PubTriviaHow to promote a quiz night
Getting the first teams through the door and keeping them: posters that work, the local Facebook group, and why the first six weeks decide whether it sticks.
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The first six weeks decide it
A quiz night does not grow steadily. It draws a curious crowd in week one, loses most of them in week two, bottoms out around week three or four, and then either builds on the handful who came back or quietly dies.
Which means promotion has two completely different jobs, and most people only do the first. Getting people in the first time is advertising. Getting them back the second time is everything else: the night itself, the prize, whether you read their team name out.
Spend accordingly. A pound spent on the experience of the people who already came is worth more than a pound spent reaching people who have not.
The things that actually work
In rough order of how much they return for the effort.
- Telling people who are already in the pub
- The highest-converting audience there is, and free. A chalkboard by the door, a card on every table, and staff mentioning it when they serve. Somebody drinking in your pub on a Saturday is the likeliest quiz attendee you will ever find.
- The local Facebook group
- Not your pub's page, but the town group, the 'what's on in' group, the community noticeboard. One post the day before, every week, written like a person rather than a business. This is where most small-town quiz nights actually get their crowd.
- Existing regulars bringing a team
- Ask directly. "Get four of you together and come Tuesday" said to the right regular is worth more than any poster, because they arrive as a team rather than as individuals who have to find one.
- A poster in the window
- Cheap, and it works on passing trade that would never see you online. Put the night, the time, the prize and the price on it, in that order, readable from across the road.
- Other businesses
- The chip shop, the barber, the corner shop. Ask to put a card up. Most will say yes and it costs you a printed sheet.
- The local paper or radio what's-on listing
- Free, still read by a demographic that fills quiz teams, and permanently underused because everyone assumes it is dead.
What to put on the poster
Four things, and people routinely leave one out.
The night and the start time. The prize: say what it actually is, because "great prizes" tells people nothing and reads as nothing. The entry cost, including if it is free. And the fact that teams do not need to be big: a lot of people do not come because they assume they need six friends.
Leave off: a long explanation of the format, anything about the software you use, and the pub's history. Nobody is choosing a quiz night on any of that.
The week-to-week rhythm
One post the day before is the right amount. Two posts a day is how a pub gets muted by the people most likely to come.
Post the result the morning after, with the winning team's name and the score. It costs a minute, the winners share it, and it is the single most effective recurring post a quiz night has, because it is about people rather than about you.
If the prize rolls over, say so. A jackpot that has rolled three weeks is a genuine reason for somebody to come this week rather than next.
What not to bother with
Paid social ads for a weekly pub quiz. The audience is a two-mile radius on one night of the week, and by the time you have targeted that narrowly the spend does not buy enough people to matter.
Flyering the high street. Low conversion, and it annoys people.
Changing the night to chase a crowd. It resets everything you have built with the people who had started to come.
A loyalty card for a quiz night. The loyalty mechanic is the leaderboard and the rivalry, and adding a stamp card does not strengthen it.
Give people a reason to come back next week
The best promotion happens at the end of the night, when the room is still in front of you. Announce the next one, name the current leaders, and mention anything rolling over.
A quiz with a running table across a season, points accumulating over eight weeks towards something at the end, gives every week a reason to attend that a one-off night does not have. It is the cheapest retention mechanic in the business and it costs you a sheet of paper on the wall.
Give them a result to share
Every session is saved with its final leaderboard, so the morning-after post is a thirty-second job rather than a memory test.
Start free, no card neededKeep reading
- Starting a quiz nightWhether a quiz night is worth running: which night to pick, what it costs, how many weeks before it builds, and the numbers that tell you it is working or not.
- Prize ideasPrize structures that bring teams back without costing much: bar tabs, rollovers, the wooden spoon, and why a cash jackpot is usually a mistake.
- PubsRunning a weekly quiz in a pub: filling a midweek night, hosting from behind the bar, the same teams every week, and no answer sheets to mark at the bar.