premiada y reconocida por FORBES.

Benefíciate y crea tu página web con botón de pago integrado dándole clic a este enlace por tiempo limitado.

No cabe duda de que el café es una bebida indispensable para muchas personas. Para que te des una idea, solo en Estados Unidos el 64% de las mujeres y el 62% de los hombres consume al menos una taza de café al día, según el libro Business Statistics for Contemporary Decision-Making (2019). Con ese dato, no sorprende que haya aproximadamente 24,000 cafeterías en dicho país, de acuerdo con información de E–Importz.

Si estás leyendo este artículo, seguramente tienes una cafetería o estás pensando en abrir una. En el primer caso, quizás sientes que el negocio puede ir mucho mejor y deseas encontrar la manera de que los clientes te visiten en mayor cantidad.

En el segundo escenario, a lo mejor no sabes hacia qué dirección dar el siguiente paso o cómo lograr que tu negocio llame la atención entre tanta competencia. ¿Acaso temes que, al inaugurar tu cafetería, haya más sillas vacías que ventas en el día?

¡No te preocupes! Cualquiera que sea el caso, aquí te revelamos 5 estrategias de marketing para cafeterías que sin duda le darán a tu negocio un gran impulso. Siéntate, toma una buena taza de café y presta mucha atención.

Estrategia 1: crea una página web vistosa

Comencemos esta estrategia con el principio que hará que tu página web sea exitosa, y hagámoslo con un video donde te lo explicamos paso a paso, ¡adelante video!

Las estadísticas en vivo de internet indican que actualmente hay más de 4.5 billones de personas que tienen acceso a la gran red mundial. Mientras que 2.05 billones compran algún producto o servicio en internet, según Statista. ¿Puedes imaginar cuántos consumidores potenciales existen justo ahora en el mundo virtual? 

Si quieres llegar al menos a una parte de dicha cifra, es importante que te hagas un espacio propio en internet. Para conseguirlo, te recomendamos crear un sitio web para tu cafetería.

Hay dos maneras generales de crear una página web: mediante etiquetas HTML o mediante un CMS (gestor de contenido, por sus siglas en inglés). La primera es un poco compleja, pues debes conocer acerca de ese lenguaje y por lo general lleva bastantes meses de trabajo poder tener listo tu sitio web. 

En el caso del segundo método, debes comprar un dominio, un hosting y crear una cuenta en algún CMS. Una vez hecho, puedes crear contenido en dichas plataformas de manera sencilla. No necesitas ser un experto en programación para tener tu sitio web en tan solo unos días u horas.

Asimismo, usar un gestor de contenido puede resultar más económico para tu cafetería. Por lo general, hay proveedores que te ofrecen paquetes que incluyen tu dominio, tu hosting y el CMS. Kolau te permite tener tu sitio web totalmente gratis con solo unos clics y sin tener que descargar ningún software en tu ordenador o dispositivo móvil.

Para ello, debes crear una cuenta y seguir los pasos que aparecerán en pantalla, tales como ingresar los datos de tu cafetería, elegir una plantilla, agregar tus productos, etc.

Cuando vayas a crear tu sitio en internet, te recomendamos que tengas en cuenta los siguientes aspectos:

Elige un diseño llamativo

Para empezar, es importante que el diseño visual de tu sitio web sea atractivo para quienes lo visiten. De acuerdo con un estudio de Adobe, el 66% de las personas prefiere visitar una página que sea visualmente atractiva. Por ende, utiliza colores que atraigan a los usuarios y que no les molesten al momento de navegar.

Un estudio de la Universidad de Toronto indica que la mayoría de las personas prefiere combinaciones de 2 o 3 colores simples. Mientras que un estudio de Joe Hallock señala que a los hombres les gusta el azul (57%), el verde (14%), el negro (9%)  y el rojo (7%). Por su parte, las mujeres prefieren el azul (35%), el morado (23%), el verde (14%) y el rojo (9%). 

Asimismo, cuida muy bien la fuente y el tamaño de texto que usarás. Es importante que la gente pueda leer el contenido de tu sitio, aunque sean solo palabras, así sabrá dónde hacer clic para navegar por tu web.

Según la agencia W3 Lab, el tamaño mínimo recomendable para un sitio web es de 16 píxeles, pues si un texto es más pequeño, resulta más difícil de leer en una pantalla, especialmente en un teléfono móvil. Ten en cuenta que, de acuerdo con Statista, actualmente el 52% de la gente usa dicho dispositivo para navegar en internet.

Si piensas usar una imagen como fondo, cuida también los colores, pues hay fotos que resultan muy oscuras o muy claras e impiden leer fácilmente el contenido. También utiliza fotografías que no sean muy pesadas, para evitar que el sitio web demore en cargar. Según el estudio de Adobe, el 39% de las personas abandona un sitio que tarda mucho en cargar su contenido.

Sube tu menú para atraer a los consumidores

Una estrategia que te puede dar buenos resultados es subir el menú de tu cafetería. O por lo menos imágenes y una breve descripción de tus mejores platillos. La idea de hacerlo es que las personas vean tus productos y se animen a visitarte. Si subes el menú, al igual que con las demás fotos de tu sitio web, intenta que las imágenes no sean muy pesadas para que el sitio cargue más rápido. 

Asimismo, te recomendamos que las fotografías que subas sean lo más claras posibles para que la gente aprecie mejor la comida. Además, usa fotos en las que tus platillos se vean coloridos, ya que según un estudio de Xerox, el uso de colores vistosos en alguna publicación de cualquier tipo incrementa el deseo de la gente de leer o consumir algo en un 80%.

Incluye diferentes canales de contacto

Algo que no debe faltar en tu sitio web son las diferentes formas en que los clientes pueden comunicarse contigo. De acuerdo con un estudio de KoMarketing, el 44% de las personas abandona una página si ve que no hay al menos una forma de contactar con la empresa o negocio.

Ese dato no debe sorprenderte, después de todo ¿cómo esperas que los consumidores se acerquen a tu cafetería si no saben dónde queda o no encuentran una forma de preguntarte? Por ello, te recomendamos que incluyas en tu sitio web al menos un teléfono, tu dirección de correo y una dirección física. 

También, puedes incluir un formulario de contacto para que los clientes te hagan alguna consulta por escrito. Si lo haces, procura usar formularios que tengan muy pocos campos para llenar. Según QuickSprout, tener solo tres campos incrementa hasta un 50% las probabilidades de que un cliente ingrese sus datos.

Estrategia 2: utiliza las redes sociales para darte a conocer

A día de hoy las redes sociales han adquirido una gran importancia en la vida de las personas. De acuerdo con un estudio de HootSuite, a principios de 2019 había 3.45 billones de usuarios en redes sociales. Esa cifra aumentó a 3.8 billones en tan solo un año, según un sondeo de We Are Social, lo cual equivale a casi un 60% de la población mundial.

Por si fuera poco, un estudio de Global Web Index señala que el 54% de las personas utiliza las redes sociales para buscar algún producto o servicio que desea adquirir. Con esos datos, puedes notar que existe un mercado potencial en dichas plataformas. Por ende, no está de más que aproveches esos espacios para atraer clientes. ¿Pero cómo hacerlo?

Antes de lanzarte al agua, debes seleccionar las redes sociales más ventajosas para tu negocio. Cada una de ellas tiene funciones que pueden potenciar un negocio, siempre y cuando este último sepa qué quiere conseguir con dichas plataformas.

Nosotros te recomendamos que, para empezar, inviertas tus recursos en tres redes sociales: Facebook, Instagram y Twitter. Estas son las que tienen más usuarios a nivel mundial. De acuerdo con un estudio de We Are Social y HootSuite, la primera cuenta con 2.5 billones; la segunda con 1 billón; y la tercera con 330 millones.

Para sacarles provecho a estas plataformas, a continuación compartimos algunos consejos.

Muéstrales tu cafetería a tus seguidores

Si quieres vender, necesitas mostrarle al mundo qué tienes para ofrecerle. En tu caso, es recomendable que les despiertes el apetito y la sed a tus seguidores. Para lograrlo, comparte imágenes y videos de los platillos y bebidas que vendes.

Te recomendamos que combines fotos y videos. Si vas a compartir videos, procura que no sean muy largos para evitar que los usuarios abandonen la reproducción de los mismos. Según Facebook, el 65% de la gente que ve los primeros 3 segundos de un video mira al menos hasta los próximos 10 segundos. Es decir, mientras más corto el material, más probabilidades tienes de captar la atención del usuario.

Por su parte, la agencia Omnicore indica que actualmente se suben más de 100 millones de fotos y videos a diario en Instagram. Además, un reporte de la compañía Mention revela que los videos tienen un 38% más de interacción que las fotos en esta red social. Así que puedes aprovechar Instagram para tu negocio.

En el caso de Twitter, Statista señala que el 42% de las personas utiliza dicha plataforma para ver fotos y un 32% lo hace por los videos. Con todos esos datos, no cabe duda de la demanda de material audiovisual que hay en redes sociales.

De igual manera, muéstrales a tus seguidores un poco más acerca de tu negocio. Por ejemplo, las instalaciones, el personal que tienes a disposición, cómo preparas algún platillo, etc. Se trata de que también les hagas ver el lado “humano” de tu cafetería. Que la gente vea que detrás de un nombre o un logo hay personas reales.

Crea un vínculo con tus seguidores

Si quieres que tu cafetería se expanda, necesitas más clientes. Una manera para intentar conseguirlo es tener más seguidores en tus redes sociales. Para lograrlo, es importante que vayas creando un vínculo cercano con las personas que ya te siguen en las distintas plataformas, así ellas te recomendarán (consciente o inconscientemente) a sus conocidos.

De hecho, Hans-Georg Hänsel, en su libro Brain View, explica que entre el 70% y el 80% de las decisiones que las personas toman son de manera inconsciente, atendiendo más a las emociones que a la lógica. Ahí radica la importancia de reforzar ese vínculo que te mencionamos.

Una buena opción para lograrlo es la sección de reseñas de Facebook. En ella, los clientes que te visiten pueden dejar algún comentario acerca de los productos o el servicio que les brindaste. Esto es de gran ayuda, pues según un estudio de Bright Local, el 82% de los consumidores lee las reseñas en línea de un negocio local. 

También te recomendamos que estés muy pendiente de los comentarios y menciones que recibas en cada una de tus redes sociales. Si son positivos, puedes darles “me gusta” y compartirlos en cualquiera de tus tres perfiles (siempre etiquetando a quien lo publicó originalmente). En caso de que sean opiniones negativas o críticas, puedes responder con educación al usuario y usar su reseña como retroalimentación. Mira el ejemplo:

Esto sirve para que tus clientes antiguos y potenciales vean que estás pendiente de sus comentarios y que estás abierto a sugerencias para ofrecer un mejor servicio o producto.

Mantén informados de promociones a tus seguidores

Según un estudio de Sprout Social, el 50% de las personas sigue a una empresa en redes sociales para estar al tanto de nuevos productos y servicios. Además, un 38% lo hace para conocer las promociones y descuentos que el negocio puede ofrecer.

Tomando esas estadísticas en cuenta, te recomendamos que anuncies en tus redes sociales todas las novedades que vayas a incluir en tu menú. No importa si es un producto pequeño (como una nueva presentación de café) o un platillo completo (hamburguesa con papas, por ejemplo), debes mostrárselos a tus seguidores; así les darás un razón más para visitar tu cafetería.

Puedes usar de ejemplo a Café Regina. Esta cafetería ubicada en Tlaxcala, México, lanzó hace poco un nuevo frappé de manzana y dio a conocer al “nuevo integrante de la familia” en redes sociales:

También puedes publicar cualquier oferta que tengas disponible. Por ejemplo, si ofreces 2×1 en café, un porcentaje de descuento en cierta compra, un segundo plato a mitad de precio, etc. No dejes que tus clientes se pierdan esas ofertas.

Estrategia 3: utiliza el marketing estacional

¿Has notado cómo aparecen ofertas y promociones en todas partes durante fechas o épocas específicas (Navidad, San Valentín, verano, etc.)? Pareciera que de pronto a todos los negocios les da por ofrecer algo especial. Bueno, te contamos que se trata de estrategias de marketing estacional.

Estas estrategias consisten en aprovechar alguna festividad o época del año para ofrecer productos y servicios especiales a los clientes. Por lo general, en determinadas fechas se regala algo a los seres queridos o se conmemora algún acontecimiento que motiva a la gente a hacer alguna compra. Esto lo aprovechan muy bien las empresas. De acuerdo con la NRF, el 65% de las compras que la gente realiza en alguna festividad está influenciado por ofertas y promociones.

Como vendedor de comidas y bebidas, también puedes utilizar esta estrategia para que tu cafetería tenga una mayor afluencia de comensales en determinadas épocas. Para obtener mejores resultados te damos algunos consejos:

Define un objetivo para elegir fechas

Si hojeas un calendario de principio a fin, te darás cuenta de que existen varias celebraciones a lo largo del año: San Valentín, Semana Santa, Día de la Madre, Halloween, Navidad, entre otras.

Súmales aquellas que varían de país en país; por ejemplo, el Día de la Independencia se celebra el 4 de julio en Estados Unidos, mientras que en varias naciones de Latinoamérica se conmemora el 15 de septiembre.

Además, hay festividades que surgen cada año, sobre todo con los avances tecnológicos, y no aparecen en los calendarios convencionales (el Día del Community Manager, el Día del Café, el Día del Abuelo, etc.). Demasiados días por celebrar y tan poco tiempo.

Si sientes que tantas fechas especiales te marean, no te preocupes. Para optimizar tus recursos y sacar el mayor provecho posible al marketing estacional, el primer paso es que elijas qué celebraciones se acoplan a tu negocio y a tu público. En otras palabras, debes decidir a qué tipo de personas quieres llegar. 

Para esto, te sugerimos que analices bien quiénes consumen en tu cafetería. ¿Acaso llegan más jóvenes? ¿Has visto si te visitan familias? ¿Qué tantas parejas ves con frecuencia en el establecimiento? ¿Acaso se forman grupos de estudio o poesía? ¿Quieres que más solteros visiten tu negocio?

