Know-How Exchange : Strategy

There are lots of creative ways to "give" something away without actually "giving" anything away.

Checkout www.promomagazine.com

They hae a lot of useful info you can apply to your specific situation.

I hope this helps!

Good Luck

One of the best ways to promote the cafe is to encourage trial. If the product is good people will come back again and again.

Print some vouchers for a free cup of coffee. At times when business is quiet, get staff to hand the vouchers out to passers by outside the store. Very soon the store will be busy and busy stores attract more customers.

You are paying the staff anyway, so it makes no sense to have them standing around doing nothing. And your cost of sale on a cup of coffee is what - maybe 20 cents? And if people come and get a free coffee - will they buy food?

Give it a try. Just do it sporadically and very soon the business will be buzzing.

Tell us how it goes...

Cheers

ChrisB

PS you can recycle the vouchers so make them durable and they can be re-used many times - keeps costs low!

One of the articles from Sean d'Souza comes to mind. It's here:

Stuck with a zero marketing budget for client gifts?

I realize you're not interested in gifts, but I think his idea for "swapping" promotional giveaways might be worth looking into for your cafes!

Shelley

Before suggesting some alternative approaches, one question:

What's the objective? What would you be trying to accomplish with your promotion effort? If you're already a market leader, you may not find incremental promotion spending very profitable. Of course, it depends on market share, likely competitive response, and a number of other factors.

Also, if the company is looking to increase profitability more than sales, it's not clear that promotions will really pay out in the short term.

You might want to take whatever small amount of money you have and spend it on some very limited tests. If you can demonstrate in those tests that the profit from incremental sales is greater than the cost, maybe Management will rethink its position regarding promotion spending. If the incremental profit is not greater than the promotion cost, then this may not be the time to invest in growth.

Growth isn't free. There's a cost. I'm sure your management understands that. Given your leadership position, price promoting is probably not a smart idea. Whether there is a smarter alternative will depend to a large degree what your objective(s) are.