As the football season finally concludes, restaurants that get a lot of business during the season might be examining different ways to keep business on the roll.
For sports bars especially, the end of football season can be particularly taxing. According to Gallup, football is America’s most popular sport. And by a pretty significant margin to boot. In their survey, 37% of American adults chose football as their preferred sport, compared to 11% picking basketball and 9% picking baseball.
Want to keep sales up? Read ahead.
Leverage Your Loyalty Program
If you want to keep customers around, you’re going to want to start reaching out to your loyalty program members. In order to keep sales going, you’re going to need to work a little harder to keep loyalty members engaged over time.
Here are a couple ways loyalty programs can help.
- Does your loyalty program use a point system? (e.g. a system where customers can exchange earned points for rewards). If so, post-football season may be a good time to start incentivizing rewards to use those points on. Assuming that they’ve been around all football season, hopefully they’ve racked up a decent amount of points. This gets them back in your restaurant and spending.
- Use it to promote yourself. Sporting events, trivia nights, happy hour specials, and whatever the case might be. Keep your loyalty members plugged in. Incentivize them with special discounts and rewards to keep them interested and attending.
March Madness
March Madness, the annual NCAA college basketball tournament, is one of the closest events to take advantage of. If you run a sports bar, hopefully you’re already aware of its significance. On the other hand, if you run a restaurant with a bigger football crowd than basketball crowd, keep your eye on this one.
There are plenty of ways to get the most out of the tournament. Not only are there games galore to consistently show, but there’s also the brackets. Filling out brackets is what separates March Madness from other sporting phenomena. You don’t have to be a hardcore basketball fan to fill out a bracket, which is why March Madness is so appealing to a wider audience. Use that to your advantage. Run a contest and have customers submit their brackets for a chance to win a prize. Keep your social media updated as the contest progresses, letting your followers know how close the competition is.
Other Sports
Beyond March Madness, there are plenty of other sports and sporting events to shine the light on as you count down the days, weeks, and months until football season kicks back in. Football may be America’s most popular sport, but those football fans need something to watch during the interim. Basketball runs until June and Hockey until April. Baseball starts in March and goes until October.
To help you out, here’s a list of the top ten most watched sporting events on U.S. television, courtesy of Listosaur. Below, I’ve picked out events airing before football comes back.
- NBA Finals
- NCAA Final Four (March Madness)
- Kentucky Derby
- The Masters (Specifically the final round)
- NASCAR Daytona 500
Get Started With CoGoBuzz
Keeping sales up is easy (and affordable) with CoGoBuzz. Our state-of-the-art digital service leverages WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions to get you repeat customers automatically.
Through a one-time login to your in-store HotSpot, customers can check out your latest deals, menus, and more directly from their mobile devices. We’ll automatically produce a full customer profile for every customer that logs in. Enroll customers in your brand new, text-based loyalty program. Promote your deals, events, and keep your loyal customers around all year long.
To learn more about CoGoBuzz, check out the rest of our website!
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How do you keep sales up after the football season ends? Let us know in the comments!