5 COFFEE MARKETING TACTICS FOR ANY ONLINE COFFEE COMPANY
Since tastes can vary wildly, coffee can be viewed in many different lights. For some it’s an excellent social activity, to others like myself, it is most likely the fluid running through our veins. To no surprise the coffee industry is on an upward trend maintained predominantly by a sustained increase in demand. The National Coffee Association has stated that for American coffee drinkers the average is 3 cups a day, with 41% opting for a speciality coffee. The coffee game is changing too with the emergence of online coffee businesses that allow you to purchase your favourite caffeine hit right from the comfort of your own home.
These online coffee businesses have created a whole new way of working, allowing people to sell coffee directly from their homes. However, if you are looking to grow your business it requires the implementation of a solid marketing strategy and an optimized online purchase experience.
1. CONTENT MARKETING TO CONNECT WITH CUSTOMERS
Content marketing is the most effective way for you to promote your brand online and to genuinely increase brand visibility amongst your target audience. Creating useful and meaningful content that is coffee related such as brewing methods, coffee recipes etc and that is also based on actual search intent is highly likely to provide the best results. Traditionally content marketing was just blogging, but it does also include videos or vlogs, as well as podcasts. Even well-crafted infographics distributed to the right outlet could prove quite successful. Its all about getting more visitors to your website. When creating a piece of content don’t get too hung up on it. Just ask yourself is this something one of my potential customers would be searching for and would they share it with it anyone? If you want to go one step further you can run the search term through an SEO tool that will give you the search volumes, they can also give you suggestions for other related search terms with desirable volumes. A great free tool to get started with would be ubbersuggest.
Consistency is really key! Firstly it will give your visitors a reason to keep coming back and to come back more frequently but also it signals to google that your serious about this and that they need to pay a bit more attention to your website and to start increasing its visibility in the SERP’s. This is ultimately going to result in more trust and brand authority. Create a content calendar to plan out a month in advance and plan out what else it’s going to take to get your website noticed online.
2. COMMUNICATE YOUR COFFEE BRAND PERSONALITY
It all comes down to your brand when discussing values and your general character. Its what creates any real lasting impact with your audience and its usually the extra ingredient that turns a first time visitor into a brand loyal customer. When deciding what impression you want to make for your online business just remember to distance yourself from your competitors, either doing the opposite to what they are doing or just by being a bit bolder and culturing a stronger brand personality.
SEE HOW WE CAN GROW YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS
Do you want to be seen as a morning lifeline or a necessity for an on the go lifestyle? Or would you rather bee associated with a warm cozy cup of coffee shared amongst friends or family? The sentiment is completely different and the approach will effect your entire content strategy and both will register with a different demographic. So make sure you know who you are going after, and don’t say everyone, or you’ll probably end up with nobody. Once you have established a brand voice and a general tone, stick to it. Every time a person interacts with a piece of content or any branded asset you want them to feel the same undertone each time.
Going for a quirky sort of energetic voice might be quite suite to this caffeniated industry, maybe you could even go a bit erratic and twitchy, perhaps you could even make it time dependent, moving from energetic to erratic depending on how long it would likely have been since the average persons last cup. And if you aren’t sure you have the level of whit required to pull of some of those tones you can always just go for a really classy tone to give it that premium feel, think James bond with a licence to brew.
3. GROW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME
Realistically one of the simplest ways to increase your ecommerce funnel is to start upping your social game. It’s not a magic wand, don’t listen to all the nonsense that I often touted around, but if you utilise it correctly or are willing to invest some budget into a PPC campaign your engagement and your conversions will increase considerably.
You want to go for the social media that best suits the age group that you are targeting. Facebook does have a fairly general audience but, in my experience,, it is most effective for 38+. If you are looking to reach a younger audience that Instagram of snapchat should be your weapon of choice and if you want to get them hooked real young you could even look at getting involved in something like TikTok. Just stick to 2 and do them well. Put any video content on YouTube also because you might as well, and if you optimise the titles well you might just begin appearing in organic searches.
Social is great for creating a sense of authenticity and allows you to keep you customers in the loop. The consumer craves authenticity these days and its why formats such as stories have proven so successful. So, utilise them and give those behind the scenes action shots with real people and real hot liquids. Show me the steam people. I want to see some steam.
4. PARTNER WITH OTHER BRANDS
One handy coffee marketing tips to achieve some online growth is by leveraging other brands that you may be able to do something with. Think breakfast foods or ceramic mugs. The idea is that you get these guys to promote your business in a lucrative way. I mean the relationship is kind of mutually beneficial as you can also feature their stuff on your blog but realistically you wouldn’t be approaching anyone who didn’t have a bigger audience than you anyway.
You could also look at potential influencer marketing partnerships. They can be a great way of getting your brand in front of a specific audience and usually if you pick one that isn’t just a spambot like most terrible social influencers you immediately gain the trust that their audience attributes towards them. Many influencers are unlikely to do an affiliate scheme, especially the ones who don’t get good results but if you have a good product that genuinely is aligned with the influencer they should get involved if the deal is good enough.
If the potential for disgenuine content scares you and it should, you can always look at different niche blogs on the coffee topic that could really give you the boost in visibility that you have been looking for. Your looking for websites like this.
5. USE ALL THE MAIN PAYMENT GATEWAYS
When it comes to taking online payments, we used to usually recommend just going with PayPal as it really did do the job and it was generally the most popular payment gateway online for consumers. And at the end of the day its all about making life easier for your customers. However, Paypal doesn’t necessarily provide the best user experience anymore, especially when it comes to their mobile design. The new interface seems to be confusing the older generations as they don’t realise that they just need to click on the card icons. Typically, we would now always advise to add Stripe’s payment gateway as well. It’s a much cleaner integration into the designs and its actually cheaper for any transactions made in the EU.
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