Growing sales and profitability is a focus for all business owners. That’s why we have created these tips to help boost your café sales.
One area that is often avoided by café owners but can help increase sales greatly is Marketing. Business owners can tend to overcomplicate Marketing and end up without a strategy in place to propel sales growth. To help, we have 4 extra-simple DIY Café Marketing Tools that can help increase your sales without advertising. These are easy enough for any café to apply within a week and can make a big difference in attracting and retaining customers, all while increasing revenue.
USE FACEBOOK GROUPS TO FIND YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY AND ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS
Do not underestimate the power of the community in the growth and maintenance of a local business. Especially if you are a small business and don’t have a load of money to invest in marketing and PR professionals, your community is what will support you and your cafe, especially through hard times.
Research Facebook groups that are related to your local community. Join these groups and try to make relevant contributions. Don’t be there with the sole purpose to advertise, but also to help strengthen the community bond. Of course, when you see an opportunity, you can use the space to tell people about your business. You don’t need anything too fancy, a nice photo of your products and description should be more than enough. Also, note that some groups have special rules, such as specific dates for local business advertising. Just make sure you are not infringing any of them before you post.
GOOGLE CAN HELP BOOST YOUR CAFE SALES: MAKE SURE YOUR LISTING IS ACTIVE AND ATTRACTIVE
We all know that social media is very important these days, I would say essential for any business. But there is something else that requires less effort and can show even better results: to be found in Google searches. And why is that? Because Google is the place where people seek information about everything, especially when they want to find a new place to visit. Of the 5.6 billion google searches every day, 46% of these are people searching for something local.
Make sure all the information on your listing is up-to-date, such as working hours, menu, and e-mail address.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TAKEAWAY/DELIVERY APPS AS CAFE MARKETING TOOLS TO BOOST YOUR CAFE SALES
The use of takeaway/delivery apps is becoming increasingly popular. This is because it is one of the café marketing tools we have found to have greater returns for business owners.
The use of apps allows customers to order their meals and receive them at their door without having to leave their homes or workplace. The main apps in the Australian market are DoorDash, Deliveroo, UberEats, MenuLog.
One of the main benefits of adopting apps is that you will increase the exposure of your business to a further audience. Because the apps invest in marketing the restaurants themselves, you will be able to take advantage of that and attract some new customers that live in your area.
Most of the apps now offer integration to some of the most used POS systems such as Lightspeed and Kuonta, which makes it very easy to reconcile sales and track its ROI. About the investment, the app usage fee is calculated according to your sales, ranging from 10 to 30%. It may sound steep, but common practice is to increase the app prices a little so you do not lose on those sales.
HAVE YOUR MENU AVAILABLE ONLINE, THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE OR SOCIAL MEDIA
It is very important to make your menu available for your customers on as many platforms as possible. Potential customers want to know what you have to offer to help them make a decision about visiting your café and if you don’t have a website or social media profile with your menu, they might choose to visit another venue that does.
So the tip here is to always make your menu is available and up-to-date online. If you are able to provide photos of the products, even better. An amazing image of a coffee with beautiful latte art always makes you look twice! To showcase your imagery you can create a simple 1 or 2-page website if you have some money to invest, or even use your social media platforms to publish your menu, photos and descriptions.