The Complete Guide to Cigar Lounge Marketing

Your cigar lounge has it all: a fantastic selection of high-quality smokes, a plethora of comfortable seats, and the friendliest staff in town.

The only thing you’re missing is a loyal customer base.

In this guide, we’ll share the cigar lounge marketing strategies you need to attract new customers and keep them coming back. Here’s a preview of what we’ll cover:

Event marketing: How in-store events expand your reach and help you connect with the community
Local search engine optimization (SEO): How to help cigar connoisseurs find and learn about your lounge
Social media marketing: How to build your social media presence without violating tobacco advertising policy
Loyalty programs and exclusive clubs: How to build stronger relationships with your most loyal customers
Promotions and product placement: How smart pricing and display techniques can help you sell more cigars
Email and SMS marketing: How to stay in touch with your customers and re-engage them

Plus, we’ll share some bonus tips and marketing best practices to keep new and returning customers satisfied. Let’s get started!

Strategy 1: Event Marketing

In-store events are a great way to build community in your cigar lounge. Hosting events can establish your expertise, showcase products, and leave a lasting impression on customers — all of which are marketing wins.

What kind of events can you host to market your cigar lounge? Here are a few ideas

Remember, event marketing isn’t just a chance to have a good time. Use the reports on your point of sale (POS) system to monitor the effectiveness and profit margins of your events to discover what works, what doesn’t, and how to achieve a greater return on investment (ROI) in the future.

Tasting events: Highlight your cigar selection with a tasting event, introducing customers to new arrivals or showcasing unique offerings.
Educational workshops: Share your tobacco expertise by hosting an educational workshop. Tell attendees about how cigars are made, what to look for in a high-quality cigar, and provide similar product recommendations.
Holiday events: Take advantage of major holidays by planning seasonal events with unique offerings or promotional discounts.
Music or food events: Partner with local restaurants and bands to let customers enjoy live music, local food, and fine cigars.
Exclusive events: If you have a customer loyalty program, you can set up member-only events to create a sense of exclusivity and to market directly to your most valuable customers.

Strategy 2: Local Search Engine Optimization

Today’s customers rarely wander around the neighborhood looking for new businesses. Instead, they explore their area virtually, relying on web searches and Google Maps to find places to shop and hang out.

That’s why it’s so important to develop your cigar lounge’s online presence. Local search engine optimization (SEO) involves moving your business up in the search results when potential customers search for related keywords, like “cigar shop near me” or “cigar lounge in [your city].”

Taking your business digital might sound intimidating, but these two simple techniques can give you a significant boost.

Don’t forget to include relevant, SEO-friendly keywords throughout your website! Tools like SEMrush can help you identify which keywords are popular in your area.

CGR Blog - Creating a Google Business Profile is one of the easiest ways to expand your reach and attract new customers to your smoke shop

Claim your Google Business Profile

This lets potential customers find your cigar lounge on Google Maps. Include your hours, phone number, and a quick description of your business. Don’t forget to upload high-quality photos of your humidors and seating area!

Create a simple website

Modern drag-and-drop website builders make it a breeze to create a custom website for your cigar lounge. You only need a few pages to describe your space, share cigar lounge etiquette information, and tell potential customers about your product selection.

Cigar Lounge Marketing Guide - social media

Strategy 3: Social Media Marketing

Major social media companies like Meta prohibit paid tobacco advertising — but that doesn’t meet you can’t use social media to grow your cigar lounge.

You simply have to focus on organic (unpaid) growth. To grow organically, you need to post engaging content on a consistent schedule. The gold standard is three to five times per week, but even posting once weekly can help you stay at the top of your followers’ feeds.

Here are some social media post ideas to inspire you:

Post updates about what’s happening in your lounge, from cigar club meetups to special promotions.
Review new cigars to share your thoughts, expertise, and recommendations.
Offer social media-exclusive deals to encourage your followers to stop by your lounge.
Share polls about your followers’ cigar preferences to boost engagement.

Remember: Consistency is key for organic social media growth, so plan your posts, reply to comments, and encourage followers to interact with your content.

Strategy 4: Loyalty Programs and Exclusive Clubs

Hosting community events and building your online presence helps you attract new customers — but how will you keep them coming back?

Customer retention should be one of your top goals when it comes to cigar lounge marketing, and a loyalty program can help you accomplish it.

