How to create a cafe marketing strategy

Whether you need a caffeine buzz on your way to work or want to sit down with a hot drink, coffee shops offer us a welcome moment of respite from the stresses of daily living. Ever since the first coffee shops appeared in Damascus in the 15th century, the humble coffee shop has become an enduring staple of town and city centres.

No matter where you go in the world, you're never too far away from a coffee shop. While this is great for people on the hunt for a vanilla latte, it can be difficult for café owners looking to bring their beans to the attention of potential customers. It goes without saying that the more competitors you have amongst local businesses, the harder it is to stand out from the crowd.

While corporate coffee shops like Starbuckshave global reach and near-bottomless marketing budgets, most coffee shops are limited to modest marketing strategies. While this does limit what can be done, there are plenty of coffee shop marketing ideas that smaller cafes can adopt and use in their own marketing strategy.

In this blog, we'll define the best cafe marketing strategies, share some common cafe marketing ideas, and how cafe marketing can help your business reach its full potential.

What is coffee shop marketing?

Coffee shop, or cafe, marketing is one aspect of the wider concept of hospitality marketing. Essentially, hospitality marketing is campaigns and promotions that encourage new customers to visit and boost sales of businesses such as restaurants, cafes, travel services, and consumer services.

Hospitality marketing strategy is generally focused on the products available, the service the business provides, and the unique selling points (USPs) of the business. As with most forms of marketing, the end goal of hospitality marketing is to attract new customers to the business while also appealing to repeat customers.

Why does hospitality marketing matter?

While paying attention to your loyal customers is important (more on that later), the simple fact of the matter is that without a continuous stream of new customers, your coffee business will fail.

Cafe marketing allows you to reach out to these new customers online and in person and bring them into your café business. Without a proper marketing strategy in place, it can be near impossible to attract customers.

Marketing is also one of the best ways small businesses can build their brand. Think of branding as your business' identity. New cafe customers on the lookout for a cup of joe are much more likely to visit a coffee with strong branding.

If we zoom out from the local area of your business, we can also see the impact of hospitality marketing globally. An untold amount of money is spent on marketing every day across the entire world. This marketing is, therefore, important because it puts a lot of money into the economy. The daily lives of the general public are also affected as they are the ones the marketing is aimed at.

Building a marketing strategy for coffee shops

Every local business in your area will have its own marketing strategies. These strategies will have varying levels of success and some will outright fail. While there's no guarantee that any one café marketing strategy will succeed, there are steps you can follow to build a competent plan.

When you begin building your marketing strategy, it can be helpful to follow the 7 Ps of marketing. The 7 Ps define key areas to think about as you come up with cafe marketing ideas. These definitions can also be applied to both traditional marketing (flyers, foot traffic etc.) and digital marketing (social media marketing, loyalty programs etc.)

The 7 Ps are as follows:

Product

Before you sit down to work out your cafe marketing ideas, you should consider what product you're trying to sell to your customers. Most cafes offer hot drinks and snacks. Is that what you're selling? Do you sell anything else such as merch or full meals? What makes your cafe unique?

Place

Think about where you're selling your products. In addition to the traditional brick and mortar cafe, other businesses may have a pop-up coffee shop they can set up at local events. A great coffee shop marketing idea used by a lot of cafes that bake their own products is to build local partnerships and sell food and drink at a third-party venue.

Price

How do your prices stack up against other local businesses? While some customers will always choose the cheaper option, some will be more concerned with the quality of the product. You should weigh these considerations against customer feedback and the audience you're marketing to.

Promotion

There are a number of different factors that come into the promotion of your business. If you're in a small town, it may be enough to go the traditional route and promote your business via word-of-mouth, ads in the local newspaper, and flyers. If you're looking to stick out in a crowded market, you should consider promoting the business via social media channels and Google Ads.

People

Think about your staff members. Are they properly trained and placed in the correct places throughout the business? Are they motivated to perform their job to the best of their abilities? Have you cultivated a healthy and respectful culture in your business? A happy team member can sometimes act as free advertising for your cafe.

Physical

Every transaction you complete at your cafe will have a physical item attached. This could be receipts, cup sleeves, food packaging, and invoices. Think about how these physical items reflect on your business. Are they branded with your marketing? Are they sustainable? While it may cost a little extra, spending time ensuring the physical items associated with your coffee shop align with your mission will pay off in the long run.

Process

Process refers to how your products are delivered into the hands of your customers. This includes customer service, payment systems, and distribution. Do your customers feel valued? Can your customers pay the way they want to? How are you physically handing your products to your customers?

Cafe marketing ideas

The 7 Ps can help you come up with cafe marketing ideas, but now it's time to put them into practice. We've compiled a list of interesting café marketing ideas and suggestions on how you can integrate them into your marketing plan.

Boost your online presence

Friendly staff and the best coffee in town is all well and good, but your customers still need to be able to find you online. More and more customers turn to online sources to find good local businesses. A powerful web presence can attract new customer and give you better standing amongst the local community.

Websites don't need to be overly complicated to be effective. Unless you plan to sell products online, all you really need is accurate information. A simple layout out that states your opening times, your menu, links to your social media, and your location should suffice. If you do want to sell products through your website, services like Shopify can be set up quickly and easily.

You should also take the time to learn the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO dictates how well your business ranks on search engines so it's important to get right. Make sure your content is informative and targets all the relevant keywords. There are free services online which can help you with this.

Social media marketing has become an increasingly important part of building an online presence in recent years. Many of your new and existing customers will have a social media account. If you can reach them there, you've opened up a new way to market to your customers.

Take a look at how other local businesses handle their social media. Make note of what works and what doesn't and apply these marketing ideas to your own social media. Social media is also a great place to promote deals. If your customers seen that you're advertising free samples and half priced refills on Facebook page.

Nuture your reputation

The way your customers think about you is very important, especially in smaller towns. Reputation management can be difficult at first but will pay off in spades if done correctly. Customers are much more likely to visit your coffee shop if your have good standing in the local business.

There are several ways to build a reputation. Online, you should encourage your customers to leave positive reviews on social media and other review sites. You can encourage this by offering a free coffee if they show proof of the review. Customers old and new will always appreciate free stuff!

You can also make the effort to become a hub for the local area. One of the ways you can do this is by putting on live events. These could include a weekly open mic night where customers could enjoy playing music or reading poetry. You could also offer free refills to local groups who host their book clubs and other such events at your coffee shop. This is a great chance to talk to other businesses in your area and see if you could host events together. Be sure to promote the events in local newspapers and online with social media posts.

Loyalty programs

Building a customer loyalty program is a simple way to get customers coming in. Using a program like Loyalty, you can quickly set up a program that encourages repeat customers. Loyal guests are much more likely to come in for seven cups of coffee if they know their eighth coffee will be free.

In addition to free coffee, your loyalty program could also include other bonuses such as discounts on food and special timed deals. It's really up to you to decide what to offer but make sure it's worth it for your customers.

Reach success with perfect POS

Once you've brought your café marketing ideas to fruition, it's time to invest in an electronic point of sales (EPOS or POS) solution that will help you reach success. The Epos Now's Hospitality POS technology for marketing has everything you need to build a marketing plan and start selling coffees.

If you'd like to hear more about Epos Now, get in touch with our expert team below.