landing page. The next remarketing opportunity comes from the landing page where guests go to view and download their photo. On the photo gallery page, include banner ads, display advertising, or marketing messages around featured images. This puts your business back in front of audiences who area already familiar with your bar, and it helps develop deeper brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty.
5. Add your logo as a watermark on photos. Another way to keep your brand front and center is to include your logo as a watermark on the photos from your event. Include a soft overlay that doesn’t distract from the main image but succeeds in sharing your logo and reminding viewers where the photo was taken.
6. Collect contact information from guests who download photos. You're providing professional, quality photos to your guests. In exchange, you can ask them for their contact information. Set up a system that requires guests to enter their phone number or email address to download photos. This step allows you to collect valuable customer data because you are gathering information from people who are already interested and engaged with your brand. It’s a smart way to obtain contact information from customers that you would otherwise have no way to connect with once they left your bar.
7. Remarket to contacts through email or text marketing. Once you collect contact information, you can then reconnect with this audience through email marketing or text marketing. You can send follow up messages, deals and discounts, promotions for upcoming events, and other content that will encourage customers to return to your bar or nightclub. Existing customers are more likely to visit a business again, so your remarketing tactics will produce better results than marketing efforts designed to bring in first-time customers.
8. Retarget contacts through Facebook. Collecting contact information also gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience on Facebook. Using Facebook advertising, you can upload your list of email addresses or phone numbers to create an audience of those people on Facebook. You can then target that audience with ads. The power of this tactic is that you are getting your brand back in front of your audience on another platform. It's a soft promotion to an already warm audience.
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As you can see, a photo promotion at a bar isn’t just about capturing images of your guests having a good time. It’s a strategic approach to marketing your business by offering your customers a high-quality giveaway and enjoyable experience.
And, it has even more to offer.
Bonus Benefits of Photo Promotions
Outside of the benefits listed above, a photo promotion at a bar comes with even more upsides for your business.
Grows Social Media Exposure. When guests find a professional quality photo of themselves (where they look good while having a great night out), they will likely share that image on social media. Each time one of your guests shares your branded image, it gets additional exposure for your business.
Supports Customer Database Growth. The great thing about collecting data from customers is that it has long-term value. While you will want to remarket and retarget your new contacts right away, you can also use this data in the long-term. Your list provides valuable connections for years to come.
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Produces High-Quality Marketing Graphics. High-end photos captured in your business aren’t just valuable for your guests. They are also useful to your bar as you can use the images to create marketing materials, promote future events, and create albums on other social platforms.
Helps Advertise to New Audiences. You don’t need to execute the full plan explained above to use photos promotions. You can also leverage photo promotions by advertising on the back of photo cards that are taken at an event that would have an audience similar to your target customers. For example, if you own a Mexican bar, and there is a margarita festival event in your area, it would be a smart partnership to advertise on the back of cards distributed at that event.
Photo promotions provide both an immediate and lasting value for your business. And, it’s a fun and engaging win-win for both you and your customers. So, what’s holding you back from embracing this strategy?
Where Do I Find a Professional Photographer?
The reason many bar owners and managers don’t consider photo promotions or fail to launch their campaign is that they get stuck on the first step. They can’t find a photographer.
A high-quality photographer is the glue that holds the whole process together, so you can’t just skip this step. MyArea Network knows that it can be challenging to find a quality, reliable photographer if you don’t know where to look. So, we've simplified the process.
We created a database of photographers across the country, so business owners could quickly find a talented and professional photographer in their area. Our community of photographers shoot nightlife as well as other styles such as headshots, food and drink, and more. Check out our roster of photographers.
How Do I Run a Full Photo Promotion at My Bar?
At MyArea Network, we also know that it can be a big job to execute the full photo promotion strategy laid out in this article. So in addition to connecting businesses with photographers, we also work with bars and nightclubs to implement their photo campaigns from start to finish.
From sending in one of our top-tier photographers to posting photo galleries and developing landing pages to building retargeting campaigns, MyArea Network works with bars to launch their entire photo promotion.
If you’re interested in running a photo promotion with MyArea Network or want to learn more about our resources that help you execute your campaign, let us know. Schedule a free consultation to learn more and talk to one of our marketing experts.
