 September 25th, 2011, by MyCoffeePro   Did you know that Halloween is the third largest party occasion, after New Year’s and The Super Bowl? Halloween generates $2.5 billion in sales … $500 million are spent on costumes alone.
Wondering how you can make sure your coffee business gets a sweet piece of that treat? Here’s a little list of marketing ideas to get you started:
- Donate coffee and refreshments to the radio staff at the biggest Haunted House (or hayride, or corn-maze, Halloween attraction whatever it is) in your area … you’re bound to get mentioned on air.
- Really play on the “I’m a Zombie before My First Coffee” theme … how far can you take that idea and run with it?
- Give away a free pound of coffee to anyone coming in on Halloween in a costume that ties into your branding, or whatever theme you choose … make sure you’re pretty specific on what the costume can and can’t be and don’t forget to take plenty of photos to post into social media.
- Have a Great Pumpkin donation/giveaway contest: For a $1 or more donation, customers get to enter their name in a giveaway of a giant pumpkin (proudly displayed in your shop until it’s won). All donations go to a local charity in the spirit of the season.
- Host a Halloween Party … with contests for best/scariest/creative costumes of course. Try to get some neighboring businesses to join with you and make it a block party that the kids can go from business to business trick or treating.
- Throw a Haunted Halloween Sale … from Midnight until 2am, 31% Off!
- Promote a “Coffee Killer” video contest where entrants submit their “coffee killer” themed videos to your YouTube channel and the winner gets a very nice Grand Prize … like a trip to an origin country and visit to a coffee farm.
- Send out a few costumed employees to hand out Free Drink coupons.
- Decorate everywhere for Halloween. Don’t stop with store decorations, put Halloween stickers on to-go cups, give your website a Halloween touch, and don’t forget your email marketing campaigns … give them trick or treat discount codes. Get creative … draw a skeleton hand on the sidewalk pointing into your shop … or a chalk outline of a dead person with a spilled coffee facing away from your shop.
- Give out chocolate covered coffee beans to any adults in costume on Halloween.
- Why leave the gift baskets to Christmas? I say buy a few skull and pumpkin mugs and make up some Halloween baskets!
- Have your baker make special pastries that are ONLY available during the last 13 days counting down to Halloween (Lady’s Fingers anyone?).
- Create 13 Spooky Specials … for 13 days counting down to Halloween have a different Spooky Special of the Day.
What do you do different and unique for marketing your coffee shop at Halloween?
September 18th, 2011, by MyCoffeePro
 In today’s coffee marketplace, it’s essential that you have some form of a customer database … and that you routinely use and update that database. Google “customer database software” and choose what works best for your coffee business and situation.
Once you’ve entered all your customers into your database, analyze it’s information and segment your customers into buying groups. I personally like to use 4 groups: 1. Platinum, 2. Gold, 3. Silver, and 4. Bronze; categorized by their spending habits of Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM formula –see below).
Now create and use your Customer Loyalty program with the following tips:
Continue reading …
December 12th, 2010, by MyCoffeePro Ronette Reynolds over at Barista Exchange recently posted this:
I’m currently working at a shop that was opened up a little less than a year ago.
It’s located in a golf resort that is also an upscale housing community. This is the first winter, and with just the home-owners to bring in business at the moment, business has BOMBED. We made a total of $35 in sales yesterday. This is completely opposite (or so I’ve been told, as I just started working) of the summertime sales, when resort guests are around.
Now, we are outside of a town of about 35,000 (maybe more), and located just off the main highway. I’m wondering what kind of marketing strategies I should look into (I’ve been given the job to research) to get the winter business up and going. What are some of your advertising musts? What about Facebook, Twitter, etc? Do you hire outside of the company or do it yourself?
 After reading her post and knowing from experience that many shops face dilemmas very similar to this one, I thought it would be nice to share a small list of ideas on how I would tackle this marketing problem if I were in the same situation (the theme is local, local, local):
*UPDATE*
Start-up a Customer Database! Too many small business owners just don’t do that, but there’s no excuse not to with so many options and price-points available. A free CRM is ZohoCRM, but there’s a good comparison at BusinessInsider.com. I personally use Act by Sage, Outlook & OneNote because those fit best into my work-flow on my tablet pc (which I LOVE).
Continue reading …
November 26th, 2010, by AimItMedia 
As a small business owner in the coffee industry, you can’t afford to lose money on wasteful or ineffective marketing. Therefore you should invest in creating a customer database and then use that database as your core marketing tool. With your customer database in place you’re ready to start creating your direct mail campaigns.
Direct Mail marketing remains popular because of it’s incredible value. You can design multiple versions of a direct mail campaign, assign a unique identification code to each version and then test different elements of those designs and measure their success … all for pennies on the dollar. Then it’s just a matter of refining your design to increase the response rate even more and soon you’ll hone the ultimate direct mail weapon for your marketing arsenal … that you can use for years to come.
The industry average on response rates for direct mail campaigns hovers right around 2%.
What do you think is one of the cheapest, yet most effective, direct mail pieces to send? Postcards.
You can also apply and use all these tips for Email Campaigns … just think of the cost savings then!
Continue reading …
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