Hey folks,
Would love to hear how you market your stores to your communities. I am reading through my marketing plan and would really like to put some more muscle into our marketing. How do you guys get the word out on your shops? How can you get your name in the paper, so to speak? Has anyone used a PR firm like the "PR Store"? They are pricey I think, but seem to do a lot of the heavy lifting. My shop is supported mainly by early drive timers and then during the day from the neighborhoods that surround our center. Stay at home mommies, trades and such. We get good traffic through out the day. In the afternoon and evening we get the highschoolers and folks headed to the gym or grocery (in our center) or the bar/resturant next door. But I really want to get our brand out there. I do a lot of instore promotions and we pretty much have a freebie going on just about any time. I do a taste guarantee where people can bring in a same day receipt from any of our near by competitors and we will make the same drink for them to try out. We do loyality cards. We support a couple of local sports teams (baseball and soccer) and we have our logo on the fence at the nearby sports fields. We sponsor a night a for 2 elementary schools were a percentage of our proceeds are kicked over to the schools and we sponsor the high schools Chess Club. (I bought 10 very cheap t-shirts and offer them a place to practice) We offer discounts to teachers (there are 4 public schools and 3 private schools less than 2 miles from our shop) fireman and police. I bought space on a 5k t-shirt in our area as well. I don't do a lot of print ads. I do mailbox flyers and send one of my partimers out to put them in paper boxes in pre-determined neighborhoods. Ususally we put some type of coupon on it or sometimes we just announce a special event (I do live entertaiment and open mics once a month) My logo is on my sleeves and posted on just about everything in our store.
All this works fine and I have no complaints, but just wanted to see what else others are doing.
Thanks!
Johnlatte
Wow it works!
After reading Surfside I took my digital picture frame into the stand and placed it in the window where cars in line can see what add on products we offer and my bakery and snack sales doubled the first week!
I posted this under another thread but here it is for you....
We opened our business in May 2007. It had been a location that was not ran properly by the past owners. They either didn't open at all or if they did they would close by 2PM daily! We had to change the look of the place as well as the name so everyone would realize we were not the same owners. It was worth the money we spent painting, signs, advertising etc...
We have been breaking even as of August 2007. We have 2 part time employees who we hand picked to work for us, they are both cheerful, friendly and make great drinks. We work them in total about 75 hours per month, we work the rest of the time until we grow bigger and can afford more payroll.
My daughter runs the stand and she is co-owner. My son and I work weekends to give her time off and my husband is our Mr fix it when time allows.
Market yourself to death. I market offline to drive traffic online so our customers can get to know us better. You can visit our site to see how we do it. www.SurfsideEspresso.com
We have a buy 10 get the 11th free stamp card and on the back you see our website address and the chance to go online and win a free months worth of 16 oz coffees. One winner per month. We also have our web address on all radio and print advertising and also our sign.
In our stand we have a 15" Digital Picture frame that I uploaded our pics of pastries, drinks, specials, etc...on. That has been great as the pic refreshes every 4 seconds with a new advertisement. It allows our customers to see what else we have along with the prices.
I am a marketer by trade so for now I won't overwhelm you!! :) Jude
"Coffee makes life Beautiful....