Written by Abias
Introduction
Digital marketing should play a major role in any modern marketing strategy. Due to the value and reach that online channels provide, it is no secret that digital is an important part of any business’ strategy.
There is no doubt that people rely on search engines for information on virtually every topic, even and especially where to get coffee.
What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your organisation attain specific goals through carefully selected marketing channels such as paid, earned, and owned media.
If you don’t have a strategy in place for your digital marketing campaign, it’s like trying to navigate a foreign city without a GPS. As a result, you are likely to lose your way, leading to frustration and an unnecessarily long trip.
Think about the following digital marketing steps for a successful coffee shop.
Steps to building a digital marketing strategy.
1. Set a goal.
It sounds simple, but before you create a marketing strategy, you need to come up with a very detailed and specific set of goals.
To do this, you can use the SMART criteria
SMART is a very helpful and commonly used mnemonic tool for setting objectives. SMART offers the following criteria for setting goals
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable/Agreed
- Relevant/Realistic
- Timely goals
Examples of goals
- Increase sales by 30% in the next 5 months.
- Create brand awareness.
- Generating 10 % more visits on the website through Facebook and Google My Business.
- Within a year, Return on investment (ROI) must increase by 15%.
2. Evaluate your existing digital marketing presence.
It’s good to know what you have already accomplished, although it’s close to non-existent. Furthermore, this will enable you to identify what to focus on to achieve your current goals.
To begin, you need to understand your main marketing channels:
- Your website
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Content marketing/SEO
- Pay per click advertising
The second step is to identify which traffic-generating channels are driving the most leads and traffic to your site? Ranking each channel and specific media in order of most to least effective (thus far).
3. Understand the digital sales funnel
You can think of a digital sales funnel as the journey of your buyer from stranger to repeat client.
In addition, brands with a strong digital presence can use the funnel to reach their digital marketing goals. How? By implementing the right digital marketing tools at each step of the funnel.
In the following, I provide a simplified breakdown of the different stages and their relevant digital marketing responses.
Awareness
Create awareness of your existence through social media or search engine optimisation.
Interest
Raise interest about your brand. Who are you and what sets you apart from your competition? For this stage, digital tools such as brand profiles in publications are helpful as well as videos.
Engage
Ensure that your relationships are solid. In this stage, sponsored social media posts address potential concerns the client may have or encourage them to ask questions.
Action
Engage the client by implementing calls-to-action. For instance, by offering discounts in ads or emails, you can incentivize a purchase.
4 Build buyer personas
Before you attempt to reach out to your audience, you must be able to identify who they are. So how can you do this effectively?
Also, imagine yourself in the shoes of your customer. Once you have an idea of who a person is, think about what might appeal to him or her.
Gather information about your audience
In order to determine buyer personas, real-world data is required rather than gut instinct. Compile data on your existing customers and social audience. Consider data such as:
- Age
- Location
- Language
- spending power and patterns
- Interests
- Challenges
- Stage of life
Gather your information from:
- Social media analytics, especially Facebook Audience Insights
- Your customer database
- Google Analytics
5. Locate your customers on the funnel
At the same time, it is equally important to find your customers at each stage of the funnel. Most likely, there are customers who are open to connecting with you at all stages of the funnel.
6. Make use of the Consumer Decision Journey
Customer journey mapping is important, because it is a strategic approach to better understanding customer expectations and ordinarily it is crucial for optimising the customer experience.
Mapping the customer journey has a host of benefits such as:
- Allowing you to optimise the customer onboarding process.
- Benchmarking the customer experience desired by your customers against what they actually receive.
- Understanding the differences in buyer personas as they move from prospect to conversion through the buying funnel.
1-Intial consideration:
Visitors will be checking out the brand, reviewing and gaining more information about your company.
2-Trigger:
Visitors will be doing research for coffee shop products.
3- Active Evaluation:
The buyers are still evaluating their options at this point, but they are not yet ready to purchase anything. Customers evaluate a variety of factors, such as pricing, reviews and testimonials.
4- Moment of purchase:
Ultimately the consumer selects a brand at the moment of purchase.
5- Post Purchase :
After purchasing a product the consumer builds expectations based on experience to inform the next decision journey.
Digital marketing strategies
1) Optimize Your Google Maps Listing
Google My Business (GMB) listing verification is one of the key steps in any coffee shop digital marketing campaign.
