Direct Marketing Coffee - A Case Study
Why My Coffee Shop Should Be Using Direct Marketing
Do you use direct marketing in your business? After we moved from our huge house into our penthouse apartment we made one decision that we try and stick to and that is to eat out for breakfast as often as possible.
After trying almost every restaurant in Hale Village in Cheshire where we live we finally settled on a really cool Italian restaurant that we eat or drink coffee in almost daily.
It’s high-end, has great food, great service, and a good team of staff. The fittings and layout of the place is cool and almost feels like a little piece of bohemian London in the heart of leafy Cheshire.
The other day we went in and unusually it was absolutely dead. I can’t give you an exact number but if it usually sits 80 there were probably 5 people in there including us.
That meant all the staff that gets paid are stood doing nothing. The fresh food doesn’t get sold and of course, the great service becomes lazy because the staff quickly lose motivation due to the lack of atmosphere.
All the staff knows us very well now and I feel like we know them.
So I mentioned the fact it was so incredibly quiet to the manageress.
She agreed and I went on to ask her about the local marketing what do they do? Now you have to understand I never tell anyone what I do when out. I never have and probably never will. When people ask me what I do my reply is usually the same…
“I do my own thing” unless it’s a client meeting of course.
So I asked her out of sheer curiosity with no hope of selling, as I had no interest in a sale. Her reply surprised me for such a cool place. She told me the company doesn’t believe in marketing as they feel it cheapens their high-end brand.
READ 5 POWERFUL DIRECT MARKETING CASE STUDY RESULTS
Now lack of marketing in business isn’t a new thing for me to hear, I have heard it many many times over the decades from different customers or prospects.
They don’t do marketing because it looks cheap.
Yet think about this.
BMW, Mercedes, Apple, and just about any premium company you can think of does marketing or even direct marketing and they set aside budgets going into the millions upon millions to do it. So why?
Because it’s as simple as this, your buyers move on quickly or even worse they simply forget you exist. To keep your brand at the top you need to keep your brand in front of the marketplace. Once you drop out – they – your buyers drop out also. That means days where there are no clients will happen to you time and time again.
Now there are two problems above.
The first problem is the place is dead. The second is how do you get it busy without any kind of marketing?
The answer is you cant and wont, you have to do marketing - direct marketing but not as you know it.
For example, way back in my hair salon business days after I discovered marketing and direct marketing (they are different) from a Jay Conrad Levinson book I also realised that if I put an offer into the public domain – newspapers – weekly then I would quickly get a reputation of being cheap despite the high-end prices on my walls.
And let’s face it there are so many companies that you know you will never have to pay their high prices due to the massive volume of endless discounts they do. You simply don’t believe what they are saying in their marketing when they advertise real prices against discounts. In turn, you no longer use them because it feels cheap.
I had that problem in business years ago and not only found a really easy way around it but it’s the same tactics I use today and have used with many clients of mine.
Here is what you do to create powerful marketing without selling out and looking cheap.
Before I tell you it’s very important that you are aware that marketing isn’t as fixed a strategy or system, as you might have been told it is. Universities and even your own in-house team will tell you it has to be done a certain way but do their results support that? Also, it’s critical that once the math has been done you create and use direct marketing that doesn’t cost you a penny (real marketing will not cost you s single penny ever).
Anyway, first you need to collect data or in very simple terms build a list of clients you can then market to privately or direct to them. This is direct marketing. This can be as simple as collecting every customer’s email, cellphone, mailing address or encouraging them to sign up and become part of your social media campaign so they see your posts on a regular basis. What strategy should you take? The real reply to that is the one that will work for you because it really depends on the mind set of your buyers.
For example, if you sell very high-end products that carry a high price to sell them via a text message will cheapen the product. So generally direct mail would be the strongest approach for your business if it were high-end. If you are selling coffee this is different due to the mental buying pathway of thinking that a coffee buyer takes (impulsive) text message is fine and will work.
But here is the point for you.
You are only using direct marketing to those that KNOW YOU already not to those that have no idea about your business. For those that are already in a relationship with – marketing like this is good and will build your business loyalty and keep the relationship hot for more business. In other words, you increase sales spend from your existing clients.
Let’s look at the example at the start of this page.
We have been using this coffee shop now for around 4 months weekly. Twice they have taken my email address on a simple form yet not once have I heard from them. Yet I give them my email address with permission to email me and the reality is they have never emailed me.
Now think about this. I drink coffee 3 times minimum every day without fail. Sometimes we don’t want to walk the extra 100 meters to our favorite coffee shop and simply nip into the chain coffee shop. Yet if I got either a direct marketing email or a text in the morning with a coffee offer where do you think I would go?
A bit like
“Alan your breakfast is ready on this beautiful summer’s morning. We have prepared your favorite almond croissant for you - FREE today - to go with your favorite morning coffee. It’s hot, ready and waiting for you. And … today your coffee is going to cost you just £1. See you soon for breakfast!”
If you got an email or text like that from your coffee shop would you think it cheapens your business or increase the value of your business?
Now here’s the thing – we always have two coffees, not one. The second coffee would be regular price. If they repeat this with every person on their direct marketing list or database they have just doubled their turnover from coffee at a minimum. Can you imagine the huge boost in income from over 100 coffee shops?
Yet they have already told me they don’t do marketing as it cheapens their business.
It’s not they really feel marketing cheapens their business it’s more the fact they don’t really understand the gigantic pulling power of well planned direct marketing.
Direct marketing that is well-planned, well-thought-out, well executed, and brilliantly supported can easily double any business. I have seen some outrageous expansions from using very simple direct marketing.
Do You Use Direct Marketing?
One of the best bits of advice I got in my business life was this…” ask for advice when you need it”
If you’d like myself and my little but gigantic orange gang to show you how to increase your business in days using simple, powerful and highly profitable strategies all you need to do is ask.
A direct marketing consultation with one of my team or myself will be the best investment you will make into your business I absolutely guarantee that. And I also guarantee within 20 minutes of speaking you will have at least one new strategy that could potentially transform your business.
What do you have to lose by talking with us?
Head driver at Orange Beetle
Alan Forrest Smith