There’s a reason people move to make resolutions year after year…after year.
The turn of the year brings with it a tide of new hope and a host of new aspirations. As a cafe entrepreneur, you would find yourself searching for new ideas to boost your first quarter sales and get a headstart on the competition.
You will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon and rightfully so.
And there is a bandwagon really worth jumping on - it’s riding on the resolution hype.
What Motivates People to Make New Years’ Resolutions?
What is it with humans in general that build a list of to-do’s and to-be’s?
In its entirety and most simplistic sense, a resolution is a promise that one makes to themselves. It is like an ode that one does - either to please someone else or to make one’s life better.
Why set new targets every new year? People believe in the power of the “fresh start effect.” It signals new beginnings - of righting the wrongs and turning a new page over and this is why many are setting targets to push themselves.
12% of the people who make resolutions felt a sense of achievement from completing their goals. Another study showed that 46% of the people who made their New Year resolutions were successful in keeping them.
And what do you do with the 46%? You turn them into sales.
Here’s how.
Get ahead with the data for New Year Marketing
As a cafe entrepreneur, listen closely to what people are saying about your brand and the current season. To viably generate traffic, observe the trends, patterns and what your customers - especially the bona fide coffee lovers - are talking about. It is important you make an active effort to see what people are searching for and optimize your content around it.
People will generally start thinking about their lives and their plans as soon as the year draws closer to an end. And what do most people do on a year-end? They begin to make resolutions.
Common holiday resolutions may include:
Fitness: exercising, bodybuilding, excelling in sports, eating healthily and more consciously, drinking less, indulging less in salty food
Financial: saving money, managing their finances better, investing, learning to trade, starting a new business or growing their current one
Career: applying for a new job, acing an interview, climbing the ladder of success, learning a new skill or hobby, asking for a promotion, switching careers
Personal: spending more time with family, practicing self-care, living life to the fullest, appreciating nature more, reading more
The post-festive period starts with good intentions but that seldom lasts for many. But as we enter 2022 with a changed dynamic brought by COVID-19, human behavior may have gravitated towards fulfilling these resolutions.
Enter your cafe. Offer a coffee rewards program that will encourage your customers to write down their resolution or goal, put them into motion and get a complimentary drink when they achieve it.
This must come with social proof, of course, that they have to post which creates another stream of online engagement for your cafe.
But the way to build that up is to produce content that will direct them to fulfilling these goals so they can get the reward at the end of the line.
If you have observed that more of your followers aim to reduce stress, position your coffee and your other products as a solution to achieve that. If the goal is self-care, they can indulge in their favorite cup of coffee from your cafe as a treat for a life well-lived. If the goal is to read more books, your cafe might just be the perfect place for it. If the resolution is to get higher grades or toil harder at work, a coffee is a perfect tool for boosting mood and productivity.
Be intentional with creating attraction. And do it in a way that will lead them closer to their own goals, too.
Your content can be tailored to provide more visibility and take advantage of engaging traffic.
Not sure which resolutions your customers are likely to pursue?
Fish the answers straight out of their keyboards. If you have a group for your loyal cafe customers (if not, read on why you should have one), engage your social media audience by asking them to share quotes or stories that inspired them in the past year.
Ask them what they are looking forward to the most in 2022 or what it is they feel inspired by. It can be anything: a personal journey or a post they have read or seen. From then on, the drive to commit to achieving their goal, in no small part thanks to your encouragement, becomes a seamless effort.
‘Help Us Have an Amazing 2022’ Promotion
As you enter the New Year, make the experience more immersive for you and your customers. Now that you have given them a goal to chase with a reward waiting in the end, it is time for your cafe to have its own resolution, too.
Collecting feedback is important for every business but it can be rather challenging to get customers to participate. Well, this promotion gives your customers a reason to fill out a quick survey. You can tell your customers that your cafe wants to do everything it can to make the customer experience more memorable and exceptional. Pool their feedback and make a commitment to fulfill it for 2022.
Post-New Year Promotion
Keep the holiday spending train rolling by offering a sale or a discount for your cafe products. The sale does not have to be grand in number but in thought and execution. A standard 5% off one item in your menu can be helpful. Of course, you’d be wise to amplify it with online promotions on your social media channels.
These, of course, are just some ideas from us. In the end, it is you, dear Cafepreneur, who must decide what and how to execute, based on your objectives. Do you want to get a headstart in marketing your cafe? Talk to us here.
Reference:
Peterzil, Y. (2021). 6 of the Best New Year Marketing Ideas. Yellowhead. Retrieved from https://www.yellowheadinc.com/blog/new-year-marketing-ideas/.
Ward, S. (2020). Increase Your Business Success With These Top New Year's Resolutions. The Balance Small Business. Retrieved from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-new-year-s-resolutions-for-business-success-2947126.