Con base en ello, puedes elegir qué festividades o temporadas son más rentables para ti. Por ejemplo, si ves que a tu cafetería llegan muchas parejas o grupos de amigos, podrías ofrecer algún descuento o promoción para el Día de San Valentín, como hizo Café Regina este año:

Sin embargo, si notas que la mayoría de tus clientes llega sin compañía, podrías ofrecer alguna oferta a los solteros para que no pasen solos ese día en que se celebra el amor y la amistad. 

Otro ejemplo podría ser que, si ves que muchos jóvenes consumen en tu cafetería, des algún descuento por el Día de la Juventud. En cambio, si a tu negocio llegan varios padres con sus hijos, podrías ofrecer combos familiares por el Día de la Familia.

Como puedes darte cuenta, tener una idea de qué tipo de clientes te frecuentan y a quiénes quieres atraer te facilita la tarea de elegir una fecha o época para lanzar promociones. Además, según un estudio de ITSMA, el 81% de las personas está dispuesta a pagar por un producto o servicio si la empresa ofrece soluciones específicas. Es decir, mientras mejor definido tengas tu público objetivo, tendrás más probabilidades de atraer clientes.

Por último, sin importar qué decisión tomes, te sugerimos que planees tus campañas de marketing estacional con varios meses de anticipación.

No te quedes solo con un producto

Si vas a optar por el marketing estacional, es recomendable que no ofrezcas el mismo producto o la misma oferta para todas las festividades. Varía un poco para que la gente tenga más motivos para visitarte. Por dar un ejemplo, si durante una festividad ofreces una taza de café gratis, en la siguiente puedes ofrecer un 50% en todos los desayunos con café.

Un estudio de la Universidad de Stanford demostró que un 79% de las personas es más propenso a comprarle a una empresa que ofrece variedad en sus productos. De esta manera, te sugerimos que cambies las promociones en cada temporada. 

Claro que, si ves que alguna te funciona muy bien para determinada fecha, podrías intentar repetirla al año próximo. Para estar seguro, es importante que lleves un control de cada campaña estacional que realices, desde que empiezas a planificarla hasta que finaliza.

Sé creativo con tus productos

Este punto va muy ligado al anterior. Puedes crear algún producto exclusivo para determinada época del año, ya sea completamente nuevo o una variante de uno existente. Por ejemplo, para las fiestas de fin de año puedes servir chocolate casero y venderlo como una bebida de temporada que transporta a tus clientes a un ambiente hogareño. Si el chocolate ya forma parte del menú, podrías optar por servirlo con malvaviscos de colores y un toque de menta o canela.

Si usas este tipo de estrategia, es recomendable que indiques a tus clientes que la disponibilidad de tu producto es por tiempo limitado. De esta forma, los invitas a que te visiten lo antes posible para probar la delicia que has implementado en tu menú.

Puedes tomar como ejemplo a Starbucks. A finales de octubre, esta empresa saca a la venta bebidas con temáticas de Halloween. Como puedes notar en la imagen, son por tiempo limitado:

Estrategia 4: crea un programa para retener a tus clientes

Atraer a nuevos clientes es tentador para un negocio, ¿no crees? Sin embargo, no debes olvidarte de las personas que ya han consumido en tu cafetería. Según un estudio de Frederick Reichheld de Bain & Company, aumentar la retención de clientes en un 5% puede incrementar las ganancias de un negocio desde un 25% hasta un 95%.

En otras palabras, si quieres que tu cafetería se mantenga estable, debes retener a tus consumidores. Para ello, puedes implementar un plan de fidelización. Esta estrategia consiste en recompensar al cliente de acuerdo con el consumo que realiza de tus productos o servicios con el fin de que siga comprando en tu negocio a largo plazo.

Para que tengas una idea del funcionamiento de estos programas, te damos un ejemplo. Starbucks lanzó en 2009 su programa de lealtad, el cual consiste en que una persona adquiere una tarjeta con la que va acumulando estrellas por cada compra que realiza en dicho negocio. Estos “puntos” los puede canjear por productos o promociones diferentes. Por ejemplo, una bebida gratis por cada 100 estrellas.

Según Starbucks, en los últimos dos años la membresía de este programa creció más del 25% y los miembros del mismo lo usan para aproximadamente el 40% de sus compras en Estados Unidos. Asimismo, los ingresos de la empresa aumentaron un 4.6% durante el último año.

Tú también puedes implementar este tipo de programas. De esta manera, invitarás a la gente a consumir en tu cafetería y les darás una recompensa por hacerlo. Eso sí, debes tener en cuenta algunos aspectos si vas a lanzar un plan de fidelización:

Hazlo simple y entendible para tus clientes

La idea del programa es que las personas participen en él. Para ello, es recomendable que establezcas reglas de acumulación y canje fáciles de entender. La plataforma WoowUp recomienda utilizar un método de 1 a 1, ya que este es de los más sencillos y transparentes.

Por ejemplo, puedes dar 1 punto por cada dólar de consumo en tu cafetería. Cuando el cliente acumule 50 puntos, puede canjearlos por una taza de café gratis acompañada con un trozo de pastel.

Con este método, el cliente puede calcular desde un principio cuánto le costará (tiempo y dinero) obtener uno de los premios que ofreces. Asimismo, él podrá llevar la cuenta de sus puntos acumulados sin ningún problema. Claro, siempre es recomendable que le des alguna especie de tarjeta o documento en el que tanto tú como él puedan revisar los puntos constantemente. 

Ofrece recompensas alcanzables y justas

Para decidir qué les darás a tus clientes como premio, elige productos que ellos puedan desear y que no les cueste tanto obtener. Por ejemplo, no hagas a un cliente consumir US$1000 para ganarse una taza de café que le cuesta US$1 o US$2; aunque tampoco se trata de que les regales una bebida cada vez que hacen una compra.

El estudio de WoowUp recomienda, en sus ejemplos, utilizar una regla del 5%. Es decir, ofrecerles a tus clientes un premio equivalente al 5% de lo que han comprado en tu cafetería. Para darte una idea, si les das un punto a tus clientes por cada dólar consumido y una taza de café les cuesta US$2, puedes dar esta bebida gratis a cambio de 40 puntos.

Por otro lado, procura no ofrecer premios deseables que sean prácticamente imposibles de alcanzar. Quizá se te ocurre dar como recompensa un año gratis de café, pero decides que el cliente debe tener 1 millón de puntos para obtenerlo. Es probable que las personas, en lugar de consumir más en tu cafetería o ser parte de tu plan de lealtad, no le presten mucha importancia a esta estrategia.

Estrategia 5: utiliza el correo electrónico para acercarte a tus clientes

Otro canal para intentar retener a tus clientes es el correo electrónico. Aunque te parezca que esta herramienta no tiene tantos recursos como las redes sociales, puede ser muy efectiva al momento de acercarte a tus consumidores.

De hecho, en un estudio de Emarsys y la compañía WBR, el 81% de las empresas indicó que el correo electrónico es la principal herramienta para la adquisición de clientes. Mientras que un 80% respondió que también impulsa la retención de compradores.

Como puedes ver, esta herramienta puede ser muy útil si quieres expandir y mantener una cartera de clientes. Ahora bien, ¿cómo puedes usar el email para llegar a las personas? Lo primero que te recomendamos es crear un correo personalizado para tu cafetería. Nos referimos a que, en lugar de usar Gmail, Yahoo o Hotmail, compres un dominio para que tus clientes identifiquen que se trata de tu negocio.

En términos muy sencillos, el dominio de un correo es la parte que va después de la arroba (@) y su función es la de identificar un sitio en la red. Cuando adquieres tu dominio, puedes empezar a crear a tus direcciones personalizadas a partir de dicho nombre en la web.

Por ejemplo, si compras el dominio “cafeartesanal.com”, puedes crear varios correos que tengan dicha terminación, como “info@cafeartesanal.com”, “promociones@cafeartesanal.com” o “contacto@cafeartesanal.com”. Con direcciones de ese tipo, tus clientes sabrán de mejor manera que sí se trata de tu cafetería y no de algún tipo de engaño.

Asimismo, un correo con dominio propio es muy importante porque, según GoDaddy, las personas están 10 veces más dispuestas a elegir tu negocio sobre la competencia si usas un email personalizado. Además, un 75% de los usuarios considera que es muy importante que la dirección del correo concuerde con el nombre de la empresa.

Así que, cuando vayas a elegir tu dominio, procura usar el nombre de tu cafetería o uno que se asemeje a este. Por ejemplo, si tu negocio se llama Cafetería Las Margaritas, tu dominio podría ser “lasmargaritas.com” o “cafemargaritas.com”. Recuerda no usar caracteres especiales (“ñ”, “$”, “%”, “#”, etc.) para que tus clientes no tengan problemas para reconocer tu correo.

Si has creado tu sitio web con Kolau, tenemos muy buenas noticias. Puedes comprar tu dominio con la plataforma y también distintas direcciones para el correo personalizado de tu cafetería. Puedes guiarte con este video:

Si has creado tu página web con otra plataforma, hay servidores que te pueden proveer de un dominio por una cómoda inversión (como GoDaddy, GSuite, Latin Cloud, entre otros). Además, por cada dólar invertido en una campaña de correo puedes recuperar entre US$38 y US$48, según un estudio de Data & Marketing Association. 

Una vez que tengas tu correo personalizado, puedes usarlo para enviar diferente tipo de contenido. Te damos algunas ideas:

Da la bienvenida a tus clientes

Para poder enviarles correos a tus clientes, es más que obvio que necesitas su dirección de email. Puedes conseguirla mediante pequeños formularios en las cuentas de tus consumidores, en los cuales ellos pueden dejar sus datos para mantenerlos informados acerca de novedades en tu cafetería.

También podrías dejarles la dirección de tu correo en su factura de consumo, invitándolos a que se comuniquen contigo por cualquier duda o comentario que tengan. Y claro, puedes colocar tu correo o dejar un formulario de contacto en tu sitio web. 

Cuando ya tengas sus datos. Puedes enviarles un mensaje de bienvenida dándoles las gracias por preferir tus servicios (además de responder cualquier duda que tengan). Asimismo, sería un plus si les ofreces alguna pequeña promoción limitada para incentivarlos a volver a tu cafetería. Por ejemplo, si vuelven a consumir en tu negocio las próximas dos semanas y te muestran el correo de bienvenida, les puedes ofrecer refill de café o una galleta.

Te recomendamos que procures personalizar el mensaje que enviarás a la gente. Es decir, utiliza al menos el nombre del cliente a quien le vas a responder. De acuerdo con Ascend2, este tipo de personalización es la estrategia más efectiva del marketing por email y es usada por el 50% de las empresas.

Informa sobre promociones y ofertas

Al igual que las redes sociales, puedes usar el correo para mantener informados a tus clientes acerca de las promociones u ofertas disponibles en tu cafetería. Incluso, podrías animarte a darles un mejor descuento ya que están “suscritos” con su email. Por ejemplo, si tu promoción consiste en 2×1 en café americano, podrías ofrecerles agrandar gratis una de sus bebidas o aplicarles la oferta en otro tipo de café. 

El uso del correo electrónico te ayudará también en tus estrategias de marketing estacional, así podrás mantener informados a tus consumidores de las actividades o promociones que vayas a implementar para alguna fecha o temporada especial.

Comparte información sobre tu cafetería

Otra forma de utilizar tu correo empresarial es mantener al tanto de novedades de tu negocio, no necesariamente acerca de comidas o bebidas. Estamos hablando de cambios en la administración o en los horarios de atención, renovaciones en el inmobiliario o local, si estás buscando empleados, etc.

Este tipo de correos tiene la intención de generar un vínculo cercano con tus clientes, que ellos sientan que les tienes la confianza para transmitirles ese tipo de información de manera personal (después de todo, un email es mucho más privado que una red social).

Ya te compartimos la teoría, ahora te toca ponerla en práctica. Anímate y utiliza estas estrategias para que a tu cafetería nunca le falten los clientes. Empieza por implementar las herramientas que te ayudarán a lograrlo: tu sitio web, tus perfiles en redes sociales y tu correo electrónico empresarial. 

Cuando ya las tengas, empieza a utilizarlas de la mejor manera. No dejes que los consumidores potenciales pasen por alto tu negocio. Comparte las mejores imágenes de tu cafetería y de los platillos y bebidas que vendes. Engancha a las personas con las delicias de tu menú.

Y no olvides interactuar con tus clientes antiguos. Si ya te visitaron una vez, convéncelos de que lo hagan muchas más. Ofréceles algún plan de lealtad, una promoción especial en su primer consumo o responde sus comentarios en las redes sociales. Recuerda que para mantener estable tu negocio necesitas crear un vínculo con tus clientes. ¡Haz la prueba y verás cómo se llena tu cafetería!

The post 5 Estrategias de Marketing para Cafeterías [Ed. 2024] appeared first on Kolau Blog.

Create your website quickly and easily clicking here – Offer available for a limited time only.

Companies that have other companies as customers are known as Business to Business or B2B companies. They create products or services for them just like other retail companies which means they need to be promoted like any other business.

If you’re part of a B2B company and are trying to find better ways to market your business, consider digital marketing techniques specifically designed for these unique companies. 

Approaching B2B Marketing

B2B marketing is usually done on a smaller scale and can sometimes be more complex for companies due to the difficulty of approaching their final clients. These aren’t usually the top executives but instead, are employees in charge of purchase decisions.

In order to sell your products or services, it’s essential for B2B companies to know how their customers will buy them. To do this, Google did a study tracing the process of buying a B2B company and it showed that it usually begins on the website. The study showed that 90 percent of B2B opportunity seekers do a search online first. Specifically, they make an average of 12 searches before they settle on a specific brand.

This search begins in a generic way 71 percent of the time. Little by little, it becomes more specific until it reaches one company. For example, if someone searches for a cleaning products provider, they’ll type that in the Google search engine. Clients don’t look for you as an enterprise at the beginning so paid generic searches can pay off.

Before a B2B buyer decides on a company, it’ll go through several pages of your competitors. You have to concentrate on making your site the best it can be for this reason.

“It’s not enough to just offer your brand’s products. Influence and decision-making are occurring earlier in the purchase route, even before the recognition of the brand”, the study says. “Identify where you can be part of the conversation from the beginning and during that search.”

