I just lunched my new espresso machine cleaning product couple of months ago and I need advice on how to take it to the distribution level.
right now I'm going door to door after I close my shop every day.
thank you.

Donate, donate, donate. Donate what ever you can to non-profits and community organizations. Gift cards are the best way to donate. You help the organization raise money and people have to come to your shop to use the cards. From there its up to you to perform. The best part is that your helping others first and then helping yourself.

Sounds like you hit on a lot, but here's a few more ideas that we have used and have gotten good results.
If there's a gym or workout club nearby, talk to the manager about doing a tasting there. Also make up some flyers, with coupons that they can include in their welcoming packets to new members. The only place I was ever turned down as at the YMCA. Make sure you reciprocate though. If there day care nearby, this is another good place to post brochures about the business. We sponsored a couple of little league teams, and got a banner with our logo on the fence at one of the Optimist parks ball fields. Take a stack business cards to every hotel and motel in the area. I had some made up that were very generic and on the back, had printed. "Bring this in for a 2 for one special." Got loads of responses from business travelers coming to the adjacent business park. One of our local radio stations gives 10 seconds of free air at the beginning of the morning and afternoon traffic reports. Basically, it goes..."this traffic report is brought to you by Java Jeff's coffee house 1300 Starbuck Rd".... We've gotten involved in local charities by sponsoring events. We don't have to do a lot, just provide a space for a meeting or reception. This gets us in the paper without really any investment. Also we've gotten some cheap ads in the local freebie papers. It costs about half the price of printing up flyers and all we do is send them the copy. I am sponsoring a book signing in a couple of weeks. Again nothing out of pocket, and all the free pub that comes with it. We talk marketing alot, and are always coming up with ideas. Some we throw out, but some we try and get good response, some go over like a lead balloon. The point is, keep at it. Flyers and pens should just be one piece. The goal is to get your brand out there. You may not need to have give aways or specials, (although they don't hurt), just get people to start recognizing your brand and your store's name. Hope that helps.

First things first, make sure that your products, service, and shop atmosphere are consistently the best. If you are failing in any of these it doesn't matter how many pens, flyers, coupons, ect. you have out there, you will always struggle.

Secondly, I don't believe there is one magic bullet for bringing in customers. Use as many avenues you can to get your name out there. Some will work better than others but it all works together to grow your business. One thing I would definitely do is collect as many email addresses as I can from my customers and send them a monthly newsletter. In it you can inform them about the different coffees or drinks, specials just for the newsletter subscribers, ect. Include stories about the different people that work there and about the customers themselves if possible. Create a sense of community.

Read as many books as you can about marketing, customer service, and sales. Apply what you can to your situation. This will give you many ideas to grow and improve your business. Some suggests are "Raving Fans" and "The Simple Truths of Service" both by Ken Blanchard, "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless" by Jeffrey Gitomer, "Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson, and "The Starbucks Experience" by Joseph Michelli. I know everyone here probably hates Starbucks, but for all their faults we can still learn things from them.

Just some of my thoughts and opinions.

Mat

Thanks for your thoughts here. We are in a corner of the world controlled by one property management company, and the leases are very restrictive on flyers....as one would want to have the name of the business and an address, we would easily be "found" and penalized....in general, this whole area is very restrictive on signage and like....again, my thoughts run to regrets I did not think of pens before, because people always pick up pens to use, and often carry away, it would have been a most acceptable "flyer" going all sorts of places I could not access readily. A little more expensive, but they do get around.

One way around the "flyer" has been to find contacts in critical positions, like HR people who can send emails company wide with favorable terms for employees, like a discount for showing your badge and asking for it. In a company of say 13K employees there is a chance you will actually see 0.5% of them any given day, or even week, or month, so the discount does not seriously impair sales, and improves traffic slightly--and it is a measurable response.

Also, we did a notablely attractive small menu-to-carry that many have posted in their secured locations, and though my survey did NOT give a positive response to that, the verbal feedback of customers over time has been a indication some have found us due to that.....warning, don't publish prices, and don't include everything on the menu, because people get unhappy when they can't get what they expected, even with a clearly stated disclosure "subject to change".

We have done sampling...in front of our place, with & without a barista....we have had a barista discretely work the crowd outside during lunch hour in common areas....and we have taken coffee into office buildings to sample....great fun, but have not seen it builds repeat traffic, or any traffic at all...it is a hard thing to measure.

Katheryn

Send that barista out with free samples on a tray and you have your product in your next patrons hand instead of a flyer.

We have the same situation, new customers are always surprised when they find us. I always send the Barrista's out with half page flyers and have them smile and talk to people like our coffee house is THE place to go and meet friends and hang out. Putting flyers on windshields works but not as well as handing them to potential customers and telling them your a local independent shop. Of course if you have wretched coffee or service like so many indies out there nothing will keep them coming back!

Apparently I am NOT a good spot checker...the 32% was by DIRECT REFERRAL of friends or coworkers, and 3% was folks checking online. I am trying to spiffy up my skills for online promotions, since it at least drove more traffic than the coupons, direct mails, etc. that were at least tried.

Also, in retrospect, considering the constant demand for a pen to sign stuff with, I know our pens walk....spending money for ones that would walk with our name, address--including the web address--seems would have been prudent.

Katheryn

I agree, the web is a great way to go. I have a coffee shop in a small Midwest Town town (about 25,000 people). A little over a year ago, the local Chamber of Commerce invited all of the businesses to participate in their web site. At the beginning, I like everyone else, had a simple business listing. Seemed to work ok.

Since then I've become more active. With each contribution I've made (i.e. short stories about a variety of topics, everything from those coffee related, to little league baseball), business has grown. Participating has been great for business, without the financial issues associated with the flyers, coupons and other more formal marketing tools.

You said that 32% of your customers found you on the web first... What kind of online presence do you have? Do you actually have a website or are you listed in the online directories like yellowpages.com or Local.com? My coffeehouse is interested in getting a website, but I didn't know if it would really help drive traffic for my business.