The craft coffee industry has done an exceptionally good job at marketing their products and businesses over the last few years. Below are just a few of the great moves coffee businesses have made to engage with their customers;
Guiding customers to better products — there are many off the shelf coffee brands that sell a commodity product. Craft coffee has differentiated itself by offering a premium product at a premium price. It’s often reassuringly expensive and consumers like to known they are using a superior product.
Create a community — craft coffee has built itself around the hipster community. By attaching itself to a community it has seen exponential growth as the ‘word’ has spread around like minded folk.
Be a geek about your product — we like to buy products from someone who loves what they are offering. If you really love your product you will want to know all you can about it.
Stand for something bigger — I recently visited a local roaster who were donating a percentage of their profits to charities in Rwanda helping to ensure children of parents working on the coffee plantations had access to education. What a great way of giving something back to the industry that feeds you.
Give them something they can share with their crowd — we like to know and share information that our friends may not have. If you can give your customer a unique insight into your product you can be sure that this will be shared. This is a great tactic for word of mouth marketing.
Talk about its origin — like the cannabis plant, coffee comes from regions across the world that inspire our imagination. Think Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica or the Guatemala volcanic region coffee farms. People want to know where products they consume are coming from and what those business are doing to support their communities.
We hope, like us, you spot opportunities to replicate some of these approaches within your business.
