Social media & the digital space provide a plethora of free marketing opportunities that you need to be taking advantage of to get both your brand and business message seen and heard. In this video Jimmy covers four of our favorites that are a great place to start which include a Google Business listing, Tripadvisor, Facebook and Instagram. With a little effort each day you can put your business in front of the customers you want to see in your coffee shop. The great news is, they won't cost you a cent!
We hope you find this video hopeful and would love hear any comments in regards to your own experiences marketing your cafe. If you need any advice please leave us a comment and we'd love to see how we can help.
YouTube Video Transcript
Hey guys welcome back to Artisti Coffee Roasters YouTube channel. Today my video is about how to really capitalize on some of the advertising opportunities that are out there that aren't going to cost you money and they're going to help you build your brand and build your business. The main areas that I want you to think about and to do this might seem pretty straightforward, you might already have these kind of accounts set up but it's kind of knowing what kind of value they bring to your business. I guess what kind of content you should be producing for those for those platforms and I guess making also sure that you're putting your efforts into the right places for the results that you want to get.
The four main spaces that we believe are the most valuable to make sure you've got that initial online presence would be your Google Business listing. Your Tripadvisor or any relevant apps to your area your Facebook page and your Instagram page. Make sure your content is up to scratch it's a good representation of your brand. Be active in that space posting three times a week change up your content. Look at what other people are doing, look at what other people are getting engagement from and you can replicate that kind of content in the early days to get some traction and then you will find your feet and you'll start to see what people are engaging with. Look at the stats they're really key to finding out what people are enjoying about your content and that's the goal is to feed them something that that they love to see every day and they they'll like that they'll interact with that and that will help you build your online presence making more searchable and therefore bringing back to making more money from sales from a whole different market you really weren't tapping into it before.
Now the first thing I do and I have this conversation with a lot of business owners when they come to me and they're kind of asking for advice on where they should invest their time and maybe thinking about investing their money but there's a lot of free platforms out there for you to tap into. I always say the best thing to do to find where you sit in your community around being found is to simply Google yourself. Google your business name, Google your area, Google coffee in ‘coffee near me’ and that will give you an indication of kind of where you sit. How your online presence is and where the competitors are. You will instantly find things like in Australia we've got TripAdvisor and places like Bean Hunter. Maintaining these accounts can actually be a really great source of advertising for you. Where you're not having to put any initial outlay and cost but you're potentially getting in front of an audience that's already looking in those spaces. These are tourism people, if you're purely relying on word-of-mouth you're really not capitalizing on all the opportunities for coffee sales that you could be. If you haven't claimed your Tripadvisor business or if you're not existent on there, you're just not going to get in front of the people that are actually using that as their go-to place. If they're not local they might just Google coffee and that might be the first listing. If you haven't claimed it, if you've had people review you, potentially post photos, your profile picture could be a photo that isn’t a good representation of your brand. Update your menu, update the photos, have the right contact details on there and give people the ability to find out more about you in a way that you can control that environment and that's essentially what you're doing across all these platforms. It's just controlling that environment online. Making sure people aren't finding things that you don't think are a true reflection of you. If you leave that up to other people they'll probably make a mess of it for you.
Obviously we've got our social media channels. The main ones being Facebook and Instagram. Which ones should you use first? Why am I using these platforms? First and foremost you definitely should be using them. It's a place that people are and that's really where this comes back to is, your customers are there. They're on there every single day, so if you're not there you're not getting in front of them every single day. Facebook first off is a great space to build a community. It's a lot more connected than say Instagram or even Tripadvisor where you've got an account but this is a space that you can control where people are having those conversations. You can respond to comments and you can interact with people on a much more personal level. So I would say having a Facebook account is crucial.
If you wanted to up your game and have a bit more presence as a brand that's where Instagram comes into it. Now Instagram is a platform for brand building. It's a place to really portray your café. This is where the baristas a great value to every business owner. If you're a business owner, capitalize on the young people you've got working for you behind the coffee machine. Ask them to take a photo of a nice coffee when they pour good latte art out and if you're a barista and you're good at this you can do good latte art if you can take nice photos maybe you should approach your employer and see if they'll let you manage your Instagram account.
It's pretty normal for cafes not have a website and to not be spending a lot of time creating new content whether it be blogs or all that space as much value as that could be to their café. At the end of day you're probably working busily behind the counter making coffees and making money like the rest of us. So, you might not have the time to do that but doing these things in your google listing across the different apps through your Facebook, Instagram and other relevant apps to your area and where your audience is, is really going to find that information you can actually improve your rankings in Google. That's what we're looking for is those opportunities to advertise without the costs.
So, if you're not sure how much time you have to invest in these places we suggest it's good to be posting three times a week at least if you can. That's manageable especially if you're able to get more of your team on board. If you have a better bank of photos that's helpful there's some great online apps. If you're active from home, outside of work hours you can look at these apps where you can schedule posts and that means that you don't have to be on your phone during work when you're getting smashed. You can be taking photos in the time that suits you, get those photos up consistently through the week so you can stay relevant in people's news feeds.
Guys these four spaces are FREE, you’ve got to capitalize on these opportunities. We can get that free advertising and get more people into your cafe by doing these things you're going to keep yourself at the forefront of your customers minds. Making sure that when they think about getting a coffee they're thinking about coming to you in your café.
If you are interested in growing your business at no extra cost and finding out more about coffee in the industry, make sure you subscribe to our channel, comment below, like this video and be sure to hit the bell so you can find out about new videos that we're posting all the time.