Thus, a B2B company has to prepare to face a buyer who expects the same experiences that he expects as a consumer who would go through the same search process to find what they’re looking for. This information makes having a significant web presence important. It sounds logical, but some might be surprised to learn that a large number of companies—especially small ones—don’t have a website.

For example, in Spain, 47.6 percent of microenterprises lack a web page and, as curious as it may seem, the percentage of SMEs that don’t have one increases up to 88.1 percent, according to the National Telecommunications Observatory and Information Society.

In Spain, 32.1 percent of SMEs and large organizations make purchases through this medium, while 16.6 percent of micro-companies do so, according to data from the National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society. Your website is basically the first point of contact for B2B companies, so a company of this type (and really any business) has to be present in the best possible way.

As you can see, knowing how to reach your targeted market is a critical step in increasing your bottom line. Here are four tips to help you do this and create the best digital marketing strategy for your company.

1. Optimize your page so that it appears in search engines

According to a survey conducted by Google a couple of years ago, the audience for B2B companies is online with 89 percent of B2B buyers looking for purchase information on the web. Things have changed and B2B customers today don’t expect to deal with a sales professional until they want to close the sale. Most importantly, they expect the same digital experiences they would find as customers, according to Google.

You need to position your page within the first results of Google so those B2B clients can find you when they do a search.

There are two ways in which websites are positioned in Google, the paid one (SEM, Search Engine Marketing) and the non-paid one (SEO, Search Engine Optimization). Each case is particular, but a very general recommendation is that a site should use both to position itself on search engines properly.

This is one of the most important recommendations when drawing up a digital marketing strategy. It’s very important to have good, quality content because this will grow your social channels, capture leads and transform them into sales in an organic way.

That being said, it’s not usually enough, so you need to consider a paid campaign for your most valuable content. Check your metrics and choose the content that has the best results. Improve it and then start a paid campaign.

2. Create a strategy and direct it correctly

Like all business actions, digital marketing ones must have a strategy. This strategy has to be directed to who is going to buy your products or services. In the case of a B2B company, this is not always easy to determine. First, draw the “customer journey”, the path that your customers travel throughout the purchase process. As a B2B company, your customers are other companies, but this doesn’t mean that it makes this process simple.

Google’s research knocked down several myths about B2B marketing and how it was believed that it had to be targeted to high-level executives. Their study showed that this simply isn’t the case as the people making purchase decisions aren’t those who run the organization.

This investigation showed that the strategies targeting these executives are not as effective as they were before. Those that influence the purchase search have changed and are now employees who are not the heads of the organizations. According to the study:

81 percent of a given company has a say in purchasing decisions while 64 percent of the final decision falls on senior managers

What will almost always resonate in this decision making are these employees’ voices. “Clearly, if you’re marketing only to the highest level, you’re overlooking the people who need to notice you”, Google explains.

One tip in doing this is to make sure you don’t neglect the mobile version of your site. According to Google’s study, 42 percent of B2B business customers use a mobile device when searching to buy and this is growing very fast. “They are comparing prices, reading about products and contacting companies”, the study says. “But they are also buying. The purchase rate through these devices grew 22 percent in the last two years”.

Today, more than ever, a company has to have a site that is completely responsive to any device so your strategy always has to include proper device optimization in order to offer your customers rich experiences. Remember, they seek the same quality of experiences as any consumer.

3. Use a blog

This is constantly being noted as one of if not the best way for any company to engage with your target audience. Specifically, it’s the preferred channel for a B2B company to communicate with its potential customers.

According to a Hubspot study,

Companies that have a blog have 55 percent more visitors to their websites.

This helps convert potential customers to actual customers thanks to the information on your website. This translates into more leads. 

Numbers from the same platform indicate that companies with a blog see their leads growing 126 percent more than those that don’t. So, those companies that take the time to blog get more than double the data of potential customers who are interested in the company and the information it generates.

Having a blog can help a company in many ways, including the fact that Google indexes much more (434 percent more, specifically) of its pages. The more indexed pages you have, the more opportunities you have for your site to be found by Google’s search engines and, consequently, the more likely it will appear organically among the first sites when someone does a related search.

Another benefit is that marketing specialists who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy a positive return on investment in addition to being considered as a trusted source. According to Hubspot, blogs are the fifth most reliable source of truthful information on a given topic.

Publications in a corporate blog should be constant as this greatly increases the possibility of increasing traffic to the company’s site. B2B companies that published 11 times or more a month have more traffic than those that did not publish or did so only once a month.

4. Use LinkedIn and professional networks

LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world and the most recommended for companies in the B2B market. There are more than 500 million users on it, of which a large part are professionals or people who lead to or are part of organizations. It’s not by chance that it’s the favorite social platform for B2B’s content marketing specialists.

According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 97 percent used LinkedIn in their strategy. More so, among the three most effective networks (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), LinkedIn is in first place with 78 percent thinking it’s the most effective for content marketing purposes. LinkedIn is a way to drive traffic to your company’s site and generate sales. 

According to a LinkedIn guide on how to market on their platform, the first thing an entrepreneur has to do is to create their own profile. “Your LinkedIn profile and that of all the other members of the company are the peaks that come together to form the mountainous chain of your brand”, the guide states.

When people look for your name, you want them to find you and find something that makes you more attractive than your competitors. If you don’t already have one, make a LinkedIn profile. Here are some tips for you to do it well. 

• Add a photo (this increases the chances of connecting with someone nine times).

• Update it with your current position.

• Add your current location.

• Upload videos, images or any file so people can know you better. 

If you make a good profile, it will help convince the people who see you and who are interested in doing business with your company say yes when you approach them with your business proposition.

You’ll also need to make a business profile on LinkedIn. When making a LinkedIn page for your company, it needs to be complete. According to statistics from the same platform:

30 percent of companies that complete all of their profile information get more visits per week.

This information includes the description which should contain phrases and keywords that define the mission and purpose of your company. You’ll also need to have the company logo, web address, location, industry and the size of your organization. 

Now, you have to figure out whether you want to generate leads (potential clients that give you their contact data) or get brand awareness through your LinkedIn presence. As in any strategy, you need to be clear about your goals. This is the third marketing tip of the LinkedIn guide after making your own profile and that of your company. It has to do with what you want to achieve with the platform. 

Start by getting to know your audience. From there you can tailor the content for them. “For example, your company sells a productivity tool for social media specialists and you want to encourage them to try it. If they do, they’ll probably recommend it to their bosses”, the guide explains. In this case, your goal would most likely be to increase brand awareness. This calls back to the “customer journey”, that was discussed earlier. 

In this example, while companies are the final target for your product, the social media professionals within the company who make the purchasing decisions need to be the initial marketing target. This means your efforts should be focused on them trying out your product, entering into an exclusive deal with your brand and seeing that you are the best option to increase their productivity.

In addition to LinkedIn, you need to investigate other social platforms your targeted companies use. There are usually industries that have their own networks, too, so don’t forget to also use those.

These are four relatively simple things you can do to start marketing your B2B business on a digital platform. Go through each tip and use them to the best of your abilities. Consider hiring professionals for things like content development and SEO if you aren’t comfortable with these strategies. If done properly, you can expect a good return for all of your marketing efforts. 

The post 4 Digital Marketing Strategies for B2B Companies [Ed. 2024] appeared first on Kolau Blog.

If you’re a writer looking to enter into the publishing world, your end goal is likely to sign on with a well-known publishing house and become a bestseller. While this is a great plan it isn’t that easy.

Most publishing companies are looking for writers who already have an established following that will buy your books and make them money. New writers with no fanbase are unlikely to get noticed. More so, self-publishing options like Amazon’s eBooks and Google Play Books require some kind of following to help you get noticed and make money, too. 

In order to build a following before signing on with a publisher, you have to market yourself properly. Considering that the industry is growing slowly and that the publishing market is constantly changing, adaptability and flexibility are two qualities that any writer must possess to turn their writing from a hobby to a career. To help you do this, consider these four marketing strategies for writers. 

# 1 Marketing Strategy for Writers: Create a blog and publish relevant content for your target audience

According to an Ascend2 survey, 72 percent of marketers say that the creation of relevant content is the most effective SEO tactic. A blog is just one of the digital marketing tools that helps you offer valuable content while gaining more visibility in search engines. Since blogs are content-based they should be the first thing a writer turns to gather a following.

The Spanish writer Ana González Duque made her work known through a blog. In an interview she said:

For a writer, a blog is their online business card. The reader will know from reading your blog if they’ll like your books.

Her first novel, Dr. Jomeini’s Blog, was written in the form of a fictional blog. She initially published it online where she gained a following and was then discovered by a publishing house. 

Your blog can turn into a future book, a space for reflection or even a site where you share your creative process with your audience. This is the case of the book In Vino Veritas by the writer Virginia Gasull. The author created a blog of the same name in which she discussed how she researched everything to write her book and develop her characters.

With this strategy, she was able to generate interest in her work and engage with her readers who were interested in the subject of her book. It’s about creating a community that knows your book in advance and is ready to receive it once it is published.

Keep in mind that your blog won’t become popular overnight. It’s a laborious process that may take months to pick up traffic. Luckily, the results will be worth the effort. Here are some tips so you can create a blog and improve your SEO positioning and attract relevant visitors.

• Post valuable content for your readers. This means non-commercial content that focuses on addressing the concerns of your target audience. Each post on your blog is a new page that Google can index. This influences your website’s SEO. If your content has valuable information and your writing is high quality, your readers will keep reading and share it. When they do, they’ll create new links to your blog. These links contribute to improving SEO so your potential readers can find you easily on Google.

• Choose the right keywords for your posts. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and choose the words they would use to find your post through a Google search. Keywords influence the positioning of your blog’s pages for a specific search. Among the keywords that come to your mind, choose those that have lower competition and a higher volume of searches. You can figure that out with tools like SEMrush, Moz or Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

• Put your keywords in the right places. Google will list your web pages when someone searches for the keywords you selected as long as they’re in the titles of your posts, the subtitles, in the first paragraph, the snippets of the URLs (the text that appears after your domain name in the URL and that matches the title of your post); in the meta description (the summary that is shown when your website appears in a Google results page) and in the “alt” tags of the images.

• Make sure your posts have at least 2,000 words. The length of your posts is a factor that influences SEO, too. According to QuickSprout, the first 10 results Google shows for any keyword are long-form articles with a minimum of 2,000 words. Therefore, long posts tend to get better positions on Google.

• Use social networks to share your blog. Your posts are also a source of relevant content that you can share through your social profiles. Thanks to the viralization potential of social media your followers can share or retweet your posts which will generate more links and drive traffic to your blog. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are the most appropriate social platforms to share your blog since they allow you to add links to your posts.

#2 Marketing Strategy for Writers: Contact bloggers who do book reviews

A study by Collective Bias, the leading company in influencer marketing, reveals that almost 60 percent of users have taken a review in a blog or a social media post into account when making a purchase decision.

If a blogger who has thousands of followers speaks well of your book, people will want to read it, but for that to happen you must first contact the blogger(s) and build a good relationship with them. Keep in mind that it’s not worth it to send them a link to your book or ask them to read it and write a review. If they don’t know you, they probably won’t do it.

If you want to increase your chances of getting influencer reviews, follow the steps and tips below:

Investigate in social media

Explore hashtags about books on social networks to find influencers who post reviews about the books they read. For example, #bookstagram is one of the most used hashtags on Instagram for this purpose. Another less popular hashtag that may be useful to you is #bookreview.

You can also use Twitonomy which allows you to find influential profiles on Twitter from a specific hashtag. Klear also lets you search for influencers on the most popular social networks while BuzzSumo can help you find the most influential journalists and media outlets who write about the topic you’re targeting.

Analyze their social profiles

Find out what social media channels these influencers are using and look at the number of followers they have and the engagement they get on their publications (likes, shares, comments, etc.) to measure the impact that a publication of theirs could have on your book.

Above all, analyze the content they publish. If you think your book could fit in with their content, follow them. It can be useful to make a list of bloggers who have profiles you are looking for.

Interact with their content

After following them, try to capture their attention by interacting with their publications on social networks by giving them likes, commenting on their posts and sharing what you find interesting. If they have a blog, you can also leave a comment on their posts. But be careful! Do not comment publicly on their posts asking for a review, or posting a link to your book because you will probably be perceived as “spam”.

Limit yourself to observations about the content, valuable contributions to discussions if you know any of the books they recommend or congratulate them on their work. Make sure to use the same username in all your social profiles to be recognized. Add the word “writer” or “author” or something similar in your username. By doing this you’ll call more attention to yourself since they’ll know what you do before visiting your profile.

For example, the North American author KM Weiland uses the term “author” in their Instagram username.

Get in touch with them directly

After interacting with them on social media, look for a direct contact route. If you get these influencers to follow you back on Twitter or Instagram send them a private message. If they have a public email address, send them an email. In case you are targeting a journalist, you can contact the publication and ask for the journalist you are looking for.

If you can establish direct contact with them, introduce yourself, tell them what you like most about their content, tell them that you are a writer and then tell them about your book in a brief but enticing way. If your book and one of those that the influencer has recommended to his followers have anything in common, offer a comparison. This shows them that you really know their tastes and you’ll hopefully create a bond with them.

Finally, tell them that you would love to hear their opinion about your book and that, if interested, you can send them a free copy without any commitment.

Keep interacting with their content

Once you have managed to contact the influencer directly and they have agreed to read and review your book, continue interacting on their social media posts from time to time so they don’t forget you.

If you see that they haven’t published any reviews, you can write or call them to ask if they have been able to read your book and what they thought. If they have not read it yet, don’t force them. If they have already read it and their opinion is positive, tell them that you would love to be a part of their content and that you would really appreciate a review of it. 

#3 Marketing Strategy for Writers: Turn social media into your best ally

Social media is one of the most effective channels for the acquisition and retention of customers or, in this case, readers. Social media allows you to build a community of fans or followers around your brand that will be exposed to your messages.

According to a report by Social Media Examiner, 89 percent of marketers say that their activity on social media has generated more exposure for their businesses. As a writer, you have to start thinking of yourself as a brand and then build and cultivate that brand to achieve success.

