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.

  • The_Tommy_Knockers@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Omg not one person has actually mentioned a method of advertising…consider cost per thousand, how much does it cost you to reach 1000 people? I can guarantee you Radio is going to be one of the best options.

    You also mentioned 12,000 cars pass by a day. What does every car have? A radio. You get 30 seconds to control your message (not hope a Google review mentions all your attributes).

    Also consider, how many cafes are in your area? Most probably aren’t advertising on the radio, so you would own the market.

    You need to create Top of Mind Awareness, thought first bought first.

    Absolutely continue to improve your online standing but you need to take an active approach to reaching out to customers.

    • qwertyahill@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Their target audience is not listening to the radio, maybe Spotify ads instead but not the radio lol

      • The_Tommy_Knockers@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Then advertise on Spotify!

        But it will be more expensive. I promise you advertising on radio will reach a significant amount of new customers to make back a return. Then you can pick up Spotify after. Keep in mind the dominate radio stations are country & Top 40 and that’s not bc no one is listening.

        And just because the “main demo” is X group don’t eliminate all the other demographics that could be potential customers.

        • qwertyahill@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Fair point, Spotify will definitely be more expensive. Unless OP has an unlimited marketing budget, they should probably just use their money for other ad avenues instead of radio. At least for now.

          • The_Tommy_Knockers@alien.topBEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Well that’s the entire question…”other ad avenues”SUCH AS?

            You can go pay for social media boosting but this biz isn’t well established enough for that to work. Social media can also be an exhausting amount of work for little to no gain.

            I can see various forms of TV being helpful for this type but again, expensive.

            They opened up a business with high failure rate, they need to invite as many customers in to do business as possible, right now!