With a loyalty or membership program, you can invite one-time visitors to become repeat customers at your lounge. Every time they make a purchase, they’ll earn exclusive benefits, like:

Discounts on their go-to cigars
Access to rare products in your specialty humidors
Reserved or member-only seating areas
Invitations to exclusive events

Managing a membership program might sound intimidating, but a point of sale (POS) system with built-in marketing features makes it easy.

You can create an account for each customer and add them to your program within seconds. When they return to your lounge, you can link each purchase to their account, check their rewards points balance, and redeem their perks.

Strategy 5: Promotions and Discounts

Driving revenue is another critical aspect of cigar lounge marketing — and promotions are a powerful tool to help you sell more cigars. Here are a few of our go-to cigar promotions

Make sure to set up these discounts in your POS system for an easier checkout process! Your software should let you schedule discounts so that they apply automatically when an eligible item is scanned — no manual price changes required.

Pro tip: Wondering which cigars to promote? Rely on your POS system’s inventory records. If a certain brand of cigars is collecting dust in your humidors, offer a strategic discount to increase turnover.

Product bundles: Create custom SKUs for bundles that include your bestsellers or products that are frequently purchased together — like a beginner-friendly kit that includes a few mild cigars, a cutter, and a lighter.
Happy hour: Encourage customers to visit during your slowest times by offering special prices from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weeknights.
Cigar of the day/week/month: Highlight a specific cigar each day, week, or month, and offer a special discount.

Strategy 6: Email and SMS Marketing

Email and text marketing are highly effective strategies for cigar lounges. They give you direct access to your customers, allowing you to send updates, reminders, and coupons right to their inbox.

A POS system with built-in customer relationship management (CRM) software makes this easy. You can collect your customers’ contact information, let them opt into communications, and send email or text blasts to keep them up to date on what’s happening in your cigar lounge.

Just remember: sending spam is not an effective cigar lounge marketing strategy! Keep your messages quick, relevant, and on brand.

Use the Right Cigar Lounge POS System

Putting all of these strategies into action might sound like a tall order, but the right POS system makes it easy.

Along with providing must-have features like scanner-powered age verification, cigar barcode label printing, and compliance-friendly reports, cigar lounge-specific software includes all the features you need to advertise your business effortlessly. Look for one with

Scheduled and auto-apply promotions
A built-in customer loyalty program
Integrated email and SMS marketing
In-depth sales reporting and analytics

Stay on the Right Side of the Law

Tobacco advertising has always been a hazy, confusing landscape, which has only gotten harder to navigate in the digital age. To effectively market your cigar lounge, it’s critical to know what you can and can’t do.

The FDA has laid out strict rules for cigar lounge advertising. It’s worth reading through them in full, but the key takeaways are:

No sales to minors: You cannot sell or advertise to minors, so always use in-store age verification tools (e.g., ID scanners) and gate your online content.
No sponsoring public (non-tobacco) events: Unfortunately, a cigar lounge cannot sponsor a local festival or event like a traditional retailer might. This sponsorship restriction runs both ways, and a cigar lounge can’t benefit from public or (paid) celebrity endorsements.
Health warnings: Tobacco shops are required to display prominent health warnings on all product displays.
No free samples: Cigar lounges can’t use free samples to entice new customers. Instead, use your POS system to create a custom product sample at a steep discount.

Tobacco marketing rules are strict, but don’t let that discourage you. As a cigar lounge, you are offering a high-quality experience for adults, so you shouldn’t need to stretch any rules to advertise effectively.

Create an Excellent Lounge Experience

All the marketing in the world won’t matter if people show up to an uninviting space and a lackluster experience — which is why the most important aspect of your cigar lounge marketing is your lounge itself.

Here’s what goes into creating a welcoming cigar lounge design:

Warm lighting
Comfortable seating
Well-placed speakers and the right music
Style of furniture and decor (modern and minimalist vs. classic and refined, etc.)
Signs and menus
A bar and counter for staff

When picking out furniture, product displays, and other pieces of cigar lounge decor, keep your brand story in mind. Your marketing strategy should be an extension of your cigar lounge design, so ensure the story you tell isn’t at odds with the atmosphere of the space itself.

Don’t forget to balance the aesthetic of your shop with practical concerns. If people are smoking indoors, an air purification system is a must for ventilation. You’ll also want to avoid odor-absorbing materials in your furniture and decor.

Pro tip: Your lounge’s product selection is just as important as your interior design! Use your POS system’s inventory reports to learn about your customers’ shopping habits and tailor your offerings to their unique tastes.