‘Tis the season for giving thanks, bestowing gifts, and spending time with family and friends. Business owners and marketers can harness the season’s warm feelings and general sense of goodwill to connect with their customers, build loyalty, and ultimately, increase sales.
According to The Seattle Times, experts forecast a strong 2015 holiday season, with a 3.7 percent jump in overall sales to top over $630 billion. It is a season of spending—make sure your customers spend with you. There simply isn’t a better time to enhance your coffee shop’s marketing tactics and incorporate simple actions to stake your claim in the holiday spending rush.
Plan holiday promotions, sales, or discounts.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… for sales. In fact, customers not only want great deals—they demand them. Take a look at your strategic plan, discern the best products to discount, and deploy generous (yet profitable) promotions to drive traffic to your establishment, website, or social media outlets.
May your marketing promotions be merry and bright.
While we like to believe we make rational decisions all the time, we often tend to base our decisions from an emotional standpoint—especially around the holidays. That’s why your holiday marketing promotions should be emotional, appealing to feelings such as love towards family and friends, being home for the holidays, beloved holiday characters, giving back, or giving thanks. For example, “home for the holidays” would work wonderfully for a coffee shop. It evokes images of a family back together after a long year apart, sipping coffee by a fire. Now that’s great emotional marketing.
Create consistent branding and messaging across all marketing channels.
You’ve selected your holiday deals and promotion theme. Now it’s time to spread the word and attract customers. Launch the promotional messaging across all available marketing and communication channels, including the company’s website, social media pages, eNewsletters, specialized email blasts, direct mail pieces, on-hold messages, paid advertising mediums, and more. Ensure the design, color scheme, and verbiage is consistent across all channels, so your customers see your messaging repeatedly.
Make your promotions easily shareable to generate holiday buzz.
Did you know that 74 percent of consumers rely on word of mouth as the top influencer of their purchasing decisions? Transform your current customers into brand ambassadors by making your marketing campaign and promotions easily sharable. For example, you can add special social icons to emails, allowing recipients to share with a single click and create engaging social media posts that are begging to be shared. You can even incent your social media followers with a prize for sharing your messages. Word of mouth for coffee shops and roasters is incredibly crucial—take advantage of it during the holiday season.
Create a holly, jolly customer support infrastructure.
Hopefully, your effective holiday marketing tactics will result in droves of customers lining up for your coffee shop’s offerings. However, the best-laid marketing plans, campaigns, and promotions can be tarnished if the customer service infrastructure isn’t properly in place to support the additional patronage. You may even consider hiring temporary holiday staff to help ease the holiday stress. Make sure everyone is on board, knowledgeable about the promotion, and ready to provide great service.
Use these tips to boost your coffee shop’s holiday marketing prowess and connect emotionally with your customers. After all, being at the top their holiday wish list is a gift all its own.