Here are some ideas you can apply to your social media strategy:

Use popular hashtags in your publications

Search the most relevant book hashtags your target audience participates in and use them to tag your posts. Make sure they are popular enough to attract a good amount of visibility.

There are some tools like RiteTag, Hashtagify and Keyhole that can help you find the best hashtags. These tools will give you information about a hashtag’s popularity and their audience while also suggesting new ideas.

Show your day-to-day life in your social media

Writers tend to be more known by name than by their face. Social networks give you the opportunity to break this scheme and humanize your work. By showing yourself and your personality, you will be able to connect more with your readers. It’s okay to talk about your books but do it in a subtle way.

You must bear in mind that social networks should not be used shamelessly as promotional platforms because people don’t use them to buy things; they use them know what their friends (or the people they follow) are doing. You can publish photographs of yourself while you are writing or of everyday situations that you wish to share with your followers and make subtle allusions to your new works. You have to find the balance.

Ajay K. Pandey’s Instagram profile is a good example of this. Similarly, these photographs that the writer Jamie McGuire posted on her Facebook page about a meeting she attended in Rome are also a good example of this.

Make posts about the books you read

It’s not worth talking about your work alone. Social media was conceived as a space to share content and interact with other users. To avoid posting only about your own work and life, talk about other authors’ books and make recommendations to your followers making sure to tag the authors of the books if they have a profile on the given social network.

By doing this, there is a chance that the author will see your post and will reciprocate by making a public post recommending your work to their followers. Your visibility and sales could increase considerably if the writer has a large fanbase. Sometimes, you can gain more talking about others than talking about yourself.

Below you can see a recommendation made by the writer Jessica Knoll on her Instagram profile.

Organize contests or sweepstakes

Contests and raffles are a good way to increase the number of followers on your social profiles and get leads (users who give you their email and allow you to continue contacting them that way).

You can give away a free book by choosing randomly from all followers who comment on a specific photo or make a post using a designated hashtag. You can even have fans register for a contest through a form with their name and email address.

Post fragments of your books on Instagram

Although Instagram is known as a visual platform, there is room for your book. You can post images with snippets of text from your book. Users might be drawn to a text-heavy photo since it’s a nice surprise on feeds that are heavy with images.

For example, Robert Drake usually publishes simple images with small pieces of text from his books on his Instagram profile and still gets as much or more engagement than with other types of posts.

Ask your readers to leave a review on Facebook

According to Marketing Land, 90 percent of consumers say that positive reviews influenced their purchase decision. Facebook is the second platform after Google that people use to read reviews so try to get your readers to leave a review on your fan page.

You can also offer a discount on upcoming books or raffle off a reading-related gift, like a personalized bookend, among those who left a positive review on your Facebook page. If you get several positive reviews, people will be more inclined to buy your books.

Below you can see some of the reviews that the author Keri Beevis gets.

#4 Marketing Strategy for Writers: Create audiobooks of your writing

Audiobooks are a relatively new book format that is becoming increasingly popular in the book market. In Germany, 2.83 million people bought more than one audiobook in 2016 while copies of audiobooks went from 348,000 in 2013 to 675,300 in 2015 in Norway.

By creating audiobooks of your work you can reap more benefits including:

• Greater accessibility: One of the advantages of audiobooks is that they are accessible to people who can’t read. BBC News revealed that in the United States the illiteracy rate is 8.1 percent of the adult population. There are many people who have dyslexia or who have not had to opportunity to learn to read. If you can bring your book to the illiterate population, blind people or people with reading difficulties, you will be expanding your audience.

• More attractive format for young people: Several studies show that young people are much more accustomed and drawn to the use of new technologies than to traditional formats. Audiobooks can be the solution to the “laziness” that young people seem to have for reading. If your works are directed to a younger audience, audiobooks can be a good way to reach them.

• Multitasking: Another advantage provided by not having to read a book is the possibility of combining audiobook consumption with other daily tasks that, otherwise, could not be carried out. Just like when you listen to the radio, you can listen to an audiobook while doing other things. It’s perfect for users who don’t have time to read.

There are several websites dedicated to the sale of audiobooks including Audiobooks.com and Ivoox. Audiobooks can be easily created with apps such as Audiobookmaker, too. Here, you simply have to copy and paste the text of your book into the application, verify that it can read it and then export the audio file.

If you liked these marketing strategies for writers and want to learn more, you can also take a look at our post about Email Marketing for SMEs and find out how to create an effective newsletter that you can use to keep in touch with your fans.

The post 4 Marketing Strategies for Writers to Gain Readers [Ed. 2024] appeared first on Kolau Blog.

As part of our series of interviews in the MSME Digitalization plan in Jamaica, we would like to hear more about Nuh Gluten as our featured MSME company of the week. 

Nuh Gluten was born from an act of love by the owner for her husband who cannot eat gluten.  Her mission was to create delicious gluten-free cakes so people, like her husband who cannot eat flour, can still enjoy desserts and cakes.

It was our pleasure to interview the company’s owner, Yaneika Walker-Tomlinson and to learn how she created her artisan bakery that develops and makes fully non-gluten products.  

Nuh Gluten comes at a time where more and more people are discovering the need to look for alternatives to wheat as a result of allergies or other health conditions.  There is no reason that everyone should not be able to enjoy a cake or a dessert and to satisfy their sweet tooth!  

QUESTION: What does your company do?

ANSWER: Nuh Gluten is a gluten free artisan bakery. We produce gluten free cassava cakes from locally grown and manufactured cassava. This means we don’t use imported cassava flour.  It is all local.

Q: When did you start the company?

A: My company started in 2018 and we decided to start the business as my husband has atrial tribulation and cannot eat gluten because of this condition.  So I started experimenting and I came up with the gluten-free cassava flour.

When we were out, we would realise that there were very few gluten-free cake options.  There aren’t many desserts apart from ice-cream that are gluten free either so I began making these cakes and I now have my gluten-free cakes in three cafes around Kingston; Island Coffees Café Devon house, Ocho Rios-Island Village Plaza and Wholesome Café in the Digicel Building on Ocean Blvd.

The cakes are gluten free and flexible as they come in a variety of flavors. I have Jamaican Fruit Cake, Rum and Raisin, Banana Pumpkin Seed but the cassava flour can be used with traditional flavors like carrot cake, chocolate cake.  They come at a reasonable cost also.

Q: Tell us a bit about the company’s name –  Nuh Gluten.

A: Well, when I was researching about a possible company name, I wanted a name that was authentically Jamaican. I didn’t want to use No Gluten, I wanted a name that would represent Jamaica and the Patois language so that is how I came up with Nuh Gluten.

Q: Has the market in Jamaica grown for gluten-free products?

A: Well, what I have realized over the years and since I began the business is that most of the people that look for gluten-free products have rheumatoid arthritis and other illnesses as the gluten causes inflammation. 

Some people go ahead and do their own research about the problem. It is more like a self-diagnosis but they come to that conclusion.

People who are receiving cancer treatment also look for gluten free products and eat “clean”. Most of my customers would like to eat clean and they don`t want to eat any type of food that will cause inflammation in their bodies.

The market is definitely growing.

Q: Tell us a bit about what process you went through to when you started your business.

A: Firstly, I started alone.  I went through all the steps of the formal process to register my business.  I went to the company’s office to register the business and this was a pretty easy process.  

I decided on our how I was going to get my product to the market which was through distribution and person to person selling.   I began visiting cafes as they were already established so it was the best way to get the cakes into the cafes. 

Nuh Gluten is an artisan business and it is based at home.  But, I have purchased the Food Handlers Permit and I have a background in catering. I have a Certification in Catering.  So I have the equipment and the knowledge to know what I am doing.

Q: Has anything changed since you started the business? What are these changes?

A: When I started, I began with fruit cake only and I soon realised there was a need for more cakes. That let me to add the other flavours.

A lot people tend to gravitate to eat and then in some areas, the demand lowers so I have to go out and look for new places to sell my cakes.

I really had to do a lot of market research to understand where my customers were and then look for a café in that particular area to fill that demand.

Q: Why is it important for you to be on line as a small business owner?

A: For me, as an artisan who works from home, I don’t have a store front so to have a website, will give me that exposure for people to see me, to see the product and to get to know it. 

In this day and age, the first thing a person does when verifying a business is to go online and if you are not online, you don’t exist. 

It is very important to be online nowadays.

Q: Do you advertise your product on other digital platforms or with traditional media sources?

A: I don’t really.  I started an Instagram page but I didn’t keep up it up to date or upgrade it.  I am weak when it comes to marketing the product. My strongest point is producing the product and talking to people.  With the marketing side of the business, I could definitely get some help from someone.

Q: Do you work alone or do you have more team members?

A: I work alone but when the workload is heavy, I have casual workers that come in and help out. I take them on under-contract. I don’t want to hire people and have to pay over-head so with contract workers, it works out fine and we are able to reach our product production goals.

Q: Do you have a lot of completion in the creation of gluten free cakes?

A: There isn’t a lot of competition in general terms. There are other companies that make or are dabbling in gluten free products but they also make products with wheat. They also make desserts using regular flour.

I don`t do that and that sets me apart from the competition. Because of my husband’s heart condition, I don’t use any wheat flour in my cooking. I have a completely gluten free kitchen.  

Q: Based on your experience, what would be your top three tips you would give to maybe a new generation who wants to become a business owner, start their own business, or is in the process of a startup.

A: Firstly, understand and be knowledgeable about the field you are going into. Secondly, do your market research, because you might have a product but if there is no customer base to purchase your product, you are not in business.

Lastly, your team, whatever you do, you have a have a team.  While, I don’t have employees on a full time basis, I don`t do this alone. 

And always have a plan! You can’t build a business with a plan!

Q: What do you most enjoy about your business?

A:The greatest thing for me about my business and what I most enjoy is to see the smile on people’s faces when they eat the product. The can`t believe it doesn`t have any flour in it.

This is what I most like about it; the joy people feel when they try my product, especially for the first time.  The understand that it is just as delicious as cakes made with regular flour.

Q: What has been your greatest challenge?

A: I would have to say our greatest challenge is finance and getting the products to the market.  I am working on getting the products to the market through marketing but if you don`t the financial backing, to get the product where you would like it to be, it is very difficult or won’t be as effective.

If you would have asked me that question before, I would have said business knowledge and finance but I am currently studying entrepreneurship so that is helping me with business knowledge aspect with how to run the business, how to structure the business and all that. So, now it is a financial thing.

Q: Where do you see your business in the next 5 years?

A: In 5 years, I see my business in more store front businesses, cafes and supermarket shelves.  

I am not interested in having my own store front business as that would limit us to just one space but I would like to be on a lot of supermarket shelves and possibly even start exporting to other countries.

Q: Do you have even motto that you live by?

A: Well, our company’s motto is “Gluten Free – Delicious Treats without Wheat”. This is simple but sums up what we do and what we are about.

Every week, we highlight a company from Jamaica, within the framework of the MSME Digitalization Plan, whose trajectory, achievements and experience are an inspiration to all of us. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to bring these great stories together and learn from them.

The post Interview with Nuh Gluten – MSME Digitalization plan in Jamaica appeared first on Kolau Blog.

As part of our series of interviews in the MSME Digitalization plan in Jamaica, we would like to hear more about Develop Digitally Limited as our featured MSME company of the week.  

Develop Digitally is focused on assisting the agricultural sector through the use of blockchain technology and providing access to loans for Jamaican farmers.  The company`s core value is to assist farmers to become more productive and solve agricultural issues.

The company`s marketing strategy is fully on-line and it has a clear understanding of the added value of projecting the company through the web site despite the fact that they have a very particular customer base.

It was our pleasure to interview the company’s owner, Varun Baker and to learn how he has successfully applied his knowledge of technology to create new opportunities for farmers to become more productive through access to financial support with his project, Farm Credibly.  

QUESTION: How was the idea of your company born?

ANSWER: I do general IT consulting.  At the moment we are focused on a very specific platform, and we are building on which is technology applied to the agriculture sector.  It is called Farm Credibly. We are focused on access to finance in agriculture and farmers especially. We basically do alternative credit scoring for farmers so they can have access to loans, micro-investments to help them become more productive.

Q: How does Farm Credibly work? 

A: While we do have a signup process on line the truth is most of our good performing farmers come to us via reference.  We reach out within the agricultural ecosystem here and we try to find out who are the productive farmers.

For instance, now we are looking at hot pepper farmers. So, we speak to agro-processors who create pepper mash and they have challenges every year because they can`t get enough hot peppers.  We ask them who their top farmers are, who are the most productive farmers. We ask different stakeholders; some give out awards every year to farmers. We use them as reference points to know who is productive and who would be more productive with access to capital.

At the moment, I know it is very hard for farmers to get a loan.  About 90% of farmers don`t have access to credits and loans. This is where we assist.

Q: Why is it hard for the agricultural sector to get loans?

A: Formal financial institutions consider the agricultural sector as a high risk. They don`t understand enough about the sector to be able to decide and make decisions so they just ignore the whole thing.

This is where we come in with a level of expertise so that loans can be processed and people who are doing the lending don`t have to have the expertise and knowledge about agriculture and farming. They can lean on our credit scoring which is based on validated points that the farmer already does business with.

Q: Is Farm Credibly open to all farmers?

A: This business is not about everyone and all the farmers.  There are 200.000 registered farmers in Jamaica and most of them don`t have access to loans and this is where we come in and can assist. 

Many of them are very productive and have very successful businesses but it is mostly cashed based. It is very difficult for them to access credit.

So we use technology to make this process easier.  Farmers can continue to do what they love which is farming and we have to build up a profile for them.

Q: How important are the farmers for the Jamaican economy?

A: Agriculture contributes to Jamaica in 7% of the GPD. That`s about 14-15% when you include the manufacturing that also depends on this.  It is a significant part of our economy. This is even bigger in other countries so I know that this is a challenge on a global level.

Q: How long have you been doing this particular business?

A: This project really got started in 2017 but I have been working in agriculture with technology that is my background for over the last 10 years.  So, I have had a lot of experience speaking to farmers. My skill set is really technology and software engineering.

