3 Ways to Reinvent Your Nightlife Marketing
Believe it or not, parties are bumping well into the morning hours seven nights a week.
While Fridays and Saturdays are still the premier nights to embrace one’s inner raver, there are ample advertising opportunities available Sunday through Thursday as well. Tapping into this nightlife market can certainly seem like a daunting task.
Brands can often use similar, if not identical, strategies to reach a myriad of demographics, as there are many overlaps between groups that allow marketers to streamline their efforts. Targeting night-owls, club-goers and late-night musicians, however, requires an entirely different strategy. This group, and other nightlife aficionados, often have completely different schedules and priorities than most other segments, which means that your marketing strategy can’t just rehash or tweak old efforts. Instead, to become a successful nightlife marketer, you’ll have to do plenty of research and put forth a significant amount of effort. While it will be more work than a generic marketing campaign, the payoff will be worth it.
First, what is nightlife marketing?
Nightlife marketing essentially targets consumers in night clubs, music venues and bars. These individuals can range from owners and promoters to bartenders, clubbers and pretty much anyone else out and about late at night. To fully reach this demographic, you’ll need to employ a variety of techniques to ensure your brand, and its associated message makes a memorable impact. Read on to learn about the advertising strategies and trends that are bound to have people talking both on the dance floor and off.
This guide will provide you with the tips and information you’ll need to create a marketing strategy that reaches all sorts of nightlife enthusiasts.
1. Experiential Extravaganza
If you’re trying to engage with nightlife goers, you’ll need to think big. These individuals seek out exciting events on a regular basis, so printing a 25% off drink coupon with your brand’s name on it isn’t going to cut it.
Instead, consider experiential marketing. Each week more than 607,000 readers in DFW depend on GuideLive for accurate listings and reviews for local restaurants, upcoming events, theater performances and more. Why? Because GuideLive connects brands directly to consumers to integrate advertising into their everyday life, and in return, readers have a trusted source to easily find things to do.
That’s the beauty of experiential marketing – both parties win! Renting a popular nightclub, hosting a famous DJ, having generous drink specials or not charging a cover at the door are all examples of how brands can use experiential marketing to reach this demographic. While this may seem like a quick way to lose lots of money, you have to think long-term. If you’re hosting a large event, you’ll have your name on banners and signs everywhere. Create a hashtag specifically for your event is just another opportunity for your brand to be a part of the experience – maybe even shared on social media by a happy guest or two. By hosting an event, you’re building goodwill amongst the nightlife community. Your brand will be trusted by not only the attendees but also those following the pictures and hashtags they see on social media.
Red Bull has seemingly mastered experiential marketing, so they are helpful to look to for examples. They host Sound Select, a traveling music production from Los Angeles to Miami booking big name bands and charging nothing to attendees. The events have reasonable drink specials (that involve Red Bull), and branded photo booths that upload straight to Facebook. Overall, experiential marketing is a great way to immerse your brand in a community and build lasting relationships. If this is a path you’re wanting to take, we highly suggest you learn more on our experiential marketing page.
2. Tech Trends
If you’re looking to put on a large party or just want to host a local event, you’ll have to spread the word. Traditional means of advertising like print promotions or flyers will help spread the message, but to really attract the nightlife crowd you should incorporate digital marketing tactics as well. And given the prevalence of social media for…well, everything, you will want to try a more digital approach. Embrace the thought of your favorite flyers, only recreate them digitally. If your brand has access to a graphic design team, they can certainly help out. However, if you’re trying to do this on your own, Word Swag or Canva are excellent choices. With these apps, you’ll be able to easily meld text and images to create fun, easy to read posters that you can even send to print just in time for your next event.
There’s no doubt you use Facebook for marketing as is, so why not utilize as many features as possible? Facebook Events are a solid platform to spread information, but you don’t have to stop there. Why not Livestream your announcements? Or you could even Livestream a smaller party to stir up excitement for the large, blowout event you have planned. Looking for more tips on Facebook Live? 5 Easy Ways to Use Facebook Live For Your Business is a helpful guide that explores the capabilities of Facebook Live.
Consider learning more about new and evolving technology trends that you can use to your benefit. Read this guide to help prepare yourself so that you’re not left behind as late night party goers become even more tech savvy.
3. Embrace Influencers
A successful event in the nightlife community has lots of attendees and lots of exposure. An efficient way to ensure both of these outcomes is to use influencers. Influencers are mainly individuals who share the same thoughts or interests of the demographic segment who have a following online. People turn to them for insights and entertainment, and typically hold on to every word.
Use an influencer to help promote and boost your marketing efforts and it could move your event from good to great. If a popular influencer in the nightlife community tells his or her followers to go to your party, or that they have a favorite weeknight bar special, it could bring a significant increase in attendees and fill your event with people ready to interact with your brand.
Keep cost in mind when picking influencers. Big name influencers will most likely ask for a fee as massive as their following. If you can pay for this, great, but if you can’t, you may want to consider turning your party into a co-branded event with the said influencer. Co-branded events allow you to split the costs while still gaining exposure to each other’s followers – two heads are better than one, right? There are many examples of co-branded events, but perhaps the most notable is when Red Bull (yes, Red Bull again…they’re good at this sort of thing) teamed up with GoPro to put together the Stratos Space Jump, which garnered 52 million live streaming views. Of course, hosting an event like this may be out of your reach, but it still underscores the success of this strategy. Within six months of the jump, Red Bull saw a seven percent sales increase, which just goes to show the extensive reach collaboration can have.
Nightlife. Reinvented.
If you want to reinvent your nightlife marketing efforts, you need a hands-on approach. Most strategies will require lots of research, and you’ll probably need to stay up a bit later than usual to implement them. But if you follow these three steps your advertising strategy will undoubtedly pay off, and your brand will become a pillar of the nightlife community – one energy drink at a time.