Marketing Tools for a Taproom

Good tap selection?

 

Have you started with FB, instagram and twitter? Find users in your area. Search craft beer hashtags and start using them. Post your tap selection. Thats what gets me out the house.

 

Resources like taphunter or beermenus.

I don't go out to drink all that often, but when i do im checking taphunter first.

 

Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, a solid grasp of social media platforms, and the ability to not get hostile online.

Also, the ability to keep your online tap list up to date. Not nearly enough places do this.

Local Google Adwords campaigns might be worth investigating too.

 

Using concise and complete information and not putting three words on a board and expecting people to understand/respond

 

I'm assuming you are talking an independent taproom with variety rather than a taproom for a specific brewery. Based on that assumption, you need to make your tap list easily accessible and keep it up to date. Personally, I won't take my time to travel to and try a new place if it does not or cannot provide the most basic and pertinent information, aka a current list of available beers. Secondly, do whatever you can to get some handles for the beers that the others in your area are not offering. Adding just another spot to get all the same "standards" is not going to win any new business.

 

Happy Hour

 

A good chef or line up good food trucks. Provide meeting space for commodity groups. Send out press releases as well as the on line stuff. Get the mayor or some local political/media/sports figure to MC the grand opening. Print up 1 page fliers with a coupon and stick them into neighborhood doors. If there is a college around stick the fliers into dorms and frat houses. Hire some one dressed like a beer keg/bottle to had out fliers and coupons downtown or in local shopping malls.

 

Same. Taphunter is solid when taprooms keep up on it.

 

Take a photo of your taplist and post it on instagram twice a week. When I see something I like, this is what drives me to visit a bar or brewery.

 

Amen across the board. Also be absolutely sure you have your Google+/Places/MyBusiness/WhateverItsCalledThisWeek setup correctly.

 

Yeah, Google+ is stupidly important for local businesses. It's a shit platform, but Google has the power to make it matter, since, you know, Google.

Fortunately our overlords are benevolent, or at least indifferent, and there's little chance I'll get disappeared for the above derisive comment.

 

I understand super bowl ads reach a lot of people. Alternatively, a nice low tech approach is to have someone out in front of the taproom maybe dressed as a giant glass of beer dancing and pointing to the entrance. Just watch the patrons stream in. Where can I send my consulting services invoice?

 

Good service and better beer.

 

Good beer, hot waitresses

 

Try and get some coverage in a local "what's happening" newspaper or magazine. Also, sometimes their advertising rates are reasonable.

 

A lot of great suggestions. I would also seek out/ search for some local craft beer influencers in your area (Twitter and Instagram are great places to start). Invite them to come check things out. Maybe host a small get together to discuss what's new, different, etc.

 

I love Digital Pour. Works with Social Media entities and lets a patron know how much is left in the barrel. I would totally use this with my POS if opening a taproom..

 

I'd take skill and knowledge over hot. I forget the exact quote, but "When did breasts replace skill as a requirement for bartenders?".