Living in the Communication age, new technologies are helping to connect more and more our already globalised world. Who wants to remain competitive at every level needs to rapidly adapt to this changing trend that is moving towards digital. Consequently, local businesses need to be as creative as they never had to be if they want to find their want to stand out from the crowd. In fact, the coffee shop market is constantly growing, increasing differentiation and keeping level of competition very elevated. This market shows many opportunities, especially for local businesses that identify their point of differentiation and use it in their favour, to become the hub of many happy locals.

The key strategies when running a local coffee shop are generally identified in:

An outstanding customer services, addressing people by their names, treating everyone with friendly manners to make their experience unforgettable.  Service speed & Wi-Fi can be essential to attract main customers too.

Furthermore, great quality coffee is fundamental to reinforce in old customers the desire to return to the shop and engage their friends to do so too.

All of these lead to a higher level of awareness and reputation, mainly developed by Word-of-Mouth, an essential tool for local coffee shops.

However, all of this is not enough anymore to be the best coffee shop in the neighbourhood, since every coffee shop owner should keep in mind these basics when running their store. What really makes the difference is identified in how coffee shops create a higher value for their customers that will be stuck in their minds as remarkable.

 Digital Strategies

Consequently, here are 3 significant digital strategies to keep in mind for this year to be ahead of competition. Some of them are purely common sense, but sometimes every little bit will help you to drive your strategy towards success.

 

1. Friendly and Engaging website

Nowadays, people want to find everything easily and enjoy their experience while navigating your website. Therefore the design needs to be outstanding as well as functional, reducing margins for confusion, leading the customer directly to what they are looking for. This will increase ease of conversion, from desire to action (Appnova, 2014).

Source: (Workshopcoffee.com, 2015)

Moreover, a website needs to be informative as well as engaging, telling ‘stories’ which people will read out of interest. This system will educate customers and increase their engagement with the store.

 

2. Social Media Presence

For some reason some coffee shops still don’t understand the importance of social media and it seems this point has not be stressed enough. Having a presence on social networks it is vital to shape the personality of the place and reinforce the positive feeling s that transmits.

• Twitter

It will help to increase your short-term audience by tweeting the ‘offer of the afternoon’ or tempting customers with different kind of creative messages, showing how great their food is that they finished everything at 3.30.

Source: (Twitter, 2015)

Twitter now can be used to purchase digital coupons, therefore coffee shops can use it to promote their offers anywhere and then customers can redeem them within the store. This features enables stores to increase instant purchases’ volume as well as track their products in order to increase production flexibility as well as providing many other benefits (Miners, 2014).

Source: (Miners, 2014)

 

• Facebook

Differently, Facebook is better for building an audience in the middle & long term; since members’ reactions are slower, a post can still be engaged with after days or weeks. Therefore, Promotions or competitions will have to be developed to appeal a different segment, as will run for a longer period of time.

Source: (Facebook, 2015)

 

 

3. Mobile App

 Sometime it seems like an app is not that necessary for a coffee shop, but this is not the case anymore. A mobile app, will always bring benefits to any business, using any app builder website is relatively cheap and it will be one more platform where to increase visibility and get in touch with your audience. Moreover, push notifications about latest deals can be sent directly on your customer’s phone, which can be redeemed only through the app or on that specific day/ period. But these are just the basics benefits mobile app can offer.

 

Many other useful features can be integrated to increase value for customers:

 

• Loyalty coupons

Only redeemable through the app, which will make it unique for the most loyal customers, driving them to increase number of visits/purchases to the coffee shop.

 

• Digital Loyalty card

As part of the mobile app, will be automatically updated and customers will not need to take out their wallet and look for the card (Maytom, 2015).

 

• Social media promotions

Linking social media to the mobile app and showing every promotion available across every channel, which will increase customer’s desire and awareness.

 

• Mobile payment

Finally, something that will revolutionise the way normal transactions worked, mobile payment via Near Filed Connection (NFC), a wireless payment from smartphone to point of sale terminal (LaMendola, 2014). This new system will help the coffee shop to increase check out speed and facilitate service, creating added value for customers.

 

So be smart, let the digital start!

 

 

 

References

 

Appnova’s Digital Marketing Blog, (2014). Digital marketing for coffee shops: A modern way entice the coffee aficionados. [Online] Available at: http://blog.appnova.com/digital-marketing-coffee-brands-entice-coffee-aficionados/ [Accessed 12 April 2015].

 

LaMendola, D. (2014). Coffee Shops are Best Positioned to Benefit from Mobile Payments – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International. [Online] Available at: http://blog.euromonitor.com/2014/07/coffee-shops-are-best-positioned-to-benefit-from-mobile-payments.html [Accessed 12 April 2015]

 

Maytom, T. (2015). M&S Adopts Eagle Eye Digital Loyalty for Coffee Shops | Mobile Marketing Magazine. [Online] Available at: http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/marks-spencer-digital-loyalty [Accessed 13 Apr. 2015].

 

Miners, Z. (2014) Twitter, in time for the holidays, put digital coupons in your feed. [Online] PC World. Available at: http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/560459/twitter-time-holidays-puts-digital-coupons-your-feed/ [Accessed 13 April 2015].