I own a Houseplant Café, where you can sip coffee while you shop for houseplants and small handmade items, think jewelry, pottery, candles etc. We’ve been open six months and things are going not as well as we’d hoped. Demographic: millennial women, brunch crowd (I can break this down further) Area: 12k cars pass us a day, we do have road signage and a flag Returning customers: 17% of our clients visit more than once a month Offerings: locally roasted coffee, lattes, smoothies, sandwiches, fresh pastries

I have a marketing background, but I’ve been out of the game a bit and so I feel like I’m not living up to the needs of the business. We do post daily on social media. Have a following of over 5k between insta and FB, starting on Tiktok next week. We need to nearly double our daily numbers to get to the profits we estimated before we opened. We do theme days that are very popular but then the rest of the week is under $500 days. I have a small marketing budget of about $1000 a month which I’m not sure where to utilize. Help? I’m getting desperate for my space to succeed.

  • LuckyLittleNumber@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    $1000 is a really good marketing budget. Many small businesses may have less. Your expertise will help you find the best talent your dollars can find.

    So, Google reviews are your best friends, so is TikTok and a few other social media platforms.

    … Offer your current customers rewards to encourage them to return more often (punch cards for free coffee, etc.) and businesses a chance to win freebies by dropping their business cards off, and so on. Use marketing funds to reel in the new customers (you already know this).

    Stretch your marketing budget out by googling the highest rated marketing companies and then see if there’s anyone you can afford. You can also check out Fiverr to see if you trust any of the talent enough to get hand over some of your SMALL marketing and advertising tasks.

    On Fiverr: It can take time to find someone good to work with on Fiverr. I use Fiverr a lot for graphic design, but I go through many talents that I have to move on from very quickly because their output doesn’t match their portfolios. The good news is they are CHEAP so even having pay a few to find someone who’s up to the task is still cheaper often than the alternatives.

    Internships: You can contact local colleges/universities that have marketing AND advertising students who want to do an internship. You might be surprised at how many businesses with deep pockets do this, so why not the little guy who truly needs the financial break? Your biz only needs part-time help so you CAN afford a stipend or payment of some kind or you can pay your intern nothing as well, it’s whatever you set up and plenty of intern students want the experience, especially in big cities. Just ask lots of questions to decide how to approach this.

    Website: Make sure you have one! Offer merchandise whenever you can put something together (printable and other print-on-demand platforms are great), that way you don’t have to buy a bunch of stuff upfront but your website will look more established.

    How are you video skills? How’s your sense of humor? Can you handle any type of graphic design (photography, layouts, web work, etc.)?

    Pair up with any bakeries or candy makers who want to expand their market and will give you a killer deal to start carrying some of their products if the presentation and taste is of excellent caliber and is something you don’t have time to do but something that might make your shop more cozy… something gift-worthy.

    Have a GREAT attitude every day and EXUDE self-confidence and warm regard and humor. Kill it with customer service. Remind your best customers to leave a Google review (or put up a sign by the register). If you obtain interns, they can hang out and help keep your coffee shop looking during the hours they are working. On that thought, you might want to offer student, medical staff, first responders, law enforcement, and military personal discounts…. Don’t break the bank doing this, just see what works best for you and evaluate carefully your approach in this.

    Those are some ideas. You’ve got this. I wish you well in all that you do this holiday season (and, oh ya, holiday decorations in your shop ;)!