What's your favorite low cost promotion ideas?

cueandcushion said:

What promotions or specials do you have that are low cost but a good income generator? I hope that if everyone contributes just a few different ideas, we all can "borrow" a couple for ourselves. This helps us and helps the players too.

My favorites:
Free Pool on your Birthday.
Cost-Minimal. The only time it really costs you anything is when someones birthday just happens to be on a Saturday night and is alone the whole time. Most people will celebrate a birthday with some friends. This brings a whole group of people to your place to play pool, buy drinks etc. The birthday guy/girl will suggest your place over a movie etc.

Half Price Tee Shirt Night.
Cost- $7 per tee shirt up front appx. We have half price pool when you wear a Cue & Cushion tee shirt to play pool one day a week. This gets your customers to advertise for you helping bring in word of mouth customers. Pick a slow night and it doesnt affect your bottom line. You could do the same thing after midnight even? We even have promotions and contests where you win tee shirts. Some customers on a limited budget will only come on that teeshirt night, but hey, better they come there one night a week than zero?
I even have unannounced days twice a month. So customers that get in the habit of wearing your shirts every day gets a nice surprise now and then with a reduced bill.

Internet site.
Cost- $1500 max...If you have time..find a customer who has webdesign experience and maybe work a trade. Free pool for a year? You might get a better website than a pro company dollar for dollar. I paid about $900 upfront for our website and regular updates have been $100 here and $200 there. Not a huge expense. I am very lucky with my webmaster.

Just having a website with basic information and pictures of your place I think is a huge deal these days. It gives a person a sneak preview of your prices and specials and what kind of place you have. Set up is a pain but once up the monthly costs are pretty low. Putting your web address on every single piece of advertising is really important. It doesnt have to be a secure website for selling anything. The websites that have the shopping carts and retail sales on them is where it gets more complicated. Pictures of people having fun. Emphasize your specials for those who have never been there. Internet coupon for the first timer? Show pics of cues or merchandise you have. Once setup it will over time bring new customers on a regular basis.

Those are my top 3 favorite promotional ideas that have worked really well for us. Hope other room owners add to it.

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Hey Craig those are some good idea's, I really like the idea's about the birthdays and the Tee shirts.

Here are some of the promotional idea's that I use on a regular basis.

1. 10% discounts off the marked price on merchandise for US. Military, Police, Fireman, and APA / BCA League members.

2. Monthly membership rates: I charge $60 dollars a month for non-students and $40 a month for Students. These rates apply 7 days a week from 12:30 pm when I open until 6:00 pm. This is a great promotion, because during slow times it keeps people in your place, not only will people spend additional money, but people attract more people.

3. Pool leagues: Currently I have 6 APA teams and 4 BCA teams that play out of my room. This brings in a lot of money, during league people buy drinks, food, have work done to their equipment, and order or buy additional billiard related items, ie, chalk, shapers, Tippiks, cues and cases.
Leagues can really bring in allot of revenue.

4. Player appreciation day: This is done on a annual basis, the establishment supplies some free food, a drawing is held and free gifts are given away, the entire event in culminated in a tournament that is by invitation only( for your regulars) were no fee's are charged and gifts or cash are given away for 1st through 6th place.
Gifts can be anything including free pool for a year, for 1st place, or any numbers of things.

5. keeping your room open to all ages: Today, teenagers have a great deal of money. In this state, there is a special license where you can sell beer ONLY, and still allow under 21 year olds in your pool room. This is really a great deal if you mange it properly. kids will buy cues, spend allot of time on your tables, and to my experience so far, (over the last 2 years) they will follow your rules if you set a standard and treat them right / with respect.
Most kids today look for guidance, not something forced done their throat, but given to them without a threat. Kids also want a safe place where they can enjoy themselves, without being bothered, by gangs, drug users, or bums.

6. Last, a cue trade up Program: This program works great for the room owner and the customer. I will except any cue that I sell to a customer back in trade for another cue that costs at least $100 more than the first cue purchased.
Trade-in value is based on the condition on the trade-in cue at trade-in. If the cue is in great condition up to 85% of the purchase price of the trade-in will be applied to the new cue.
The old cue will be re-tipped if necessary and cleaned-up and resold as used. This will bring allot of your customers back for new cue purchases, especially the young and the league players.

