Coffee and Conversations: Brewing Life Stories, One Post at a Time
There are so many digital marketing ideas for cafes and small diners floating around on the internet nowadays. Truth be told, some of them are excellent campaign ideas that enjoy excellent ROI in general. However, in our zeal to find the target audience, we often forget about the audience that’s right in front of us, or to be more precise, in front of the counters!
These are the people who have already found your café, and are in the process of converting as customers. How you brand and market your business to them during their first few (preferably first) visits, will play a big part in building a customer base and a good reputation for the establishment.
So, let’s dive straight into the three quick but effective methods that let you brand your café, from the café itself.
There is no better way to build a lasting business reputation as a brand than to be good at whatever it is that you sell. As a café, your priorities should be to:
It is imperative to maintain the same high-quality service, food and coffee throughout the day, every day. This is easier said than done of course, and practically, service, food and coffee may dwindle in quality at times, when such circumstances are not totally unavoidable. However, if you are trying to build a brand, such occasions should be far and few between.
It’s better to shut your café an hour early, than to stay open when you do not have much of anything to serve to your incoming customers. Every time you tell a customer that you can’t meet the demand they have, it diminishes the establishment’s reputation. There is no shortage of companies in any field of business who started well but deteriorated with time in quality of service and/or product. Perseverance and repetition of standardized quality throughout the years is what separates a brand that’s here to stay, and just another café people won’t even remember visiting a week down the line.
As far as branding merchandise for a café is concerned, there is simply nothing better than the classic coffee mug. When handcrafted and engraved by a skilled artisan, each of your custom ceramic mugs will stand out impressively, giving your patrons one more reason to remember and recommend the small establishment to their friends and family. Just in case you do not have a brand logo for the café already, brainstorm for a while and come up with something to customize your ceramic or stoneware coffee mugs with.
In addition to using customized coffee mugs, soup bowls, etc. in your own establishment, don’t forget to also use them as occasional gifts to patrons and other associated businesses. You can and most certainly should display them for sale as well, which will add further meaning when you present one of them to a patron as a gift.