When I was asked to write a column on how we turned the Excelsior into an ‘overnight success with little or no promotion’, I thought, “Should I answer this honestly?”. Surely it will sound less than impressive when I say, “El Loco is a huge success because we generated a bucket-load of awareness via word-of-mouth”.
For any product, word-of-mouth is the ultimate marketing tool because it’s not you marketing your product, it’s other people marketing your product and that’s the most genuine kind of marketing. Word-of-mouth is crucial to a successful venue but to produce the effect, you need to get the product right before launching, know that it’s a right fit for your potential customers and exceed their expectations when they come in.
In my experience, there are four key pillars. Firstly, get your product right. You don’t want anyone spreading any kind of message until you are confident with the product you are offering. You need to deliver on everything as you only get one shot at making a good first impression on your new customers. The difficulty is that every patron is different. Some will love it because of the food, others the cocktails, the people, the music, the décor, the location; the list goes on so you can’t leave anything to chance. The venue itself is like a series of ambient and experiential tactics. Merivale has a team of experts and the right systems in place so refitting and confidently opening El Loco in just seven days was achievable for us.
Secondly, know your audience. For El Loco’s launch, we knew our regular, loyal clientele were going to be the people living locally and working in the surrounding businesses. So we targeted them, made them the VIPs. We intentionally didn’t make it a big media launch because we wanted as many locals as possible to experience the venue first hand, not just read about it. Media coverage is important but for El Loco, word-of-mouth allowed us to create a slow groundswell culminating with exponential sales. A traditional launch generates great hype at opening phase but doesn’t necessarily offer longevity.
The third pillar is to use social media to bring people in. The time-lapse video that we shot of the fit out and loaded onto El Loco’s blog really set the creative tone and fun vibe of the venue. We released that into the market around launch. It was quicker to get a blog up than website content for El Loco due to the seven-day fit-out and launch, and it’s still active today as our means to communicate with our local community.
Finally, and this is a crucial pillar of generating positive word-of-mouth: Make it personal. I frequent El Loco - actually most of Merivale’s venues - and that’s because I have a good time when I’m there and enjoy meeting our customers. But it’s not just about me; our managers hit the streets regularly, meeting local businesses and they have a personal relationship with the locals who frequent the venue. The staff engage with our patrons and enjoy what they do, which is crucial. We’ve grown our membership database quite considerably since launch - the experience inside a venue is vital to this.
Word-of-mouth is crucial but – excuse the pun - is easier said than done. To create genuine, positive word-of-mouth, you really need to hit every touchpoint and be confident in your product.
Justin Hemmes
Chief Executive
Merivale Group
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