4 Clever Ways to Use Graphic Design to Market Your Hospitality Venue
We can finally put away the winter coats and umbrellas because this week in the UK, hospitality venues like pubs and restaurants are welcoming guests inside once again. It's so exciting to be on the cusp of normal life again and as a consumer, the reopening of so many hospitality venues is nothing short of brilliant news. If you're the owner of a hospitality venue however, you might be left scratching your head as to how to stand out in such a saturated marketing landscape. If you're looking for ways to absolutely smash your hospitality venue marketing and want some ideas to apply today, we've got you covered. Read this blog for 4 ways to use clever graphic design ideas to market your venue...
Creative Point of Sale Graphics
Point of sale graphics are basically the graphic design displays you will see advertising goods or services like a stand up banner, a display unit strategically placed near the queue advertising your favourite snack or the poster behind a till letting you know about a discount. Point of sale graphics are used absolutely everywhere in retail, but how can you use them in your hospitality venue creatively in order to make your venue the top-spot for local customers?When it comes to the design of your point of sale graphics, our top tips are to keep it bold and simplistic. You want your graphic to be read and understood in just a few seconds, so it's important to make sure your copy is direct and to the point. In addition to that, keep fonts large for practicality so they can be read from further away. Imagery should be scaled up correctly to avoid the age old mistake of pixelation, but also should be relatively uncomplicated so as to portray an idea very quickly. With these being the fundamental points of attractive point of sale graphics, to really stand out you need to get creative. Here's some ideas we came up with...Use your point of sale graphics to create an experience for your guests. If in your hospitality venue you display goods near the tills, why not update your point of sale graphics with 'welcome back' messaging as a nod to the current situation and to show your customers a personal touch?Could you display customer testimonials using your point of sale graphics? Imagine a display unit advertising your in-house baked goods, with a testimonial letting customers know just how tasty others find them. A really simple but effective use of the space!
Create an experience with QR Codes
With more and more people across a wider demographic having gotten used to scanning QR codes due to the need to check into venues, it's a great idea to look to include QR codes to market your business in modern times. Using QR codes in your graphic design is an inventive way to pack even more impact into your marketing. If you have posters, menus, banners or just about any other printed marketing material in your hospitality venue - adding a QR code is a fantastic way to offer more information to the viewers. You can use QR codes in many different ways, but we're going to focus on just two for this article. Number one is to create an immersive experience. By using a QR code on a menu for example, you could link to a video or slideshow of the different dishes to really give your audience a full view of the incredible dishes you have on offer without compromising on your menu design. Not only will this create an immersive marketing experience, it will also help to build a luxurious reputation for your brand if you invest in high quality shots of your dishes. This is just one example of using QR codes creatively to create an experience for guests, but you could apply this in so many scenarios like a QR code on a promotional poster that links to a unique discount code to use for the first drink back!
The second and more common use for a QR code is to offer more information in the form of an article or blog post. Whilst this at first might not seem all that applicable to a hospitality venue, this is a useful way to offer even more practical information to guests. This could be a link to an in-depth look into nutritional value of meal, where you source ingredients, the awards your venue has received or any other longer form content that could provide extra value to guests.
Make your relaunch a special event
Do you remember keeping hold of tickets for events as a memory to look back on? If your cinema is opening this week, why not put a bit of extra time into creating some spectacular tickets to mark the occasion? Or, if your restaurant is having a grand relaunch, why not create a buzz around the event by adding a personal touch like tickets? This piece of graphic design is a really fun and creative way to mark a special occasion, and it doesn't need to cost a lot. If your looking to save on your budget whilst still creating a really epic reopening of your hospitality venue, try creating some beautifully designed e-tickets!
Update your Logo
A lot has changed in the last year, and one thing that the world of graphic design has seen a lot of is brand redesigns. Household brands like Burger King, Mcdonald's, Mini Eggs, Pringles and many more have completely revamped their product design in order to create a more modern looking brand. Commonly. we've seen these brands opt for flat colours, to ditch the shadows and highlights and to create really simple icons for their brand. What does that mean for your hospitality venue? It simply means that if your logo is looking a bit tired, the pressure is even more on to create a fresh looking brand that consumers will be attracted to. As more of the biggest household names opt for this clean and modern approach to brand design, your customers will be more accustomed to seeing this design and so your tired and outdated logo could potentially put your audience off. If you've been thinking about a new logo design for a while, now is the time to do so to make sure that your hospitality venue stays relevant and noticeable.
In this blog, we've spoken about how you can kick start your hospitality venue marketing right now by using a few simple graphic design tips, but the possibilities really are endless. Our best graphic design hack for marketing your hospitality business is to keep it creative. Look for ways to advertise your business that others haven't adopted yet and you'll be guaranteed to stand out! If you've got some really creative ideas but need some help with the execution,  have a look at our unlimited graphic design subscription plans to work with a UK-based designer every business day and get those graphic design tasks ticked off your list.
