Congratulations! You’ve just opened a brand new upscale gentlemen’s club and the future appears to be very bright. You and your partners have been in the business for some time now, perhaps as managers or bartenders. You know what it takes to run a successful operation and keep it afloat, so you’re confident that you’ve got a real hit on your hands.
The reality of the situation, though, is that in this day and age, opening a brand new strip club is often a daunting task. With our current economic climate in the United States, discretionary spending is not quite what it was compared to more prosperous times. That’s why it’s more critical than ever to take the necessary precautions to ensure that your new club is running as smoothly as possible.
To help you iron out the kinks and protect your investment, Cabaret Marketing Group has compiled a short list of tips that you can implement at your new strip club. These tips can also be applied to existing clubs looking to refresh themselves. Without further ado, here are six easy tips to help build momentum for your new club, and thus build profits!
1) Promotion, promotion, promotion. Promotion of your new club, especially early on, is critical. Unfortunately, just building a new strip club on a major thoroughfare does not guarantee that the patrons and talent will fall over themselves to pull in. People have to know your club exists, so this will require an aggressive marketing campaign. Try to get as many people talking about your business as possible. The most effective promotional tactic you will have at your disposal is to spread the word through existing clubs in your area via the patrons, guests, and employees of existing clubs. It is also a good idea to push the club heavily in outlets like alternative magazines and social media sites before the club opens to generate a strong buzz of energy. After you’ve been running for a year or so and the excitement begins to die down, you can then focus on sustaining the traffic you’ve attracted and therefore, you don’t have to advertise as much.
2) Do not try to demand high cover charges and tipouts when you first open! This is the kiss of death for most new clubs. Without guests, you cannot attract strippers, and without strippers, you cannot attract guests. While you need a healthy amount of both talent and customers to survive, the truth is that you’re going to be lacking in one or both areas when you first open. That’s just a fact of the business; you will not be able to avoid it. This is why it’s a best practice to allocate as many resources as possible to focus on attracting as many people from each of these two categories as possible in order to build your clientele and your talent base. For example, you may have to waive cover charges and tipouts entirely for the first six months in operation. Unfortunately, this means you may be operating at a loss for a while until you can gain momentum. But, over time things will level out and stabilize. THEN, once you have generated enough traffic, you can command premium prices. Think of it as an ongoing investment in your business.
3) To that end, be sure to provide incentives for your new talent and clientele. This one is self-explanatory. You’d be surprised at what simple gestures like this can do for your loyalty. Many customers are regular guests of the clubs they frequent specifically because they receive occasional free drinks and such from time to time. They continue to spend money at these clubs not because they expect free drinks and appetizers, but because they appreciate the gesture. Everyone likes to feel wanted and appreciated, including your guests. The possibilities are endless-- so you can be as creative as you want!
These are executable tactics that you can implement right away. In part two of the series, we’ll be discussing operational strategies that will help keep you on the fast track to success. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @CabaretMG!
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