I want to delete all social media, put away my consumption of technologies (I’ve done so a couple of times), but I always go back to market my nonprofit and coffee business. I throw a lot of events, and social media marketing gets me really far. However, I am wondering what other ways there are to connect with donors and buyers without depending on technology, and without hiring people. I wonder what other strategies are out there.
I asked a lady who sells jewelry how she sells it. She says jewelry sells itself.
Hire dancing girls and guys to parade down the streets
Study the growth of Dropbox and apply similar strategies but for offline. Dropbox grew through referral/word of mouth.
It’s completely dependent on the individual business.
Nobody here can really provide much of value via a one paragraph Reddit post.
We’d need to see all company financials, market research, business plan, competitive landscape, product, past marketing, audience lists, past analysis, etc etc etc before anyone can provide actual advise.
You usually have to reverse engineer your marketing strategies and tactics based on where your customer’s attention is. This is certainly true for a coffee shop.
Where do they go? Put your advertisement there.
How do they get there? Put your messaging in their path.
What are they looking at? Get into their line of sight.
Personally… I find coffee shops on google maps and yelp. Then I look at the customer pics on google maps and the shop’s instagram to determine if I’d enjoy being in there. Then I look at the menu, wherever I can find one, to see whether they have what I’m after, usually light roasts and pour overs. So to easily capture my business you’d want to support the customer journey I’ve just described at each point along the path.
But I’m just one person. You need to understand the customer journey across a wide range of your customer types.
For coffee shops and event heavy orgs you’re probably going to lose the battle to technology. Because you actually have a twofold challenge: Not only do you need to complement your customer’s journey, you’re also in competition with any other cafe or event which is leveraging the media and channels your potential customers are consuming.
I actually bought a bell today so I will go to the main part of town and make it happen.
Hire someone to do your marketing for you so you can decrease your tech consumption.
You have 2 goals that are opposing each other, that’s the solution that makes sense.
Do what works, just have someone else do it
What kind of nonprofit?
With coffee you could do local events, tastings, collaborate on subscription boxes, maybe even do a regular ad buy, but idk, you’d be missing out on people posting about enjoying your coffee…
Envelopes with letter sent through post!
Balancing minimal tech use with effective marketing for your nonprofit and coffee business is indeed challenging. If I were you, I would try leveraging local partnerships for cross-promotion, using flyers or word-of-mouth. Participating in local markets and networking events can directly connect you with potential donors and customers. Traditional media, such as local newspapers and radio, are also effective mediums to use! I also think that maintaining a regular email newsletter or blog can keep your audience engaged without constant reliance on social media.