Targeting CBD Customers
In order to stay ahead of your competition, you need to work out who else is targeting the same customers in your area and what they are offering.
These days every service station, club, pub, ice cream shop, convenience store, movie theatre, fast food chains, local restaurants, and even your buyer’s own home has the potential produce commercial grade coffee and therefore have customers getting their coffee from them rather than you.
You have potential competitors all around and identifying them, who they are targeting and what they offer is vital to helping your cafe stand out from the crowd.
Using the following parameters will help you define not only your competition, what they are offering, what their strengths and weaknesses are but also how you intend to compete against them.
Convenience
How easy is it for customers to access your competitors and their products? Is there anything that makes it difficult for them to find or get to? What are their opening hours? How quickly are they dispatching orders? How do you (or will you) compare on the parameter of convenience that is important to your target market?
Consistency
This is debatably the most important parameter that you need to maintain in order to create a positive image of your cafe brand. It’s no secret that customers like cafes that are consistent in their taste and service. They prefer products that are “consistent” in taste rather than brands that vary from being “exceptionally good” to “exceptionally poor”. A customer wants to know what he is being served and the taste he should expect from your cafe. Inconsistent taste or service might be the enough for a customer to create a negative image of your brand in their minds that makes them abandon your cafe all together.
Find out what your competitors are like in terms of consistency. You might need to do the rounds and try them out over a period of time. Is this currently a gap in the market that your competition just aren’t getting right? How will fill this gap?
Value for Money
Every customer who walks in your cafe will have their own unique preferences. You job is to ensure that you are giving them what they perceive is value for their money – better value for money than your competitors.
Remember that the value for money is not just based on the quality of the coffee but also the location, the speed of service, the convenience, and environment you have built in your cafe. You need to take into account all these elements and evaluate your offering against those of your competitors to then come up with the perfect balance between the perceived value and the price of your product.
Are your competitors over charging? Could you charge more by offering a high quality coffee or a nicer place to drink it or a more convenient level of service but still be perceived as providing better value for money?
Once you understand how your competition stacks up on these criteria – convenience, consistency and value for money – you can start to identify important gaps in the market that are not being met, and work on getting your cafe excel in them where your competition doesn’t.
Points of difference to market to your customers and ultimately stay ahead of your competition could include a mix of the following;
• Online ordering system
• Mobile App
• Take home meals
• Develop a loyalty program for local businesses
• Referral program
• Letter box drops within the CBD both commercial and residential
• SMS Marketing
• Instore competition to build data for marketing initiatives