Well I hope this helps everyone, I look forward to future posts by other room owners.

Manwon

You place a fishbowl or other container on the checkout counter and let people drop their business cards in. Once a month (or more often or less often) you draw a card and the 'winner' receives two hours of Free pool on two tables and a $25 bar tab for them and nine of their co-workers (the winner MUST have at least six people to participate). Usually from 5:00-7:00 or 6:00-8:00 p.m or thereabouts.
What this accomplishes is the winner bringing in 'new' customers, plus they often bring more than the 10 others. The $25 usually get's spent up right away on pitchers of beer, mixed drinks or sodas and then they pay for the extra drinks for the remainder of the Free two hours. Not to mention any food they order. They often will stay after the two Free hours and pay for addional table time, drinks, food, etc.
They all have a great time and then tell their friends and bring in new business.
Doug

Promotion Ideas

We have 2 different coupons for the customers that are members to use.

One coupon is get a punch for every hour you play, after 10 punches you get one hour free.

Second is get a punch for every day you play, after 30 punches you get one day free, come and go 2 or 3 times is ok.

They can`t get them filled fast enough.

highrun55 said:

We have 2 different coupons for the customers that are members to use.

One coupon is get a punch for every hour you play, after 10 punches you get one hour free.

Second is get a punch for every day you play, after 30 punches you get one day free, come and go 2 or 3 times is ok.

They can`t get them filled fast enough.

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Those are great idea's thanks for sharing!!!!!

Craig

We have chosen to produce VIP-cards for people working in bars & restaurants. They can get this card by paying about 20$, and then they get 50 % discount on pool. Since the people working on bars enjoys to go out and drink on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, we are having a lot of them in here when there is normally more quiet.

The best of all. To get the card they need to give us their name, phonenumber and email, so we have got a lot of emails to send "spam" to about happenings

After 1 year with this VIP-cards 10 % of our total income is from this group!

pool specials

Im not an owner,but ran my friends pool hall in jersey,we had all kinds of specials, one special was from 11am to 6 pm $6.00,That special brought in the retired crowed,and kids after school,most of the time I had all 25 tables going and a waiting list,second would be table time cards,for ex. $50.00 up front gets you $100.00 worth of table time,we had cards printed up with custumer name and time card #. and wrote the time on cards also kept time in a note book under register,started with #1 and went up whatever.THis also was good to remember there names,not just taking there money!!!!!Rack girls!!!!! after 6pm,they worked off of tips ,jar was left at register,that kept the customers comming back for more,I had rack girl shirts made up just to show alittle not to much.I would give them 20$ out of register at end of night,there job was also to clean,bathrooms,vacume tables,mop floors,wipe machines down etc.they didnt care they were pulling in 150$ a night.hope this might help..

The most popular one we have is Free Jukebox night on Tuesdays. Kids especially like this one. Great for getting in groups of players, rather than singles, as the girlfriends who don't play have something to do in choosing the songs. We try to limit it to a few songs at a time per person, so everyone gets to choose favorites.

Monday is double punch night. For every hour someone plays, they get credit for two on the punch cards.

All summer we've been running a $5 all day special. Open to close, five bucks a player. I think it helped us the summer. We are about to celebrate being open one full year, and are considering keeping the special for the next couple of months to see if it hurts us or helps us.

Way to expensive to get a liquor license here in PA, so we allow BYOB for adults. Hasn't caused a problem yet. No real way of making direct money off that, but it keeps people in the room longer. In this town we compete directly with bars for customers.

That's it for now.

-Dan-
www.greatlakesbilliards.com

tag said:

Im not an owner,but ran my friends pool hall in jersey,we had all kinds of specials, one special was from 11am to 6 pm $6.00,That special brought in the retired crowed,and kids after school,most of the time I had all 25 tables going and a waiting list,second would be table time cards,for ex. $50.00 up front gets you $100.00 worth of table time,we had cards printed up with custumer name and time card #. and wrote the time on cards also kept time in a note book under register,started with #1 and went up whatever.THis also was good to remember there names,not just taking there money!!!!!Rack girls!!!!! after 6pm,they worked off of tips ,jar was left at register,that kept the customers comming back for more,I had rack girl shirts made up just to show alittle not to much.I would give them 20$ out of register at end of night,there job was also to clean,bathrooms,vacume tables,mop floors,wipe machines down etc.they didnt care they were pulling in 150$ a night.hope this might help..

