In the age for fit fam and the urge to want to live healthy, there is a need for more healthy lifestyle businesses to spring up and meet the demand. From salad and smoothie bars to parfait and frozen yogurt businesses, we need more of them.
For anyone or their friend looking to start up a smoothie business or already manages one, perhaps in their neighbour hood or on a large scale, you would find some useful tips in this post.
We assumed you have every other thing sorted and are ready begin marketing and selling. With that, here are some simple marketing ideas we got from experienced smoothie business owners.
SoFresh has done well over 5 years in the smoothie business in Nigeria. Speaking with one of the founders, he graciously shared some of the marketing ideas they executed while they were starting out and also now, when the brand is established.
SoFresh Founders Bimbo & Goke Balogun
Loystar: When you began in the early days of SoFresh, how did you get the word out there about your products?
- Door to door marketing and
- Flyer distribution to alert the neighborhood about our products and services.
Loystar: With an established brand, do you still have to run marketing campaigns today? What kind of marketing ideas do you execute?
SoFresh customer
Secondly, we use Social media to engage, educate and market to existing and new clients. These are the two most important media for us.
We also attend trade shows and relevant events to showcase our products and meet new customers, as well as provide minimal sponsorship to complimenting brands and events. We occasionally use other online media e.g blogs and traditional media and print.
Loystar: What was So Fresh’s most rewarding marketing campaign/project?
SoFresh: Partnership with other brands on Instagram.
Loystar: Any tips and Advice for upcoming entrepreneurs in your type of business?
SoFresh: Be passionate, understand your customer’s need, Customer service is key, be honest.
One of the Smoothie Chefs @ SoFresh
When a largely offline business can be driven by an online tool, you realize more that the internet is changing everything.
More Low hanging Fruits: Start plucking!
1. Offer Free Tasting.
The wine junkies know this, they call it wine tasting. So why not have juice tasting, right at your point of sale or choose a day of the week when you can offer free smoothie/juice tasting. Could be the day when you have the least amount of people coming in.
Customers having a small portion of your product to taste is a good way to get them to make a purchase. One thing you can do to make this strategy yield maximum return is to provide a feedback form for the tasters. Your form is better presented in digital form. Typeform is a great tool for that. Otherwise, you can use a feedback card or get the feedback by speaking to your customers directly. This is also a smart way to build your list.
2. Build a List.
Like every business should be doing this. Building a list is the simplest marketing strategy any business could ever implement and it is always a part of all your marketing efforts. Why is building a list very important in helping you market your smoothie business, here are 2 major reasons:
- Your list is the only way to know the exact number of people that has patronized or interacted with your business. If you don’t know this number exactly, you are running your business blindly and you won’t be able to immediately tell if you are growing or not. That’s a key ingredient for business failure.
- Your list helps you get maximum returns on your marketing spend. Your old customers are more likely to buy from you, as compared to your new customers, but if you keep no list of your customers, there is no way to reach your old customers when marketing, so you are forced to spend 5 times more to get new customers, when you could be more profitable by marketing to your old customers.
Building a list is really simple to do these days as there are myriads of tools available, Excel being one of the most popular, though usually requires a computer. A more convenient way is using your smartphone or mobile device and with an app like Loystar, you can record your sales after each transaction and you automatically get a list you can use for your marketing, accessible anytime, online or offline. Always be building your list.
3. Run a Rewards/Loyalty Program
Some business naturally earn customer loyalty especially if options for alternatives are limited. However, if you are in a competitive market, which is likely the case for a smoothie business, you need one more reason for your customers to choose you over the other options assuming you all produce good tasting smoothies and deliver good service. No customer wants to be loyal to a poorly produced smoothie or bad customer appreciation. A loyalty program that truly rewards can be a great way to appeal to your early customers.
4. Vendor Partnering
This is a good way to reach more customers outside your network. Look for a partner business (on the Loystar network) that offers products or services not in competition with juices or smoothies. A good example is a Salon.
Customers who come into the salon could likely want to have a nice cup of smoothie drink while the get their new look done. It’s a clear opportunity for sale (provided there is a refrigerator). All you have to do is regularly supply the salon and negotiate a percentage commission off each sale made. It could also be a zero commission if the partner is your nice friend.
Depending on the size of your business, not all of the marketing ideas talked about in this post may work as expected. As with all things, test it. In Lean Startup lingua, your marketing campaign idea could also need a MVC, a minimum viable campaign which is the least amount of resources you could coordinate to measure how likely a marketing campaign would succeed.
Have more ideas? or have comments and feedback? Please share in the comment box below.
You can also share this article using the share buttons available.
This is the second in the series of our merchant showcase on Loystar.
Loystar provides small businesses technology tools that help them engage and keep their customers coming back. Download our Merchant App, that lets you quickly create and run your own loyalty programs (unlimited), send SMS broadcasts and Schedule Birthday Messages for all your customers. Get it here
Wow…great and very inspiring.
Thanks, I run a smoothies business I’ll really like to implement what I’ve learnt here