As pub closures rise Stampede warns lack of digital strategy is holding businesses back in 2025
New figures today have revealed that eight pubs a week ceased trading across the UK during the first half of the year, as the industry grapples with escalating tax and labour costs. This decline has seen the total number of pubs in England and Wales including those vacant or available to let, fall to 38,780!
The closures come amid an intensifying backdrop for UK pubs, which were impacted by increases to the national minimum wage, national insurance payments and business rates payments. With so many businesses struggling to stay afloat, attention is turning to what operators can do to steady the ship and this is where technology-led customer engagement and smarter marketing can help.
Patrick Clover, founder, Stampede says: “Trading conditions have been extremely volatile in recent years, and today consumers and businesses are stacked up against the state of the economy and what it’s grappling with. We work with many restaurants, bars, leisure and entertainment based businesses. Those businesses that focus on developing a solid customer acquisition and retention strategy that is based on using effective guest engagement technology to drive their businesses are predominantly more successful. Sadly, though, there are still a lot of businesses that actually have little to no modern, or digital, sales and marketing strategy. These are often the same kinds of companies that we notice are struggling.
“With the right kind of approach and conditions these trying situations can be turned around. It is possible to improve and re-engineer marketing and sales to take a more strategic approach. This includes using a modern guest engagement system that unifies customer information for better use to support sales and marketing; and to generate loyal customers, that ideally leads to repeat business and recommendations.
“So, as businesses consider their sales and marketing strategy they also need to consider whether their entire customer journey is branded when communicating with customers. Creating a memorable, branded, customer journey that includes all the major digital points like guest Wi-Fi, social media, and targeted email as a minimum, supports growth. Putting these steps in place sets businesses up to deliver personalised marketing more effectively. The results of which can lead directly to more revenue and positive reviews online – all made possible by guest data and a strategic approach.
“There is no doubt we are all currently trading within a tough business environment. But trading without an effective, modern sales and marketing strategy is like sailing a ship without a rudder from one side of the world to another, hoping you’re going to get there without problems. It’s hard enough already to just set up a restaurant or bar, if you’re going to go through all that hard work, it really is worth assessing whether your sales and marketing strategy truly matches the proposition you offer punters!”