Ensuring this is done will boost your chances of appearing in Google’s Local Pack, Local Finder, Google Maps, and help boost your organic ranking in general. Learn more about Google My Business features here
2. Visual Branding / Social Media Theme
If you have a unified theme across your social media pages, users will perceive you as a unified brand across all platforms, enhancing your brand awareness.
Boost Online Engagement:
Through social media contests, you can motivate customers to be “conversation starters”, while also getting them to talk to you!
Inspire Virality:
In today’s online world, online audiences are captivated by viral content and unique opportunities.
If you provide your audience with an exciting contest, they will certainly want to tell their friends about it, which will increase your chances of going viral in your area.
4. Audience Engagement
Start by thinking about how you might engage with your customers; this is the most important element of social media, and it also provides the best opportunity to engage with your business.
Ask Questions
As a first step, if you are unsure about potential changes in your shop, it’s a good idea to ask your customers first, rather than making changes and hoping for the best.
Then, you’ll be able to make strategic decisions and give your audience a feeling of importance, which will improve customer loyalty.
Pay Attention to Responses and Provide Feedback
Generally, asking questions is not enough, so you must analyse and utilise customer feedback. Although you may think you know everything about your clients, there is always more to learn.
Analysing your audience on social media will bring forth hidden ideas and suggestions that will help you scale your coffee shop business.
Social Media Advertising
In addition, a coffee shop that lacks an internet following currently has very little chance of having its content seen.
5) Well-Designed & Responsive Website
Local search engine optimization, typically referred to as local SEO, focuses on improving a website’s chances of appearing in local search results.
6) Get Listed in Local Directories
You should have your name, address, and phone number (also known as your NAP) posted online as local citations. Citations from local sources help users discover local businesses on the Internet as well as affect standings on local search engines.
You should have your name, address, and phone number (also known as your NAP) posted online as local citations. Citations from local sources help users discover local businesses on the Internet as well as affect standings on local search engines.
6 User-Generated Content Sells
UGC refers to the content that is created by the users of a brand. It can range from comments, reviews, and images to social media posts.
By featuring user-generated content on your website, your brand can establish credibility among customers, expand your social following, strengthen client relations, spark the interest of new clients, and boost its search engine ranking.
7 RUN Email CAMPAIGN
Email marketing is still ranked as the most effective marketing channel, beating out social media, SEO, and affiliate marketing. Despite the rise of social, people use email more than other platforms.
8 Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the critical (key) indicators of progress toward an intended result. KPIs provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement.
Important Website Metrics You Should Track.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate explains the percentage of single-page site visits. Instead, this important website KPI simply states how often site visitors stay on the same page from their initial entry.
Having a high bounce rate indicates that many people are leaving your site rather than staying long to view any information.
If this happens, then your user experience is not right or your page contains content that does not fully answer the user’s question.
Unique Website Visitors
Keeping track of unique visitors will help you understand your web traffic over time. Unique website visitors are first-time visitors to your site for an extended period of time.
Pages Viewed Per Session
It’s crucial to gauge how appealing your content is to users by how many pages they view per session.
The idea behind pages per session is to keep users engaged, nurture their interest, and inspire them to take the next step. A key performance indicator is a great way to measure interest and curiosity within your company.
Average Time on Page
In general, the average time on page is an indication of the average length of all site visits combined.
The average time on page, along with bounce rate and number of pages viewed per session, indicates how long users stay on your site.
This is a useful metric to determine the quality and relevance of your content as well as user engagement.
Top Landing Pages
Your Top Landing pages are the first pages your visitors see when they visit your website.
In order to keep visitors on your site or make sure they complete desired actions, it is very important that these pages are optimised.
Exit Pages
Describes the pages on your website where your audience leaves. It is possible to view this section in Google Analytics in order to identify where you lose your audience.
As a result, you can determine where your audience is losing interest and what type of content is outraging them.
Goals and Event Completions
By tracking the completion of goals, you can establish whether your website is effective at converting visitors and getting them to take desired actions.
On site search queries allow you to examine what content visitors prefer, what content your website is lacking.
Additionally, it shows what products or services your visitors are most interested in.
This is incredibly important to any marketer who wants to perfect their content strategy.
9 MEASURE, MEASURE, MEASURE.
One of the last coffee shop digital marketing strategies is to measure your data and growth as much as possible. I strongly recommend integrating Google Analytics and Google search console on your website.
Conclusion
In summary, businesses need a marketing strategy that guides their efforts