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Hey I like the idea about rack girls!!!! I have even though of taking it a step further.

I have been in the process of opening a Adult Pool room for around a year.

The only difference is my rack girls will only wear G-strings. Every 30 min they will rotate to a different table, every hour there will be a show on platforms that the tables surround (Pole Dances). The girls will receive tips and can perform dances while they are located at the pool tables.

In this state you can not serve any alcohol in this type of business, however, by renting pool tables by the hour you can make enough additional income to get around that problem.

I have almost got my city and state willing to allow this type of entertainment.

Currently in this state they allow strip bars and they are always crowded, the only thing I am adding to that is pool tables and I am making it a requirement that people must rent a table to be allowed into this club.

If all go's well I should be able to open in around 11 month's

I will keep my current all ages pool room open, but I think that a strip pool room could be a real money maker.

I am uncertain if there is another room like this any where else?

I'd be careful with the cards and such. Back when Atlanta Billiards was open my buddy's sister-inlaw new a bartender there. She gave us a bunch of free pool cards. I used it to my advantage. I normally would feel guilty but they screwed me out of money before so I really didn't care.

Thanks

Hey Smitty

Thanks for the link on your myspace site. I will add your links to your myspace pages to our website as soon as possible. As you can tell, it's a work in progress!

And if you are down this way the 3rd weekend of the month, Sept 16th we are having a bar box 9 ball tourney, $75 entry. Come check us out.

Some promo I did that worked:
1. Ladies Night girls playing for free the whole day! Ladies Only per table. If she wears mini skirt first drink on us! then buy one get on free cocktails. The result beatifull girls + alcohol great atmosphere, my room filled up with guys.
2. Table rent give away. On selected "big spender" on dinner or drink. We'll let them use the table for free as long as they want. Usually the first 15 minutes they will order drinks not just for them but also for our waitresses
I hope it will work in the USA, it works for me in Bali.
Cen
www.buddhasbellybali.com

Cue Purchase

Have your regulars, younger players put money down on a cue, 20% up front or whatever you think best then, don't let the cue out of the room till paid off and do monthly installments.

On my re-designed website wich is online in a few day's, i make pictures from customers while playing on busy nights.
If they find a picture on my website where they spot them selfs and print it out they get one hour free, if they show it at the bar.
Pictures change weekly...

On not so busy night i do a happy hour, play 1 hour get the second hour free.

And ofcourse ladiesnight, each lady get's 25% discount on table rent, so 4 ladies free Pool, the guy's will come eventually...
Be aware that there are only ladies at the table or else the discount doesn't count, sometimes they come in and a half hour later the boyfriends come...

MH
HOB Weert

when we had our pool hall we used to have tournaments between th firefighters and the cops that would brign in the locals so they could watch the rivalry. Or we would sell tickets for a whole month for a chance on a cue stick. we also had a pickle jug on the counter full of water with a shot glass in the bottom and if you could ring the shot glass with a quarter you got a free hour of pool. Hope some of this helps out.

okinawarob said:

First I have to say I have a full bar and when I fist bought my room it had only a few women that came in the entire month. I started thinking and made a ladies night where they get every drink 1/2 price all night long. I make a smaller profit on the drinks for the girls but it brings in more guys if there are more women. I noticed it brought my overall sales up so I went one step farther and created a SUPER Ladies Night where the ladies drink for free all night long. Before you go into shock remember the ladies night increased my total sales and brought me a good women customer base first. Once I announced the super night they brought their girlfriends and we became packed! I considered this as advertisment costs and found that once a month if I paid out around $150.00 in free ladies drinks (my costs) that I had increased my gross by 30% over the month. I did have to charge 1/2 price for beer and shots but cocktails are free once a month every super ladies night. It still happens every month after 10 years of ownership. The best investment I have made to increase customers. For the pool players I always add money to the monthly tournament, my way of saying thank you for playing here. Advertisement costs in a different way. I have found many rooms only advertise to their customers and not to the majority of people in the city that dont know you exist. You have to take care of the customers you have but without new customers comming all the time you cant grow. Focus on ways that attract new people.

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How do you keep the ladies from getting free drinks and giving them to their boy friends?