Q: So how did you go from software engineering to agriculture? Did you have some type of interest or was it by accident?

A: Yes, it was interest. I co-founded a non-profit organization called Slashroots Foundation. It was a group of us and one of the first areas we decided to tackle on was agriculture and the use of data in agriculture so at this time we ran a very specific programme which was the theft of crops and livestock which is very common in Jamaica, unfortunately.

So, it is a very big problem to solve but it was a very good entry point for me and helped me to understand what our farmers really wanted and needed.  They would say that it was good that we are working on something but that was not their priority.

They told me that they needed access to markets and to finance. So here I am a long time later focused on these things.

Q: Tell us a bit about your business and your collaborators.

A: I am the founder and we have a team of about 5 who are mainly part-time consultants who work with us on a project basis. There is an administrative assistant who works with me and a project manager, a part-time designer and about 3-part time developers and we all work on projects together.

Q: Where is your office based?

A: We have one office in Kingston. Of course, we work in many different places. Agriculture is mainly outside of the city so we do a lot of travelling and we work from a few different locations when necessary. But our head office is in the heart of Kingston.

Q: Do you have any competition in this particular area or you are the only one doing that?

A: It`s a recognised challenge to tackle on an international level. In countries like Kenya, there are companies like Farm Drive that are doing it.  Specifically, with the type of technology we use, there are sometimes really big companies that are working on similar credit score algorithms and blockchain technology. IBM is a very strong contender when it comes to providing blockchain solutions and services.

Q: And in Jamaica, you are the number one?

A: In this very special category, yes I would say we are. There are other companies doing lending and offer fin-tech solutions to the agricultural sector.  

Q: Why would someone recommend you? Do you have something different that gives you an edge on the competition?

A: We have experience in this area and we have been building this product for some time now. So our credit scores are gaining interest in the ecosystem and people have really gotten on board with what we are doing.

Q: What marketing strategies have you used since you started the business?

A: We are usually online in terms of reaching an audience and informing people about what we do. It`s a bit different than perhaps other companies you work within the sense that you are not offering a product to the entire world publicly. We have a very specific customer base that we are looking at.

So we aren`t really pushed out in terms of Google ad words doing online advertising. But, it is entirely online. If we end up in the newspaper here and there, it wasn`t because we wanted to advertise there, it was because of journalism.

Q: Based on your experience, what would be your top three tips you would give to maybe a new generation who wants to become a business owner, start their own business, or is in the process of a startup.

A: Definitely, get online, establish a web presence and get your products out there. Reach out to your customers. That is really what is going to matter, whatever you do.   If anyone would like help during this process, they can contact us and we would be more than willing to assist. 

But definitely get on line. Kolau is a great service in that sense. It is very straight forward and is a really easy way to get a web site established.

Q: What do you feel is the best way to build customer loyalty?

A: I think that it is closely related to value. You have your own brand identity that customers are attracted to. If you want customers to be loyal, you need to show this by giving real value and that you have a level of credibility to yourself as well. 

I think you gain their trust in some way.  I think these are the strongest ways of having a good track record.

Q: What do you most enjoy about your business?

A: Well, I like that even though it is tech-based, it also involves a lot of going out into the field and being in contact and communicating with real people rather than just being attached to a computer.

It is also about learning and rewarding to see how productive the food sector really can be. It is great from that perspective too.

Q: Where do you see your business in the next 5 years?

A: We would like to go beyond the Jamaica shores and grow the market.  I have travelled a bit and I have recognised that there are markets with similar challenges and that are much bigger than Jamaica.

I look forward to improving our own track record and gaining the loyalty of our customers firstly in Jamaica but expanding beyond too.

Q: Do you have even motto that you live by?

A: We are making productive farms more productive.  This is one of our core values. That sums up the main driver behind our business. 

Every week, we highlight a company from Jamaica, within the framework of the MSME Digitalization Plan, whose trajectory, achievements and experience are an inspiration to all of us. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to bring these great stories together and learn from them.

The post Interview with Develop Digitally Limited – MSME Digitalization plan in Jamaica appeared first on Kolau Blog.

As part of our series of interviews in the MSME Digitalization plan in Jamaica, we would like to showcase Camaria School of Locs, Brads and Barbering Technology as our featured MSME company of the week.  This Beauty School offers specialized courses in a number of beauty based techniques preparing students to professionalise in an ever-growing market for expert beauty services.

It was our pleasure to interview Camaria Thomas and to delve into the exciting world of a beauty school and the fields of specialization that the Camaria School offers to its students. What certainly stood out during our interview was Camaria’s passion for teaching and learning and creating opportunities for future beauty professionals.

When asked what her company’s motto is, Camaria stated: “Every teacher is a student and every student is a teacher.”  Her beauty school is a space where sharing knowledge is dear to Camaria’s heart and a core feature of her business.

QUESTION: In general terms, what does your company do?

ANSWER: The Camaria School has a management philosophy built on commitment and mutual agreement in maintaining a highly professional environment for all students.

The Camaria School of Locs, Braids and Barbering Technology is a registered beauty school that opened its doors in 2017.  We provide education in beauty care with specialized courses in barbering, wig making, braiding, nails, locs and make-up artistry.

Our series of short courses are designed to empower students and prepare them to meet and exceed the high-level pressures from an entrepreneurial standpoint and to achieve industry recognition.

Q: When did you start your business and how long have you been in the field?

A: I am Camaria Thomas, the founder, and general manager of Camaria School of Locs, Braids and Barbering Technology.  With more than 20 years of experience, I began my house-call business in 1997 and then in 2016 gave my first braid workshop.

I consider myself an industry leader who is dreaming beyond the Jamaican shorelines! I would like to expand my school to include distance learning on a global scale and give my business international exposure.

Q: Why did you decide to start your own business? What were your motivations?

A: My business was born from my love for hairdressing, sharing my knowledge and as a solution to the high demand for hairdressing services and classes. 

Thanks to the positive support from my clients who would ask me to teach them braiding in their homes, I decided to take the initiative with courage and belief in myself to start the business.

Opening up my beauty school also meant that I could focus my passion for teaching in one place instead of seeking employment wherever the opportunity arose and the financial uncertainty that this caused.

Q: When you decided to start, how did you start? What has changed since your inception?

A: My business began by visiting clients’ homes to teach them different beauty techniques.  I then began to offer workshops soon after.

Presently, we have courses that are certified and accepted by Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation after having met a number of the regulatory requirements to function as a school.   

Q: How important do you think it is for small businesses to have a website and why?

A: A website is very valuable for a business especially because technology is in a constant state of change.   

A week after creating Camaria Beauty School Locs, Braids and Barbering Technology website with Kolau, there was a significant increase in business. 

This means that the website is a multifunctional tool to create product and service awareness and provide market exposure.

Q: Do you think it is important to have your business on the internet? Why?

A: The Internet is the easiest way for businesses to connect with customers and clients and interface with other businesses. It is also an affordable way to achieve brand awareness.

When a business is on the internet, the capacity to gain vital customer data and their purchasing habits by doing digital market research is important.  You then can use this valuable data to create marketing strategies to increase business profits.

For me, the internet has positively impacted my business by consistently reaching my audience at an affordable cost.  Furthermore, it allows the distribution of the market share among competitors

Q: How do you advertise your products? Do you use social networks or other methods to publicize your products?

A: Active social media presence builds relationships and networks across the globe. Networking is about creating a profit-making business, sharing ideas and knowledge, interaction and learning. 

My business, Camaria Beauty School of Locs, Braids and Barbering Technology also uses traditional marketing methods including promotions, flyers, online directories to complement our social media marketing and branding strategies.

Q: How do you see your business in the next 5 years?

A: The business long term goals for the next 5 years include a variety of initiatives to continue to grow and share knowledge about beauty techniques.  These are providing the most experienced and knowledgeable staff to the schools’ students, providing on-line classes and career development advice with the use of technology.

I would also like to add courses to the Beauty School’s portfolio to include tattoo, body piercing, body waxing (skincare).

My plans also include the creation of a magazine or a book that specialises in African specific beauty needs including dark pigment beauty care, products, and lifestyle as there is little access to this information at present.

I am not only a teacher of locs, braids and barbering technology, but I am also a coach and an advisor for my students in their continued education as professionals to reach long-term success as beauty technicians and as entrepreneurs.  The willingness to take risks, to unlearn and learn and to have the gift of patience are my key tips for future business owners.

Every week, we highlight a company from Jamaica, within the framework of the MSME Digitalization Plan, whose trajectory, achievements and experience are an inspiration to all of us. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to bring these great stories together and learn from them.

The post Interview with Camaria School – MSME Digitalization Plan in Jamaica appeared first on Kolau Blog.

As part of our series of interviews in the MSME Digitalization Plan in Jamaica, we would like you to hear more about Health and Wellness Consultant to Travelers as our featured MSME company of the week.  

Health Travel Companion offers integrated primary care service for its clients that look to restore optimal wellness and empowerment through the use of counseling and medicine from a sustainable standpoint. The service’s motto is: 

Coaching happens when someone hands you their trust and you hand them back their greatness.

The company offers a wide range of health services for its clients that are attended by the on-site staff and a network of specialized professionals that guarantees the high-level service the business maintains. Another aspect that Health Travel has understood is the importance of technology in building the business and strengthening its professional and client base!

It was our pleasure to interview the company’s owner, Dr. Susan Lowe and to see how her medical degree and many years of experience in the health field as a counsellor and coach has transformed into a wellness coaching and counselling business.

QUESTION:  In general, what does your company do?

ANSWER: I am a completely integrated primary care service including traditional and alternative medicine, wellness coaching and counselling including nutrition, sexuality, pain management, mental and emotional work.

The services are offered online, office-based or in non-traditional settings ranging from the beach, elegant night spots to mountainside getaways.

I also enjoy public speaking and presenting on health, wellness and other subject matter and I’m developing a special niche market for business travellers on their downtime. 

Q:  Why did you decide to start your own business? What were the reasons, what motivated you?

A: It was clear to me that half the work of curing or enabling people to manage their conditions/issues was their mindset and that the internet wave was going to play an enormous part in the story.

I also figured that since men use health services far less than women, if presented with convenience and anonymity via a gadget (their numerous IT devices) there was likely an extra untapped market that could be served – men.

Q: When you decided to start, how did you start? What has changed since your inception?

A: The website has been scaled down to one of attractive simplicity and now via the Government of Jamaica’s initiative, I’m taking advantage of the Kolau/Google partnership.

I have also added public speaking engagements, consultancies and upgraded to a more comfortable office minutes from the main business travel centre of Kingston.

I now want to increase the community I serve to visitors and guests to Jamaica. There is something I’ve noticed about the responsiveness of clients who are time-capsuled outside the milieu of their regular lives back home. They are more relaxed and open to their own intuition and any help I offer.

Q: What do you think your company does differently from your competition? What distinguishes you?

A: Complete integration with training and certification in the gamut of health provision – medical degree, masters in coaching/counselling, basic assessment in alternative medicine, nutrition, and paralegal training, long years of experience (30) and amazing networking within and outside the sector.

My personality means I use techniques so the coaching or counselling process is lighter, gets to the point and frees or cures the clients to be able to manage themselves.  I’m more like a muse.

Q: How do you see your business in the next 5 years?

A: I will have built up my public speaking engagements including sessions abroad, the health tourism niche of wellness coach to visitors and travellers and added the service of being a consultant health travel companion while the client is on tour via air, sea or land.

The company’s name; Health and Wellness Consultant to Travellers is named after this favourite niche.

Q: What inspired you to enter this industry? Do you have any favourite activities related to your work?

A: I had been a degreed counsellor for years and found the process was more powerful when supplementing it with medicine. But I remain convinced that half of what it takes to get a client back into action is in their minds.

I have a gift for getting clients to realise their own power in creating optimal wellness of any kind; mental, social, emotional, sexual, pain management and nutrition.

Travel was also an inspiration to enter the industry. I love moderately paced business travel and the cultural exchange that goes with it. I have functional Spanish to this end.

Q: How important do you think it is for small businesses to have a website? Why?

A: It can’t be escaped anymore, it’s like your phone number and land address. Initially, you can get more of your word out at a fraction of the effort and cost of the older ways of doing business.

Q: How do you advertise your products? Do you use social networks or some other method to publicise your products?

A: I have LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and as often as possible engage in ‘guerilla marketing’. I’ve done the latter twice quite successfully once with our top car rental agency Island Car Rentals and once with Kingston’s top bistro for a session during Restaurant Week called ‘Wine & a Little Sex’.

Q: What advice would you give to other business owners who are starting or are in the process of starting their business? Give us 3 tips.

A: Do not waste money on grandiose web schemes at first. Make sure whoever helps you at startup has the same or a clear understanding of your vision. Stick to your vision and don’t work on more than 3 branches of it at one time.

Q: What do you do for customers to return to your business? Do you use any strategy to build customer loyalty?

A: I approach this in complete reverse to most private health providers. I love to ‘get rid’ of you. By that I mean I’ve either cured you or taught you to manage yourself. I teach that I do half the work and the client does the other half. There is full transparency of all my work and once my work is done I expect it is done well enough that the client will not have to keep coming back and will refer new clients to me. If I can’t help a client in two years, I refer him or her or release them so I don’t waste their time and money. 

Every week, we highlight a company from Jamaica, within the framework of the MSME Digitalization Plan, whose trajectory, achievements and experience are an inspiration to all of us. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to bring these great stories together and learn from them.

The post Interview with Health and Wellness Consultant to Travelers – MSME Digitalization Plan in Jamaica appeared first on Kolau Blog.

Create your website quickly and easily clicking here – Offer available for a limited time only.

Do you remember the scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go?

“Well, that depends on where you want to get to,” the cat responds.
“Oh, it really doesn’t matter,” Alice replies.
“Then, it really doesn’t matter which way you go,” the cat concludes.

This passage teaches us a valuable lesson: Knowing where we want to go is important in order to get there. Therefore, knowing how to write a marketing plan allows you to draw your road map and discover what path to take to achieve your goals (to attract and retain customers).

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be extensive or complicated. Rather, the best marketing plans are short and simple. However, the key to writing an effective marketing plan lies in a great paradox: the difficulty of achieving simplicity.

