Drawing in foot traffic is a constant point of concern for coffee shop owners. Sometimes the difference between full tables and tumbleweeds comes down to a few good marketing tips and strategies. See if you can improve the following marketing strategies for cafe’s, to get more cash flowing in coming in from foot traffic.
1) Level up your brand
Your coffee shop branding work is never really ‘done’. In fact, it should be a living process that you continually engage with. Levelling up your branding should be a cornerstone of your coffee shop marketing strategy.
In an increasingly saturated visual world, distinct and meaningful branding goes a long way to capturing eyeballs, foot traffic, and new customers.
Bland never got anybody anywhere. You need to be a beacon of strong and distinct branding to attract customers, like a moth to a flame. For a quick run-down on how to go about small business branding, read our branding article here.
2) Make your coffee shop more attractive
What can you do to make your coffee shop more attractive? Sure, your branding has a lot to contribute here, but how else can you create an attractive space that captures foot traffic?
There’s a lot of subtle psychology around creating an alluring space which leads to customer magnetism. Have you ever walked into a restaurant or café and felt relaxed, at home, uplifted, or a vague sense of coolness? That’s not an accident. Well, mostly not an accident.
Exert some effort into your:
- unique décor
- comfortable seating arrangements and nooks
- well thought out art
- branded paintwork
- plant life or flowers
By doing so, you can set yourself apart from your cookie cutter neighbouring competitors.
Go even further and think about useful functionality and perks that people really want from a local community coffee shop, like:
- free Wi-Fi
- complimentary babycinos
- colouring books for kids
- dog water stations
- power outlets and phone chargers
It’s those little things that set you apart and make your space more attractive and useful. This in turn will help garner more foot traffic and repeat business.
3) Take control of customer reviews (digital and social media)
Taking control of your customer reviews, through either Google or social media, is exceptionally important for any coffee shop marketing strategy.
You may think foot traffic has less to do with online customer reviews as they are passing opportunities, less driven by online research and review gauging. Not so.
You should never underestimate the propensity of mobile savvy consumers to do a ten second online search of your coffee shop before they pull up a seat. Recent research has shown that:
- 94% of consumers say a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.
- The most common filter applied is to see only companies with 4-star ratings and higher. So there is a big difference between being a 3.9 rated business and a 4.0
- 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product.
The key takeaway here is that you need to keep your review scores above a four-star rating. You should also be paying attention to why you got both positive and negative reviews. How can you fix the negative feedback and how can you double down on positive feedback?
4) Cappy hour!
Pubs have their happy hour, why don’t more coffee shops have a ‘cappy hour’? If you pull apart the drive behind the classic happy hour, it’s not had to see why pubs do it and why it works. They want to draw in business during slow periods.
By pinpointing your low ebb periods in the day, you can offer up a great deal to get cash flowing during the hours where patronage is scarce. By offering discount coffees at certain times of the day, you waste less money on unused staff hours and will start to change the way people buy coffee from you.
If you have passing foot traffic during low ebb periods and they see you have a cappy hour discount and your neighbours don’t… who are they going to visit? This simple change can create a host of newly loyal customers.
5) Create a loyalty program
It may seem ‘old hat’ by now, but the trusty coffee card should never be underestimated. It’s surprising that so many cafes pass over this technique.
To keep things modern, avoid stuffing your customers wallets and purses with cards. Either keep them behind the counter, or even better, capture your customer in your POS system.
By creating customer loyalty programs in your POS, you can not only manage your loyalty program much better, you’ll enhance your strategy by gaining customer details for further marketing use.
Even better, you’ll collect data on consumer behaviour and be able to adjust how your coffee shop business operates, markets, and sells.
See how many of the above marketing strategies and tips you can hone with your own coffee shop to drive more foot traffic and sales