As a business owner, you know how important digital marketing is for a coffee shop. More and more, people are turning to the digital world to learn about local businesses. But there are tons of different digital marketing strategies out there. How do you know where to start?
We know you don’t have hours of time to learn about all these tactics. You’re busy pulling espresso shots and serving up great coffee. That’s why we’ve created this list of the five most important digital marketing strategies for coffee shops. This list offers overviews of each digital strategy that you’ll want to use for your business. Let’s get into it!
5 best digital marketing strategies for coffee shops
- Responsive website design
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Digital advertising
Website design
A solid website is the cornerstone of a coffee shop’s online presence. It is the online “front door” of your shop. You want your shop to make a strong online impression so that people are eager to visit your coffee shop in person.
Having your own website gives you a place online where you have total control. The site’s design, function, and messaging are all under your control so you can do with them as you please.
More than 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. That’s why it’s important that a coffee shop’s website is responsive and looks great across all devices.
Your website is a place where people go to purposely learn more about your coffee shop and interact with your brand. You should take full advantage of this! Make sure your site is full of engaging and informative content that explains who you are and what you value.
Another reason a coffee shop website is incredibly beneficial is that it enables you to sell things online. E-commerce allows you to bring in revenue even if people aren’t visiting your shop in person. Whether you’re selling freshly roasted beans or branded merchandise, you could be bringing in extra revenue.
One functionality that is crucial to have on a coffee shop website is a way to capture visitor email addresses. You can do this through a pop-up that offers some incentive, or a simple form in the footer. However you do it, collecting email addresses is vital. We’ll talk more about email marketing later.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is an excellent way to organically grow the digital presence of your coffee shop. SEO describes the changes that you make on and off your website to help more people find you on search engines like Google.
75% of people research a business online before visiting in person or making a purchase. Search engine optimization ensures that you’re getting in front of your potential customers at just the right time. When they’re looking for a coffee shop to do business with, you’re there.
SEO involves dozens of different moving pieces that all work together to help your coffee shop rank higher in search results. Everything from the way you organize content on web pages to the number of other websites that link to yours can affect where a coffee shop lands on the search engine results page.
Search engine optimization can be one of the highest ROI options for coffee shop marketing. While it may not provide results as quickly as social media advertising, SEO can offer big returns in the long run. Over time, it can cause major increases in traffic both to your website and to your shop’s front door.
Social media marketing
Social media presents coffee shops with a huge marketing opportunity. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have millions of users scrolling through their feeds every day. Coffee shops have the chance to reach some of those daily users by posting on those platforms.
The best way for coffee shops to use social media is to do what the name suggests– be social! It should be used as a tool to foster community and create genuine connections with the people that you serve.
Business can be really simple sometimes. People like doing business with people that they know and like. Social media marketing helps more people get to know you and your team. This, in turn, makes them more likely to want to visit your shop and buy some coffee.
While these platforms do offer tons of potential reach, they’re also very cluttered. People interact with hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of content every day. That’s why it’s important that your social media posts are engaging, interesting, or enjoyable enough to cut through the noise.
Email marketing
Email marketing offers the highest average return on investment of all the marketing channels. This includes both digital and non-digital channels. This makes it one of the best digital marketing strategies for coffee shops.
According to Litmus, email marketing can offer an incredible $36 return for every $1 spent. This is certainly a digital marketing strategy that coffee shops should take advantage of.
You may be wondering how email marketing provides such fantastic returns. Remember what we said about cutting through the noise earlier? Well, email marketing lets coffee shops do just that. With email marketing, you can reach a potential customer right in their inbox.
Since people usually have to opt-in or sign up for email marketing, they are ready and waiting to receive a marketing message. These people have a higher purchase intent than the people you’ll reach through other marketing channels.
There are lots of different types of emails coffee shops can send their customers. They can be about promotions, upcoming events, or just what’s going on in the shop lately.
Email marketing is a great way to keep visitors in the loop and reward them for being loyal fans.
Digital advertising
Digital advertising is when you pay platforms money to distribute your message. One huge advantage of digital advertising is the audience targeting that it allows. You can target based on interests, location, or online behavior.
Targeting lets you choose the kinds of people that your advertisement gets shown to. This is a huge advantage for you as a coffee shop owner. You can make sure your ads are only shown to the kinds of people who are likely to actually visit your shop or website.
The digital advertising options for coffee shops out there today are highly trackable. Platforms give you access to tons of different marketing metrics. You can use these metrics to optimize your efforts and make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
Facebook and Instagram ads
Meta is the parent company that owns both Facebook and Instagram. Since these channels are owned by the same company, you can advertise on both platforms at the same time.
Advertising on social media channels provides greater reach than your coffee shop may be able to get if it only used an organic social media marketing strategy.
Social media ads are an excellent way to promote your coffee shop and bring more customers through your door.
Google ads
We talked about using SEO to appear closer to the top of Google earlier. However, the very top spot of the search results for many search terms actually belongs to advertisements.
Google ads give your coffee shop the ability to appear before your potential customer at just the right time in their buying journey. The fact that they are searching for a keyword that you would pay for is a clear sign that they have high intent to buy. This user intent is one of the main things that separate search engine ads from social media ads.
Marketing Backend | The digital marketing software for coffee shops
We’re big coffee people here at Marketing Backend. It’s the fuel that keeps us going day in and day out. That’s why coffee shops are some of our favorite businesses to work with. We know that coffee shops don’t have tons of money to blow on marketing tactics that don’t work. That’s why we offer a full suite of proven digital marketing solutions and services designed to help your coffee shop succeed.