In the words of Leonardo Da Vinci: 

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  

Similarly, Steve Jobs discussed the idea when he said, “Simple can be more difficult than complex.” Even Albert Einstein himself said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” However, it might be aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson who alluded to this concept the best using four simple letters: KISS—“Keep It Simple Stupid.” 

This guide will help you discover how to make a marketing plan in a simple way, based on the KISS concept and the extended model known as the “1 Page Marketing Plan.” This model has been defended by numerous marketing academics including Philip Kotler but was spread widely by entrepreneur Allan Dib through his best-seller of the same name. 

Is it Essential to Have a Marketing Plan?

Marketing plans are a tried and true method that are continuously used all over the world for companies big and small. However, in the SME universe, it seems that the concept or, at least its implementation, is not as widespread as it should be. 

According to a recent study carried out by Outbound Engine, 50 percent of SMEs don’t have an established marketing plan. The lack of this piece of the business puzzle can result in a stagnation or even a reduction of sales for a company.

While no one is sure why SMEs typically lack a sound marketing plan, it may be due to the fact that marketing plans—traditionally speaking—are perceived to be complex documents more than 100 pages in length. This is seen as a great waste of time and resources to most business owners who are more focused on meeting customer demands and staying within their set budgets. 

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Marketing plans should always be simple. As Allan Dib says in his book, the 64/4 rule should always be applied to any marketing plan:

The 1 page marketing plan is 4% of the effort generated by 64% (or more) of the results in your business.  

So, it can be assumed that SMEs choose to shy away from marketing plans for their perceived complexity, but it doesn’t prove whether or not a marketing plan is essential for the long-term operation of a company.

Taking into account that a report by the Press and Communication agency found that 87 percent of SMEs that closed in 2018 didn’t have a professional marketing plan, it’s safe to say that marketing plans are essential for a business’s long-term success.

What is the Purpose of a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan can help you organize your marketing strategies and focus on achieving your goals for your company. 

As defined by Sally Dibb and Lyndon Simkin in their book, Marketing: Concepts and Strategies, “marketing planning is a systematic process involving the assessment of marketing opportunities and resources, the determination of marketing objectives and the development of a plan for implementation and control.“

To give you a clearer idea, your one-page strategic marketing plan should allow you to organize your marketing strategies into three phases precisely related to your customers’ purchase cycle:

• Before your potential customer makes a purchase.

• During the purchase.

• After your potential customer has bought and officially become a customer.

At the same time, it should allow you to answer the following questions about your business:

• Who do you want to reach (your target audience)?

• What do you mean (your message for your target audience)?

• How are you going to reach  them (the means you will use to reach your target audience)?

• How are you going to capture their interest (your lead capture system)?

• How are you going to establish a relationship with them (your lead nurturing system)?

• How are you going to turn them into customers (your conversion strategy)?

• How will you do it to offer a world-class experience?

• How will you increase the value of your customers?

• How will you do it to be recommended (your referral program)?

These nine questions are the starting point and the backbone of everything your marketing plan should contain and this is how the one-page marketing plan proposed by Allan Dib is structured.

To build your own one-page marketing plan, follow this step-by-step guide based on the nine questions above.

Step 1: Find and analyze your target audience

The key to the success of any business often lies in what it knows about its potential customers. A business needs to know their clients perfectly including demographics, location and spending habits in order to offer them a product or service completely suited to their needs.

Today, mass marketing is no longer meaningful and directing your products or services to “everyone” for fear of losing potential customers is the main mistake many small businesses make. It is impossible to do something that suits everybody’s needs and, at the end of the day, you’ll have a better chance of getting noticed when addressing a smaller audience than you would trying to capture the attention of a large pool of customers.

You may be thinking that limiting your audience will limit the growth of your business, but this simply isn’t true. You can always create new products or services aimed at new “small pools” that together can exceed the size of the large pool you initially wanted to address.

Therefore, start by finding a market niche and dominating it by creating a product or service along with a well-written message that responds to the needs of this segmented group.

Think about it this way, when you break a bone, you’d rather see a specialist than a general practitioner. The same idea can be applied when choosing between similar businesses. By establishing yourself as a specialist and not a general practitioner, you can grow your business by attracting people who need your product or service instead of attracting people who just have an interest in what you’re offering.  

More so, mastering a niche allows you to set a higher price since those who need your product or service know that you are offering exactly what they are looking for and trust that the quality will be better due to the fact that you are a specialist in your field.

Analyzing your potential customers (either through surveys or through the definition of your ideal client), you will be able to figure out how to achieve your business goals by optimizing your resources and knowing what trends to look for.

In the era of 1-to-1 communication, you need to personalize your communications and your actions based on what you know about your potential customers. According to a Salesforce Research survey of more than 6,700 consumers worldwide, it is estimated that 75 percent of consumers will want to find a personalized shopping experience by 2020. 

For example, the website of the online fashion store Zalando shows a subscription form for its newsletter that asks its potential customers to indicate if they are interested in fashion for men or women.

This detail allows them to determine the person’s gender so they can personalize the emails they’ll send to them to show only what fits their interests. 

You can have more than one client profile, so analyze and define each profile to know exactly who your audience is, where you can find them and what message you want to deliver to them. 

To do this, you can rely on the popular 5W + 1H model widely used in journalism and research:

• Who is your client?: Are they a private individual, a company, a man, a woman, a child, a teenager? How old are they?

• What does our client want?: Are they looking for an expensive or cheap product? Do they prefer quality? Are they looking for personalized attention?

• When do they buy?: Do they do it frequently? Do they make planned purchases or are they more spontaneous?

• Where is our client?: Where do they live or stay? What sites do they visit (both in the real world and online)?

• Why do they buy?: What needs do they have and why would they want to buy your products or services? 

• How do they buy your product or service?: Do they buy in large quantities or individually? Do they do it online or do they prefer to go to a physical store? What payment methods do they use?

By answering these questions, you can develop multiple client profiles that will serve as the first step in your marketing plan. 

Step 2: Build your marketing message

Once you determine your target audience and create client profiles based on that audience, it’s time to create a message to get their attention. This has to be done properly since it can be the difference between reaching your audience and talking to a wall.

A message with a purpose

Every marketing message you add to your plan needs to exist to achieve a single goal. This can be anything from your potential customers contacting you, visiting your physical store, filling out a form, remembering your brand or buying a specific product or service. 

In the same way that you have selected a specific target audience to focus all your efforts on, you must also select a specific goal for your message and focus on it.

Base your message on a unique sales proposition

A Unique Sales Proposition (USP), is a concept that is used to refer to the factor that differentiates your product from that of your competition when it comes to selling it. 

To define your unique sales proposition, you must be clear about why your business exists (your mission) and why people should buy from you and not from your competition. For example, the mission of Microsoft, as the company itself explains on its website, is “to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.”

As you can see, its purpose is not only to sell operating systems, programs or devices like any other software company. Microsoft sells “productivity” just as Coca-Cola sells “happiness.” What are you selling? 

Do an experiment. Do you think that if you remove the logo and name of your company from your website, your customers could still recognize you? If yes, it means that you have defined your unique sales proposition well. If not, and your website looks like that of any other company in the sector, you need to work on it. 

Keep in mind that selling “quality” or a “good service” will not allow you to stand out, since it is something that your audience already expects from you.

Create your unique sales proposition based on what your potential customers want to achieve. People don’t want your product or service, they want what your product or service will allow them to achieve. Think about it.

Keep the medium in mind when creating the message

In his book Kotler on Marketing, Philip Kotler, with good reason, states:

The decision on the design of the message interacts with the decision of the medium [through which it will be transmitted]. 

Your message and its purpose must be defined with the characteristics of the medium you choose to transmit it in order for the message to be effective. 

For example, imagine that you own a sushi restaurant and your goal is to get your potential customers to make a reservation through your ad. You are considering creating ads on Instagram and buying a space in a local magazine. The nature of these two platforms is very different so your message should be presented in different ways.

The magazine’s ad format is more limited consisting of text and an image. The most effective option will probably be to focus your message on getting the potential customer to call your business. Therefore, highlighting, above all, your phone number is one of the most important factors.

Instead, on Instagram you can use photos or videos, add emojis in the text to get attention and direct your potential customers directly to your website to make an online reservation.

In this example, the goal is the same and the message is the same but the way the message is delivered varies based on where the advertisement is placed. 

Don’t talk only about your company and your product

Obviously, you have to present your product or service to the public to sell it, but don’t fall into the mistake of talking only about its characteristics and how good your company is. Focus on talking about the benefits it provides and how it can offer a solution to a problem or concern your potential customers face.

For example, Domino’s Pizza launched an effective marketing message with an excellent single sale proposal highlighting a benefit that differentiated themselves from their competitors. The message read: “Receive a hot and fresh pizza at your door in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.”

If they had only highlighted that they offered “Pizzas delivered to your home,” no matter how good their pizza was, they would not have stood out among the competition. Therefore, it is important to find something different and remarkable that makes you stand out to beat your competition.

Step 3: Select the media or channels you will use to reach your potential customers

Based on the objectives you have defined above and the information you have gathered about your customers, including their location and behavior, choose the marketing channels that you think will best allow you to reach them. Take into account your resources and then define the strategies and actions that you will use in each channel. 

For this, you must also take into account the 4Ps of the marketing mix – price, product, place (distribution) and promotion Philip Kotler created the theory and defines it as “the mix of controllable marketing variables that the company uses to achieve the desired level of sales in the target market.”

For example, suppose your company is dedicated to the sale of top-brand appliances nationwide sold through an online store with a goal to increase the sales of high-end LG smart TVs. Since you’re selling an expensive product,  you can invest more into promoting the devices with less risk of a negative return. 

In this same example, you know that your potential customers tend to search for your products through Google so you define Google Ads as one of your marketing channels. Here, you create Google search ads to promote this product nationwide.

To define the channels and strategies to use in your marketing plan, you can classify them as follows:

Online marketing channels and strategies

According to the 2019 Small Business Marketing Trends Report carried out by Keap, the three online channels and tactics that more SMEs plan to use this year are social networks (48 percent), digital advertising (23 percent) and email marketing (23 percent). Here are the main channels and tactics to consider:

• Blog: Content marketing

• Search engines: SEO and search engine advertising

• Other websites and apps: Display marketing, affiliate marketing

• E-mail: E-mail marketing

• Social media: Content marketing and social media advertising

Offline marketing channels and strategies

Another survey carried out by OutboundEngine reveals that for 11.67 percent of SMEs the most successful marketing channel has been traditional advertising while 13.61 percent of SMEs say their success came from events. Here are the main offline channels and tactics to consider:

• Traditional media: Advertising or press, television and local radio appearances

• Stationery: Creation of flyers, brochures, guides and other publications

• Traditional advertising supports: Billboards, etc.

• Fairs and events: Participation in fairs and organization of events 

Defining your marketing budget

It’s time to make one of the most difficult decisions, especially for SMEs: setting your marketing budget. Among small businesses, there is a general tendency to see marketing as an expense instead of an investment and this is why, according to the aforementioned OutboundEngine study, more than half of SMEs tend to spend less than 5% of their total budget on marketing. 

If you look at the data provided by the OutboundEngine study, there is no doubt that investing more in marketing usually means gaining more. Specifically, 81 percent of SMEs that invested between 5 percent and 10 percent of their annual budget on marketing actions during 2018, saw their sales increase. On the other hand, those that invested less than 5 percent of their budget, experienced a decrease in their sales.

Try to find out the advertising cost of each channel you want to use to advertise your products or services and the cost of the staff you need to carry out the strategy. Then, distribute your budget based on the cost and your marketing objectives.

Once you launch your campaigns, you will know if the return you get is positive and if it would be profitable to invest more money in the channel. At this point, you may see that you’re spending more than you earn which means you must stop using that specific marketing channel. 

You can find free budget templates to make this task easier on Smartsheet:

Step 4: Define your lead capture system

A lead is a potential customer that has shown interest in your product or service.

Getting a lead’s contact details and storing them in a database is key to generating more sales. Why? As an analysis by Kissmetrics demonstrates, 96 percent of visitors who come to your website are not ready to buy immediately. They may be ready in a month or a year, but if they never hear from you again, you lose them.

If you have a direct communication channel with them, you can continue sending them messages and cultivate a relationship that will eventually end up in a sale. For this reason, Allan Dib argues that you should not try to sell something directly through your ads. Instead, you should create a direct contact road with your potential customers.

To do this, you have to legally get your leads’ contact information. This is done through a lead magnet (a hook to attract potential customers). 

Imagine that you are the owner of a real estate agency that sells residential houses. Your target audience is young couples looking for their first home. Instead of creating an ad that says, “buy your first home,” you decide to offer an eBook on your website with useful information about everything you need to consider before buying your first home. Your potential clients can download it for free if, in exchange, they fill out a form with their name and email.

This eBook acts as a hook and will allow you to continue communicating through email with potential clients who you know are interested in buying their first home.

There are many types of lead magnets that you can use to gather contact details from potential customers. Other examples to choose from are: 

• Free trials for a limited time in the case of software or applications 

• Free advice or a consultation for a service 

• Participation in surveys to generate individual reports 

• eBooks, guides, or video series 

• Coupons and/or discounts 

• Opportunities for social media contests

Be sure to pick the incentive that will work best for your type of business and resources.

Step 5: Define your lead nurturing system

Once you have a database with your leads and their contact information, you have to supply them with valuable content in order to build a relationship with them that will grow into sales. 

Lead nurturing is the process of ensuring that people who are vaguely interested in your product or service end up wanting it and willing to buy it. 

That doesn’t mean presenting your product and asking or demanding them to buy it. If you do this, chances are your leads run out and your emails go straight to the trash or spam folder. 

Send them relevant information about your industry, information on how to get the most out of what you offer or a discounted offer from time to time. Whatever you do, don’t make the traditional sales pitch.

For example, Trello, a company that designed an application to facilitate the administration and organization of projects for companies, sends its subscribers a newsletter with links to blog posts with valuable content related to their business.

