Marketing...for independents

I feel it is both difficult & expensive for independent cafes to consitently come up with effective marketing strategies to compete with the giants. First, I recognize that my competition is not only the chains such as $tarbux, but also McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, Blockbuster, Wal-mart, essentially anyone that competes for a customers disrectionary income. That being said, I recognize that not every cafe can afford to invest a great deal of money in developing marketing campaigns. We can, however, share what we have already created. I will be posting some photographs that have been professionally taken. They are NOT perfect, but they are certainly useable. You may take them & add your logos, put them on posters or banners, or change them in any way to fit your needs. It is my hope that many of you will do the same. What about recorded commercials? If you have some that have been effective, why not upload them here & share them? We can re-record them or change the tag line at the end or whatever needs to be done to personalize it to fit each of our cafes.
Anything that you can share that can be customized would be great.
I personally don't have the resources to compete with the giants advertising budgets, but collectively, we CAN compete.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Chappell on January 26, 2011 at 1:27pm

I found this marketing advice a few years ago, absolutely priceless. My favorite thing about this, is this guy has put this out there FREE. Yes, good advice, that's free. I love it!

I was absolutely shocked to receive help with my marketing, & the person helping wasn't trying to make a buck off me. See for yourself, it will change your life.

http://www.pyromarketing.com/audio/index.php

 

Permalink Reply by christopher myers on January 26, 2011 at 8:29pm

Hey Ken, this is a brilliant idea, and I'm totally behind it.  I'll be happy to contribute some pics once I have some that might be useful, and I'll root around my hard drive.

 

I had a similar idea, because there are quite a few specialty coffee shops in my city, but exponentially more "other" shops.  Mostly chains like starbucks, peets, tully's, It's a Grind, Bean and Tea Leaf, etc. etc. etc.  My point is, if specialty cafes banded together to distinguish themselves from the others, then instead of thinking of each other as competitors, we would be working to turn some of the vast number of chain customers on to real coffee.  Sort of a local Specialty Coffee Alliance. 

 

Also, don't know if I missed it in another comment, but the biggest demographic you're probably working with are very likely to have facebook accounts or other social networking, and respond most to internet campaigns.  These are free to set up, but also, for a pretty modest fee, you can pay for facebook advertising, which can show your ad to people in specific areas (your town).  This may seem sneaky, but hey, they'll either see some crappy ad for some online tech school, or your cafe.  I'd rather see a cafe ad.  Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Ken Chappell on January 27, 2011 at 10:46am
Cool, thanks! I didn't know you could run ads based on geographical areas. Terrific idea, I'm on it!

christopher myers said:

Hey Ken, this is a brilliant idea, and I'm totally behind it.  I'll be happy to contribute some pics once I have some that might be useful, and I'll root around my hard drive.

 

I had a similar idea, because there are quite a few specialty coffee shops in my city, but exponentially more "other" shops.  Mostly chains like starbucks, peets, tully's, It's a Grind, Bean and Tea Leaf, etc. etc. etc.  My point is, if specialty cafes banded together to distinguish themselves from the others, then instead of thinking of each other as competitors, we would be working to turn some of the vast number of chain customers on to real coffee.  Sort of a local Specialty Coffee Alliance. 

 

Also, don't know if I missed it in another comment, but the biggest demographic you're probably working with are very likely to have facebook accounts or other social networking, and respond most to internet campaigns.  These are free to set up, but also, for a pretty modest fee, you can pay for facebook advertising, which can show your ad to people in specific areas (your town).  This may seem sneaky, but hey, they'll either see some crappy ad for some online tech school, or your cafe.  I'd rather see a cafe ad.  Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Chris on January 27, 2011 at 2:07pm
Check out Mail Chimp at www.mailchimp.com. It's a web based email marketing product and they have a free version. the paid versions are very reasonably priced.
Permalink Reply by Stefan on January 28, 2011 at 9:00am
I second the MailChimp nod. I'm still using the free version. Since my website sits on the Wordpress platform, Mailchimp has a WP plugin that allows people to join our mailing list directly from our website. Then I can track everything on the road from my iPhone MailChimp app. I'm diggin' it.

Chris said:
Check out Mail Chimp at www.mailchimp.com. It's a web based email marketing product and they have a free version. the paid versions are very reasonably priced.
Permalink Reply by Chris on January 28, 2011 at 9:27am
Oh that is awesome! I am using Intuit websites and they charge 10 bucks a month. Mailchimps interface is much better.

Stefan said:
I second the MailChimp nod. I'm still using the free version. Since my website sits on the Wordpress platform, Mailchimp has a WP plugin that allows people to join our mailing list directly from our website. Then I can track everything on the road from my iPhone MailChimp app. I'm diggin' it.

Chris said:
Check out Mail Chimp at www.mailchimp.com. It's a web based email marketing product and they have a free version. the paid versions are very reasonably priced.
Permalink Reply by Chase Mann on February 4, 2011 at 4:29pm

Hi Christopher,

I've worked in the coffee industry for 20+ years and I'm reaching out to those in the industry to offer my services for design and marketing, what sort of services and price points would interest you as a coffee business owner? I'd greatly appreciate any feedback you can share :-)

 

 

christopher myers said:

Hey Ken, this is a brilliant idea, and I'm totally behind it.  I'll be happy to contribute some pics once I have some that might be useful, and I'll root around my hard drive.

 

I had a similar idea, because there are quite a few specialty coffee shops in my city, but exponentially more "other" shops.  Mostly chains like starbucks, peets, tully's, It's a Grind, Bean and Tea Leaf, etc. etc. etc.  My point is, if specialty cafes banded together to distinguish themselves from the others, then instead of thinking of each other as competitors, we would be working to turn some of the vast number of chain customers on to real coffee.  Sort of a local Specialty Coffee Alliance. 

 

Also, don't know if I missed it in another comment, but the biggest demographic you're probably working with are very likely to have facebook accounts or other social networking, and respond most to internet campaigns.  These are free to set up, but also, for a pretty modest fee, you can pay for facebook advertising, which can show your ad to people in specific areas (your town).  This may seem sneaky, but hey, they'll either see some crappy ad for some online tech school, or your cafe.  I'd rather see a cafe ad.  Good luck!

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