I want to delete all social media, put away my consumption of technologies (I’ve done so a couple of times), but I always go back to market my nonprofit and coffee business. I throw a lot of events, and social media marketing gets me really far. However, I am wondering what other ways there are to connect with donors and buyers without depending on technology, and without hiring people. I wonder what other strategies are out there.
You usually have to reverse engineer your marketing strategies and tactics based on where your customer’s attention is. This is certainly true for a coffee shop.
Where do they go? Put your advertisement there.
How do they get there? Put your messaging in their path.
What are they looking at? Get into their line of sight.
Personally… I find coffee shops on google maps and yelp. Then I look at the customer pics on google maps and the shop’s instagram to determine if I’d enjoy being in there. Then I look at the menu, wherever I can find one, to see whether they have what I’m after, usually light roasts and pour overs. So to easily capture my business you’d want to support the customer journey I’ve just described at each point along the path.
But I’m just one person. You need to understand the customer journey across a wide range of your customer types.
For coffee shops and event heavy orgs you’re probably going to lose the battle to technology. Because you actually have a twofold challenge: Not only do you need to complement your customer’s journey, you’re also in competition with any other cafe or event which is leveraging the media and channels your potential customers are consuming.
My suggestion is that you put some guidelines and systems in place which help you only use tech in a creative way, and not a consumptive way. For you, it’s a tool. Leverage it. Schedule and limit the time you spend using it. Keep it in its proper place and it won’t consume you.