In this case, Trello invites its subscribers to discover a Japanese routine to increase productivity. This shows that they know their potential customers and that they take into account their needs and concerns in order to provide them with valuable information that doesn’t turn into a sales pitch. In this way, they can cultivate their relationship with their potential customers until they are ready to purchase their service naturally. 

To have greater control of your lead nurturing system and manage it easily, it’s best to use a marketing automation software called a CRM (Client Relationship Manager). This will let you know which potential customers have taken action after reading your messages and which have not, and will automate communication with them. 

There are several tools you can use to feed your leads from a blog, a newsletter, SMS and email auto responders, your social channels and sending free reports to podcasts, online videos, direct mail sequences or even handwritten notes. Each one has its advantages, so choose the ones you think best fit your customer profile.

Step 6: Define your conversion strategy

While maintaining a relationship with potential customers through valuable content is important, you have to turn to converting those potential customers into actual buyers. You can do this by building trust and showing them that your company brings them enough value to be worth buying from you and not the competition.

This is made easier by setting up a good lead nurturing system since that can help establish trust and show your value as a company. These two characteristics of a business is what helps people decide to buy a product or service from one company instead of their competition. The perception of your online business plays an important role; if this is not favorable, the conversions will not take place.

Here are some tips for you to build a credible image and an environment suitable for conversion: 

• Buy a domain for your website: Do not use free domains for your website or for your email. Otherwise, your company won’t present a professional image and you will lose credibility.

• Add your company’s contact information on your website: Your phone, email and the address of your office or store must be included on your website even if you don’t sell or offer services in a physical way. Otherwise, your potential customers won’t be able to contact you or they may think that your company is fictitious or does not offer customer support.

• Avoid showing too many options or pricing plans: Two pricing plans (standard and premium) are enough, since, as a famous study by Professor Iyengar of Columbia University demonstrates, offering too many options causes a mental block in the consumer preventing them from making a purchase decision easily.

• Offer a specific guarantee to avoid uncertainty: Do not limit yourself by adding vague phrases like “guaranteed satisfaction” or “quality service” in your messages. Explain it precisely to convey more confidence. For example, “Our certified technicians with more than 10 years of experience will effectively solve any type of breakdown in your appliance and will call you back in 15 minutes. If we don’t fulfill any of these promises, we will refund twice the billable amount of the consultation.”

• Offer your customers a free trial: By doing this, you can break the sales barrier and show your potential customers that buying your product or hiring your service is worth it. This is a strategy that can dramatically increase your conversion rate. According to a study conducted by Zendesk, this can increase your conversion rate up to 30 percent.

Step 7: Define how you’ll offer a top-notch experience

Already entering the third phase (“after the purchase”) and having successfully converted potential customers into actual buyers, you have to make sure that your customers become fans of your brand so they become loyal customers who will return to buy more products or use your service again (or continuously).

Look at Apple, one of the benchmarks in this type of marketing. When they launch a new product or a simple variation of a product, their tribe of fans flood the streets to line up in front of their nearest Apple Stores to get the latest product.

So, what has Apple done and what can you do to make this phenomenon happen? The key is in selling what your customers need and being innovative.

Sell what your customers want but also what they need

You can offer the strongest anti-theft backpack in the world, but your clients also need it to be beautiful and easy to open and close. Your clients may want the most complete online software to create web pages but they need it to be easy to use or come with an effective and accessible support service.

Come up with an innovative way you sell your product or service

Innovation does not always have to be in the product or service itself. You can sell an ordinary product but come up with an innovative way to set its price, distribute it, package it or promote it.

For example, Ikea launched their Catalog application in 2013. This not only allows its customers to see the furniture catalog (ordinary product) but they can also see how each piece would fit in their domestic spaces thanks to augmented reality (innovation).

Step 8: Define how to increase the lifetime value of your customers

A marketing guide from Custora University defines the customer’s lifetime value (CLV) as a prediction of all the value that a business will obtain throughout a relationship with a consumer. 

If you apply the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, to this concept you could say that 80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your customers. Although these percentages are not exactly like that, it is about identifying the customers that bring more value to your business either because they are willing to pay more, buy more frequently, recommend your services, contribute ideas or consume less resources. Once you identify them, you have to figure out how to increase their value. 

There are several tactics you can use to “filter” your customers and identify which ones are the most valuable in order to increase their value.  

Increase your prices

How long has it been since you increased the prices of your products or services? As previously stated, if you are able to offer a value to your customers that goes beyond the price, increasing it slightly shouldn’t be a problem for many of your customers, provided you give them a valid reason for doing so.

Explain to them the benefits they’ll get with your products or services and how this price increase will allow them to enjoy your future innovations. Inevitably, some of your clients will leave, but those who remain will be the most valuable and you will have managed to increase their value even more by raising the prices.

Use upselling strategies

Upselling is a sales technique that involves inducing a consumer to buy a more expensive item. Many times it also involves promoting more advantageous services, product packs or offers when buying complementary products.

Surely more than once you’ve gone to a fast food restaurant and they have asked you if you wanted to add fries or a larger drink to your meal for an additional charge. Better yet, if you use Spotify to listen to music, you have encountered this type of message when you signed up for the free plan:

These are nothing more than upselling techniques. You can apply upselling to your business to increase the lifetime value of your customers. A formula that usually works (and one that you have surely seen on Amazon) is to add a section to your website that says: “Users who bought (X) also bought (Y).” 

Give your customers a reason to come back

Increasing how often your customers usually buy from you is also a solid marketing strategy that you can apply to increase value. Offering them a subscription option so that each month they can receive your products or services at a more advantageous price is one way to do this. 

There are several types of business that, by nature, already lend themselves to a subscription service. Utility contracts come to mind first but it is also possible to apply it to other types of business or products that involve a recurring purchase.

Look at Harry’s or The Dollar Shave Club, for example. These brands of razors have created a subscription service for recurring products thus eliminating the need to make an individual purchase decision whenever a customer needs to purchase new blades, foam or shaving lotions.

Another way to get your customers back is through a reactivation campaign. To do this, check your database to find old customers who have not made a purchase for a long time and send them a message in which you tell them that you miss them. Include a tempting offer like a coupon or a gratuity to persuade them to make another purchase.

Measure the performance of your strategies

A marketing plan is not a static document; you have to leave room for change and adapt it constantly. From all the strategies and channels you define, there will be some that will work better and others that will work worse so it’s important to know how to measure the success of your actions to identify which ones you should keep, improve or eliminate in order to get more valuable customers. 

The key performance indicators that you should look at (and analyze periodically, either monthly or weekly) are mainly the following:

• The number of leads

• Your conversion rate

• The average transaction value

• Your break-even point

Step 9: Define your referral program

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful strategies to improve the positioning of a business and increase sales exponentially. According to a study by Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers believe more in the recommendations of friends and family than in advertising. 

However, many entrepreneurs are waiting for this phenomenon to happen naturally as a result of the great quality of their product or service. The fact is that if you wait for positive reviews to come in on their own, it can take a long time to get results, so it’s better to take action.

Ask your customers to recommend your product or service in exchange for an incentive. For example, an upgrade in their current service plan or a discount on future purchases. 

One of the most famous recommendation programs has undoubtedly been that of Dropbox, the popular cloud storage company. Dropbox offered more free space (specifically, 500 MB) for both the new customer and the recommender. This simple strategy allowed them to increase the number of registered users by 60 percent.

Now you know how to make a strategic marketing plan for your company and how to optimize the efforts and resources you allocate to marketing to grow your business. Remember that your marketing plan must continually adapt to the market and that your success can multiply if you optimize and renew your strategies based on the results of your key performance indicators.

The post How to Write a Marketing Plan in 9 Steps [Ed. 2024] appeared first on Kolau Blog.

Create your website quickly and easily clicking here – Offer available for a limited time only.

Jewelry businesses represent a unique market. They are not aimed at catering to a need, or a comfort. Rather, selling jewelry is based more on promoting emotions using symbolism that can go back to the traditions of hundreds of years ago. That’s where a good jewelry marketing strategy can make a difference.

The industry is dynamic and doesn’t stop growing. Edahn Golan’s US State of the Jewelry Market report indicates that the United States is the world’s leading jewelry consumer with total sales of fine jewelry reaching $68.8 billion. There are different types of jewelry aimed at different types of audiences and consumers. Based on that, creating a marketing strategy that focuses on a specific target audience is important.

Selling jewelry is an art. There may be an innate talent for creating it, but without the right skills and strategies, it can be difficult to get your business ahead and dominate the market. Here, you’ll find some ideas and marketing strategies to boost your jewelry business and reach the right consumers that will support you.

Establish a Target Audience

As stated before, jewelry businesses have different consumers depending on the products they offer. To tackle this, start by considering who your products are aimed toward when creating your complete marketing plan. In this step, you will have to establish your target audience as well as your marketing goals and what makes your potential clients special.

In establishing your audience, you also have to segment the audience to properly implement an effective marketing plan. By analyzing the target audience to identify key segments, you select groups of specific people within your larger audience to specifically target through your marketing efforts.

For your business, it is not about being seen by as many people as possible, but more about attracting the right audience with the right message. 

What differentiates segmentation marketing from another type of marketing is that within the group of potential consumers there will always be someone more important. This means that you’ll need to exclude certain people to achieve effective results. While this may seem counterproductive, it is effective because not only will you sell your products, but you will also create a relationship with a satisfied public that will value your products and likely share their satisfaction with like-minded people thus growing your customer base.

Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing (1994) once said:

Segmentation is saying something to someone, instead of saying nothing to everyone.  

To send the correct message, you must know to whom it is addressed. The curious thing about this step, as many studies claim, is that by grouping people together you can discover factors that connect them and make them different from the rest. Overall, the purpose of segmentation is to appeal to the interests and needs of your smaller target audience just as you would if they were face to face. 

In the case of jewelry, segmentation is much more than basic demographic data such as age and income. They are clearly part of the process, but the purchase of jewelry is an emotional purchase. To define the details of your audience, you can use a segmentation method called market psychography which will allow you to define target details including interests, tastes, image projection, etc.

For example, a specific group of potential buyers may be “the modern mother who works from home” and could be defined in this way:

• She is married and has young children

• Lives in the suburbs, near large cities

• She likes to focus on her family

• Seeks to socialize in different groups such as reading clubs, social dates with other moms, etc.

• She likes gardening and crafts

• Shops at stores like Gap and JC Penney

• She hires a nanny to go to dinner with her partner

The ads focused on that group should be shown in the places that they usually visit and use a language specifically aimed at them. However, the most important thing is that the message evokes a significant emotion. 

According to Nancy Lowman LaBadie, the executive vice president of the public relations firm Marina Maher Communications, “Businesses that learn [their] language, understand it and connect with it, will reap the rewards.”

This ad by Mejuri is a great example of how to create a successful campaign by segmenting your audience. A modern woman does not expect gifts to rain on her but works to earn everything. The slogan and the message resonate with the audience and without a doubt achieves results.

Finally, you must determine what makes your product or your brand stand out from the competition. Do you sell fine jewelry for modern mothers? Unique, handmade jewelry? Are you producing environmentally-friendly pieces and promoting the materials’ origins? Once you have determined these aspects, it will be necessary to establish your content around that distinction.

Create an Emotive Story

Emotions are the main force behind a successful marketing campaign. In fact, Capgemini Digital Transformation Institute’s survey states that consumers who are emotionally involved with a company spend twice as much as non-committed customers. This could not be closer to the truth for jewelry businesses. 

The purchase of jewelry is an emotional one instead of a purposeful one. For many, it means a significant gift for occasions like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. For others, it symbolizes the most special purchase of their lives—an engagement ring meant to profess their love for their partner. This is why your marketing campaigns need to create emotional responses in customers.

For example, one of the most successful jewelry campaigns known throughout the industry is De Beers’s Diamonds are Forever campaigns. The iconic phrase came about during a tumultuous moment for the company following the Great Depression. More than 70 years later, the phrase of only four words is loaded with feeling and has become one of the most recognized slogans in marketing.

Today, we can credit De Beers for creating the concept of the diamond wedding ring; before that campaign launched, they were not the standard. With a simple slogan full of symbolism, they managed to completely mold the behavior of an entire culture. That proves what a great emotional campaign can achieve. 

A story rich in feelings is the perfect way to present your brand or your business and show what it represents. You can take advantage of the situation and use it as an opportunity to discuss why you decided to create jewelry. You can convey your passion for art or tell your clients that you work to create unforgettable moments in their lives.  

Become the business that your potential customers choose to mark a significant moment in their lives. A good emotional campaign for a jewelry store should be:

• Inspiring: to do this, you must understand your customers’ motivations. After you segment your audience, this won’t be difficult for you to do. When people feel inspired, they act differently. Finding a model for an inspiring campaign will also help you achieve an unparalleled connection with your audience.

• Persuasive: this type of emotional campaign plays with your audience’s dreams and their desire to achieve a coveted lifestyle within society. The CEO of Tiffany & Co, Alessandro Bogliolo, created a campaign aimed at millennials despite numerous studies claiming that they do not buy diamonds. His reasoning came from cellphone emojis. Diamonds and other forms of expressing status are frequently used by this group which means there is a sense of personal projection.

• One that expresses love: in the jewelry business, this is one of the most important emotions to express in advertising campaigns. You can use the tried and true story of a couple beginning their marriage and focus your campaign on this key moment in everyone’s lives or you can take advantage of another segment of the population: single people. You can angle the campaign with a message about there being no better way to celebrate than to treat oneself or something similar.

• One that commemorates special events: many people choose to commemorate an event with jewelry making that a perfect opportunity to strengthen relationships with your customers. You can focus on stories that resonate with your audience and let them know that they are as important to your business as they are to themselves. A good way to do it could be by using their personal stories that they share on social media.

This Pandora commercial is a great example of a creative ad full of emotion. Jewelry is not the center of attention in this case. Instead, the special connection mothers have with their children is showcased and subtly linked to the jewelry. It is brilliant since Pandora wants to express that a mother, or a woman, is not defined by her jewelry. Instead, their custom bracelets are defined by the special people in their lives. 

Remember that you don’t have to be a marketing giant or a multi-million dollar company to create great campaigns. For SMEs, the most important requirement is creativity. To achieve this, you must be authentic and know your audience to give them what they want. Next, you’ll need to tell these stories through the platforms they use the most so they see the ads you’ve worked hard on.

