If you have a large party room in your bar or restaurant, then chances are that you’ve already thought about marketing it towards people for use as an events center. There is a lot of money to be made if you can capture even a small portion of this market, and often times that is the last frontier you have to expand your business’s profitability. Most bar or restaurant owners target events such as weddings and birthday parties as their primary focus, and that is certain to drum up a lot of business. However, many bar and restaurant marketers completely overlook the ever-growing office party section of the market which can be a major cash cow.
When most people think about office parties, they think about a party that takes place in the office itself. While this is a top choice for many potential clients, there are many that would rather keep the drinking and partying out of the place where everyone works. Similarly, the next logical choice would be a conference room at a nearby hotel, but many hotels don’t want that type of event happening on their premises. This is where you have a great opportunity to steal away their business and turn it into huge profits, and it’s all about marketing your space properly. Here are a few ways to go about marketing your space for office parties.
Grooming the Space
The first thing you need to do is setup your space to be appealing to businesses that host office parties. This means that you’ll need to make the room available on all of the most popular holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and the surrounding weekends. Additionally, you need to have a public address system complete with a microphone so people can give speeches and make announcements. Lastly, you should consider including some sort of projector so businesses can display slideshows and other visual media since typically they roll a business meeting into their party. This also opens the door for your space to be used as a conference center for local businesses to expand your market reach even further.
Offer High-End Services
Whenever a business is looking for a venue to host their office party, having the right type of services is crucial. Many of your competitors will have on-site bartenders and caterers, and you should absolutely do that as well; but you also need something that sets you apart from the rest of the options in your area. Consider taking things up a notch by offering bottle service right to each table. You can buy wholesale bottle sparklers online for very cheap and attach them to each champagne bottle before their delivered to the tables to create a very large “wow” factor. Little things like this will make your space stand out and drum up more business over the long term.
Market Directly to Local Companies
Lastly, you need to get the word out to the local businesses that you offer your space up for rental for office parties. You obviously want to put something about this on your website and social media pages, but the bulk of your potential business may not even be looking for an external venue. By directly marketing to local office buildings, you can expand your reach and bring in the most business. Consider making personal trip to speak with office managers or at the very least sending them a direct mailer. By properly marketing your space for office parties, you can see new revenues coming into your bar or restaurant in no time.
