An open mic night might be often associated with comedians, musicians, and even poets who perform spoken poetries. However, it’s not just limited to those individuals, as an open mic night can also help promote your restaurant.
It’s a great way to attract new customers and guests to give your restaurant a try, granted you’re able to pull it off successfully. Lucky for you, we’re here to help you out.
Without further ado, here are 6 ways that you can use to promote your restaurant’s open mic night:
1. Hand Out Flyers
Event flyers are your best friend when it comes to promoting your open mic night to potential customers. You just have to make sure you create an open mic night flyer that can quickly capture the attention of your target audience.
Aside from that, you have to make sure that your flyer can complement your restaurant’s branding so you can have a consistent style across all of your platforms.
2. Work with an Experienced Host
One of the most effective strategies for promoting an open mic night is to hire a host who’s been recognized by your customers. It’s also important that the host you choose understands the open mic community.
After all, you want a host who has plenty of experience in this aspect, someone who can keep your audience entertained and even keep them coming back for more.
Not only that, but an experienced host can even help you find local performers as well as strategic locations where you can hand out your flyers. In some cases, your host might even promote your open mic event on their channels.
3. Hire Well-Known Local Performers
Aside from hiring an experienced host, you also want to work with local performers who are well-known in your area. This will help you draw in a lot of people, especially those who are fans of the local performers themselves.
You’ll be surprised to find that this will even attract guests who aren’t even a fan of open mic events in the first place.
That said, just like how a host can help promote your event, the local performers you work with can do the same as well. At this point, you have access to free marketing.
4. Promote Your Food and Drinks
Of course, since you’re running an open mic night at your restaurant, you want to make sure your guests are full and hydrated. This is why you shouldn’t forget to promote your food and drinks as well.
You can come up with various types of promotions for your food and drinks. You can go for a one-buy-get-one offer, hand out one free drink to your performers, and offer happy hour rates to your guests.
Aside from that, you can be more creative by offering a prize to the “best” local performer of the tab based on the applause they get from your guests, etc.
No matter which method you try, rest assured that any food and drink promotion can keep both your customers and performers happy, entertained, and satisfied.
5. Promote on Social Media
Don’t forget to promote your restaurant’s open mic night on social media as well. While you might think social media websites like Facebook and Instagram are highly overrated at this point, you can’t deny the fact that they work.
So, you should never neglect the power of social media when it comes to promoting your open mic night.
There are a handful of ways to go about this. You can always go with the simple announcement indicating when your open mic night will take place. You can also share your upcoming promotions as well.
Of course, make sure to showcase your host and local performers in your post, but make sure you ask for their permission before doing so. This way, their fans will know where they will perform next, and this can convince them to attend your upcoming event.
6. Make the Event Affordable
This might sound more like a suggestion than an actual strategy, but it’s not a wise decision to charge a high price for your open mic night. It would be even much better if you do it for free.
The reason is that by offering it for cheap or even free, you can encourage your guests to buy drinks and food from your restaurant.
And since you’re running promotions as well, it will be easier for them to spend money on food and drinks than they would when they have to pay an entrance fee in the first place.
You should also keep in mind that it’s much easier to sell an open mic night event if it’s free. But if you’re going to charge anyway, you should also consider if the quality of your event is worth the price you’re charging.
Conclusion
Promoting your restaurant’s open mic night might sound overwhelming, but it’s a fun and effective strategy that you can use to attract potential customers.
Just make sure to use as many of the strategies above so you can further increase your chances of holding a successful open mic event.
