Let’s Brew Up Some Aroma – Digital Marketing Strategies for Coffee Shops

(P.C.- Unsplash, @ragojose)

Why You Should Consider Digital Marketing For Your Coffee Shop?

The finding of coffee beans dates back to at least 11^th century, as per popular beliefs, but who said that your digital marketing strategies have to be that old!!! I know you would say hey that’s an exaggeration, we know, but with the speed, the Coffee related industry has evolved and diversified, in the past few decades has been tremendous; so has the competition. This calls for you to actively adapt your digital marketing strategies, so as to keep yourself abreast as per the changing trends as well as, staying two steps ahead of your competitor, irrespective of the size of your business. Let’s see some digital marketing strategies to aid your business to ramp up the game since now businesses are slowly but steadily opening up after the pandemic:

1. Focus on Customer Engagement, Ramp up Your Mail List – The first step in successful customer engagement is maintaining a continuous and healthy communication link with your existing customers, not only is this essential to maintain customer loyalty but also for you to assess how your business is being viewed by your existing customers. E-mails though belong to an old way of promotion but still continues to be an effective way to generate and gather leads, as well as enabling more opportunities for your business. Well strategized and targeted emails shall help your customers in knowing about your business more often, as well as, you can collect more information about them and with the use of data analytics, create customized target strategies focused on consumer retention and enhancement of consumer base. You can use your mails to disseminate information regarding your business to the consumers at large, for instance, you can share the measures taken by your business post-COVID ensuring customer safety, initiatives are taken by your organization to help your community during such strenuous times, etc. Thus, careful mail targeting shall be your priority of to-do things.

(@christinhumephoto)

2. Have a Slogan or Photo Contest – Contests are always an exciting way to retain and enhance consumer interest, not only do they generate interest in consumers, encourage and motivate them, as well as they are not only economical for your business but also are an effective yet efficient way to promote your brand. With such contests, you can encourage customers to grow an organic relationship with your business, in here you can come up with such competitions maybe twice or thrice a year, wherein you can reward the idea which shall prove to be most innovative and aligns with your business goals and at the same time rewarding the winner consumer, shall encourage feelings of mutual growth and appreciation. For example, you can ask your visitors to upload some innovative photos of your shop, products, etc. or come up with a catchy slogan to boost your business, and share the same on their social media handles like Facebook, Instagram, etc., this shall not only help in spreading your brand name to a wider range of audience but at the same time, prove to be one of the most economical channels of digital promotion. There is one more aspect which you can focus on, i.e. bring customer attention to your customized products, be it coffee mugs or a bag of your freshly grounded coffee or maybe T-shirts carrying your brand logo, this way you can award the contest winners with your in-house products and also highlight them to others.

3. Work on Visuals – An appealing and eye-catching visual presentation, always carry a deeper impact on the viewers, as that has a better impact on the retention capacity of the customer as well as enhances their ability to recall it. There are various mediums to share interactive, quirky, and engaging visual content, be it Facebook Live, Twitter, Pinterest and the most effective platform for such purpose is Instagram, where you can share your Insta stories on a regular basis; sharing live feeds and videos will help in creating brand awareness and forging relationships on Social Media and the above-mentioned channels will capture the attention of your audience and connect more with your brand. There are many ways to promote your brand, for instance, you can show live feed of any small contest held at your café or behind the scene visuals of preparing your famous coffee flavor or the work culture at your café, etc…the list is long, but the takeaway is to show curated content, designed keeping in mind your audiences taste and preferences, as well as at the same time not being too much into the face, as that might irritate them. To design a well-researched marketing strategy, you can use data analytics to help you target the audience in a systematic manner.

4. Make Gains out of User Generated Content – Organic user-generated content always brings in more positive reviews and enhanced customer traction for your café. It is one of the most effective forms of marketing, for instance, if your users tag your business in their Instagram or Facebook stories, provide feedback, leave reviews on your Google My Business page and other such activities, all these lead to better customer engagement as well as boost your rankings on search engines.

Nowadays, people trust more on what others have to say about their experience regarding a particular service or product, as that is not manipulated in comparison to traditional marketing, this was validated by a survey which was conducted by Nielsen Consumer Trust Index.

As a business house, you should encourage your customers to review your services over different portals like your Facebook, Instagram, Zomato, or Yelp page, many businesses these days also reward customers by providing a discount or additional services at lesser rates if they share their reviews, this strategy can be adopted by your business too. This way, your customers will help create a positive image for your brand, without you spending too much on direct marketing. Here, you should focus on collecting as much user-generated content to enhance your digital marketing strategy.

With the changing times, it’s always a better idea to continuously evolve your digital marketing strategy, because post-pandemic, not only have consumer preferences changed but the way the businesses operated earlier, has undergone major changes. Therefore, to always stay ahead in the game, knowing how to effectively target your consumers is the need of the hour. A well-devised marketing strategy will not only keep your customers happy but your business happy too.