Use Online Platforms to Reach Your Audience

According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, two-thirds of consumers of jewelry brands start their search online before completing a purchase while one – to two – thirds use social media for information and general help. This means that jewelers should be using digital media as a communication platform between them and their potential customers to grow their business.

Although the same survey states that most consumers prefer to buy higher-priced items physically for security, SMEs can take the opportunity to use digital media to boost themselves and reach a larger audience. 

Modern consumers consider having trust and a good relationship with their preferred jewelry business essential in order to close a sale. To build a relationship with the business, consumers trust online reviews more than anything else. The co-founder of poshpawn.com indicates that they feel confident asking their satisfied customers to leave reviews of their experience and purchase.

If you have a solid and positive reputation online, your potential customers will feel more confident when choosing between you and your competitors. Some digital media platforms are better for jewelry businesses than others. More so, you need to know how to use them properly.

Instagram and Facebook

After 9 years from the launch of Instagram, it is clear that it is no longer just for personal use or to share photos of your lunch with your followers. It has become a global platform that has given millions of brands the opportunity to strengthen relationships and gain visibility while at the same time using images to inspire their followers to do business with them.

According to a Hubspot study, 70 percent of Instagram users use the platform to search for information about a business or brand. So, using this visual platform to show your products and promote your campaigns is an ideal way to reach your audience and show them who you are.

In this example, you can see an attractive and classic “feed” from a local jewelry store in Portland called Betsy & Iya. Its clean and tidy aesthetics are visually pleasing and it encourages users to get involved with their brand. In addition, the business has an impressive 23.8k followers so they must be doing something right.

As seen in the example, the store (Betsy & Iya) invites its satisfied customers to share photos and special moments using their products and asks them to tag the brand. It is a word of mouth marketing strategy brought to the digital terrain that creates a huge sense of trust among users who are unfamiliar with the business. You can encourage your customers to do this by offering discounts or gifts in return for their promotional post. 

Instagram recently added an additional feature for businesses: Instagram Shopping available in Latin America, the United States and Europe. With this function, businesses have an immersive channel so that people can explore their products and buy them online instantly. It has become the most popular tool among stores.

Betsy & Iya uses this function to redirect potential buyers to their online catalog. On Instagram, when someone clicks on the designated label in the publication, they are taken to the product’s description page where they will find the product image, a description, the price and a link that will take them directly to the website where they can buy the product.

There are several options to set up this function, but creating a catalog through Facebook, since both companies are connected is recommended. You can do this only if you have already created a catalog on your website or on platforms such as Shopify or Etsy. 

Creating a business page on Facebook will also allow you to reach a huge audience. By creating a catalog in the Facebook Business Manager section you can link it to your Instagram profile, too. Here’s how to create a catalog on Facebook and link it to your Instagram account: 

• Access the Facebook business management configuration, known as Business Manager.

• Click on Catalogs located inside the principal menu under “Assets.”

• Select “Add” to create a new catalog where you can assign a name and the type of products you offer to your listings.

• Upload the product information through data feed files. Facebook offers you a free CSV template to download and fill in with all the options you want to create a complete catalog.
  

Once ready, you can link it with your Instagram account and get your followers to interact more with your products. 

Online Catalogs

With 1.66 billion digital buyers worldwide, it is not surprising that e-commerce has become a vital trading technique for businesses. For jewelers and artisans, it is a great channel to offer products to the right audience beyond your physical location.

Creating an online store is easier than you think. If you are just beginning, you do not necessarily have to choose to create your own website and buy a domain. You can, instead, choose to use the most popular platforms that have high traffic and take advantage of its popularity to get visibility.

These are currently the most popular and secure platforms for online jewelry sales:

Etsy

Etsy is an online market platform for unique and handcrafted products. It is a space for artisans, artists and collectors to sell their best products. The public that uses it prides itself on dressing and wearing clothes that nobody else has so they are willing to pay the price for such items. It currently has more than 60 million visitors.

If used properly, Etsy can provide artisans and jewelers with a unique opportunity to generate significant profit. For example, LeiLei Secor, a college student, generated more than $100,000 selling handmade jewelry on Etsy.

According to a recent study,

50 percent of jewelry sold online are diamonds, 18 percent are precious metals and 12 percent are other gems and pearls.  

With this in mind, it is important to talk about how to create a store on Etsy and how to stand out from the millions of stores that already exist on the platform.

• Find your niche: it is important that your store has a focus so you can properly target a specific customer base. For example, if your focus is precious stones and metals, your store could showcase opal products to attract customers who like opals.

• Invest in outstanding photos: unlike a physical store, people who shop online can’t touch and examine your products. For your store to be successful, it is important that you use high-resolution photos. Nobody will want to invest in a piece or a set if it doesn’t look striking and attractive in its photos.

• Take note of other successful stores: you can look for inspiration by studying other jewelers who have used the platform to sell their jewelry effectively. This will give you a better idea of how to approach and interact with users that visit stores like yours.

• Create irresistible offers: in the jewelry business, it is proven that the best dates to sell jewelry are Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas. Still, you don’t necessarily have to wait for those dates to offer something special. To attract customers outside of the popular occasions, you can offer, for example, discounts on sets of rings, necklaces and earrings.

In the following example, you can see how a jewelry store is presented on Etsy. It is based in Tel Aviv, but it makes free deliveries all over the world. The information also tells us how long the store has been active, how many sales it has had and how many reviews were left by satisfied customers. Currently, this store has almost 5 stars.

Joining Etsy and opening a store costs nothing, but there are three basic rates that businesses pay. These rates are per publication, transaction and payment process. Each publication costs $0.20 USD and lasts for four active months. When you have a sale, Etsy charges 5 percent of the transaction on the sale price, including shipping. Finally, the Etsy payment system charges a 3 percent processing fee.

It is a small price to pay to take advantage of the high traffic that Etsy gets, but you should still keep it in mind when pricing your products on the platform. 

Currently, Etsy is available only in North America and Europe as well as in some Asian countries. They have proposed to launch it for the Latin American market in the near future, though.

Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows users to launch a personalized online store, grow it through the platform and run the business as they would a normal personally owned website. Shopify allows you to sell from almost every country in the world through its platform. It is based on a cloud hosting system so you can create your store as if it were your own web domain. 

It is a simple option for those who do not have the necessary tools to create their own web page. It even allows you to customize the themes to create a unique store that fits your brand’s identity. Unlike Etsy where stores are hosted on their platform, Shopify allows you to create it your way. You can even name the domain assigned by Shopify whatever you want.

To begin, you will have to choose one of their payment plans starting at $29 USD per month. Once you pick the plan, you can create your account, customize your page and add all your products to your store.

Shopify is quite popular among small jewelry businesses because it allows you to sell online, in person, in different online markets and through social media. For example, you can synchronize your Shopify store with your Facebook catalog.

In this image, you can see a jewelry shop based on Shopify. As you can see, it is totally customized to create a unique brand and differentiate it from other shops. In addition to all the options it offers to feature the products, it also offers the option to buy items through Instagram by redirecting potential customers to another one of its networks.

Shopify indicates that you can have SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools included in your payment plans. This will allow your potential customers to find you faster using different search engines. 

If you want to learn how to create and design your own website without third-party platforms such as Shopify, check out this useful guide about how to create a professional website. 

In conclusion, having a good product will always be your foundation, but selling jewelry in such a competitive world requires you to come up with good ideas and innovative marketing strategies. Find the essence of your brand, determine your audience and dominate the platforms that your clients use the most. Do what you can to adapt your business to these modern, digital times.

Remember, selling jewelry is an emotional process. Stay on top of the trends, work the different niches and create a unique brand that resonates with your audience. Social media is a channel that allows close communication with your customers so take advantage of the tools offered to strengthen your relationship with them and focus on creating something as unique as the pieces you sell.

The post 3 Jewelry Marketing Ideas to Attract More Customers [Ed. 2024] appeared first on Kolau Blog.

WellSpring is a wellness company headed by founder Lloyd Graham and his son Matthew Graham who leads their Social Media Marketing and Product Optimization department. Together, they strive to offer top-quality fruits and vegetables to create 29 different raw juices on a daily basis. They use locally-grown produce from the farming community to ensure quality while supporting local infrastructure.

It was a pleasure to interview Matthew and learn how he and his father grew their business to where it is today. The company is a great example of how a strong belief can be turned into a passionate and healthy business that will not only be profitable but that will also benefit a loyal and growing customer base. 

QUESTION. Matthew, how was the idea of creating WellSpring Raw Juices born?

ANSWER. WellSpring is a brand that started two years ago when we took over a company that has been in existence for more than 20 years. My father is a vegetarian and we practice and live a healthy lifestyle, so when we saw an opportunity to take over the brand and then apply some of our expertise into improving it so that people have good nutrition, we didn’t think twice.

Until recently, we have not done any advertisement or marketing, yet we have two branches in our business communities in Kingston and there are many Jamaicans that choose to have a proper healthy diet.

For the last three, four months we have settled a little footprint. We have applied technology to our business, we have started to optimize the business in terms of getting it out and having a digital footprint so that people can access information about our products. In general, just to make it more convenient for our consumers.

Q. Did you see a trend toward vegetarian diets when you decided to start your business?

A. More than a trend. What we saw was that people were seeking healthy alternatives. We wanted to be something consistent, we wanted to be a part of a lifestyle that they live, to make it possible. More so, it is a challenge that Jamaica has been facing; it is not easy to access convenient healthy alternatives consistently. That is a problem that we seek to address by having a brand that is trustworthy with a reputation that has been built on its own with the right attention to ensure that all our products are the best quality. Our customers love us for that, so we keep that in the center of everything we do. Every single day. 

As a Christian company with the beliefs we have set in place, we just do what we feel is the right thing to do which is create a healthy lifestyle and make good from that. We believe our consumers can do the same.

Q. What makes your company different from your competitors? 

A. First, we provide the best quality. I mean, we try our best to keep the standards up, regardless of the challenges that we face in terms of access to goods, maintaining exceptional quality. 

We do a very interpersonal process with all the products that we have. Our foods are practically handpicked in order to make the best juices that we can. Everything comes from our organic farm so we can ensure our products’ quality.

Q. What do you think is the secret to your company’s success?

A. I think there are two aspects of the company that allow us to be successful. The first is that we have very good products and we are very proud to say that because we do our best in ensuring that they are the best. 

The second aspect is that we stick to our principles and we ensure that we stick to them regardless of whatever challenge we might face. That is our uniqueness. Our customers know that at the end of the day, whether it is a stormy day or a sunny day, they will get the best juices that they can get, the best healing food, proper nutrition and always an open door on a daily basis to get consistent nutritious, healthy alternatives.

Q. Based on your own experience, what is the best marketing channel to attract new clients to your business?

A. Well, this is why we got into Kolau. As I said before, we have recently had our digital footprint set up. We have our Google Business profile, our website (under construction) and we do social media promotion and marketing. 

WellSpring has been growing mostly organically because, as I said before, without paid advertising and yet we have a wide range of customers across the island. 

So, when we did start to push WellSpring out to get people to know that we are going to be more convenient, give them better products and easier access to the things we provide, then, it just naturally grew. I think it had a lot to do with how we positioned the company. 

Therefore, I think the best way to attract customers is by having an attractive digital footprint and best possible quality products.

Q. What strategy or strategies do you use on social media?

A. I call my social media strategy “life experiences.” We showcase people enjoying and utilizing our products. We showcase our farm and the things that we produce and we send our message across so our potential clients get to know we are here in different ways. On a daily basis, it is all about interaction, speaking with our customers and communication in terms of what they need and what we can provide. Customers really appreciate that. We have been growing on social media platforms so far and it is something that we are grateful for and something we want to build on.

Regarding the social media platforms we use, we have Facebook and an active Instagram account. I think Instagram is a very good platform as it is able to reach markets better than other platforms, simply because it is visual and people love to see things for themselves.

Q. Are you using a specific strategy to retain your customers?

A. To retain our customers, in terms of maintaining a good relationship with them, we have our customer relationship management platform in which we integrate our social media channels and our stores. That tool allows us to communicate with our customers, to get to know their preferences, their feedback and also allows us to provide them with a better service as they give us reviews.

We do social media ads, business cards, flyers and all that stuff but it costs a lot in terms of design, product development and product optimization. The good thing is that we have mobile apps and platforms that we are able to use, like Spot+, Canva, My Quick Video to create the content that we need. You need to offer good content as a brand because once you have the information in place, people will choose the best service and the best quality product that they find. So, what we do is provide the best quality and information so they can know what the best benefits are.

Q. What advice would you give to a startup that is in their beginning stages?

A. I would advise them to use Google and ask random questions no matter what the problem is or whatever challenge they need to overcome to ensure that their brand can be ready for the worst. I encourage anyone just to ask these questions and the answers will come in the form of information, apps or content. So, I would just appeal to anyone’s real curiosity in terms of learning and getting the right information to get their brand ready for the worst situations.

Q. Finally, what do you think will be the best way to win customers in your industry in the next few years?

A. In the next three to five years, what I can see would definitely be a phenomenon is access to goods and access to good customer service. The more convenient you can make your brand or your product, the more people come to you. And I believe the more information that we have, in terms of educating our consumers, will lead to better relationship management. All we do is done to get consumers. We want people that have healthy lifestyles so we know what it takes. People are on their phones and computers every day so if you get to them there, that is the first way to attract them to you and that is just a principle that I believe. 

All businesses should adapt and ensure that they have a proper digital footprint with their proper marketing strategy, even a basic marketing infrastructure is better than none. My father would always tell me that a push plan is better than no plan. I believe that a small plan to market your business is better than not having a plan to market it at all. So, for the next three years, I believe that special delivery services, convenience to goods and access to information will be the best ways to attract new customers to your brand.

Every week, we highlight a company from Jamaica, within the framework of the MSME Digitalization Plan, whose trajectory, achievements and experience are an inspiration to all of us. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to bring these great stories together and learn from them.

The post Interview with WellSpring Raw Juices – MSME Digitalization Plan in Jamaica appeared first on Kolau Blog.