By Natalia Raben
The coffee industry is full of small yet brilliant coffee brands. Among all of them succeeding isn’t an easy job. There are a lot of factors contributing to the success of a coffee business, including the standard of the product itself. One of those factors is also branding. Below are five tips on how you can improve it or where to start if you haven’t yet.
1. Connect the Brand Values to Your Own Personality
Customers like to feel connected to a brand. If the brand reflects you, customers will feel it and respond in a positive way. Products that show no human values and/or personality aren’t as successful unless they are very innovative and create lots of added value.
How to do it thought? Put a picture of yourself on the coffee packaging? No. However, you can design a packaging that will help you with the goal. Are you a very energetic perfectionist maybe? Make the design clean but colorful.
Moreover, don’t be shy and show yourself. Attend relevant events where you can present your products and reflect your personality in marketing. Nowadays, many brands send newsletter and create blogs. Publish content that you’ve written yourself and monitor how that works.
2. Tell Your Brand’s Story
Every brand has (or should have) a story behind it. You didn’t launch your brand simply out of boredom, correct? Share your story with the world. Publish it on your website, mention it in interviews. Tell it to your (potential) clients, include it on the packaging. Moreover, publish it on the previously mentioned blog as well as external blogs and websites.
Telling your brand’s story has the same effect as giving your brand a personality. It makes your customers feel more connected as they see the brand being relatable and meaningful.
3. Differentiate Yourself on the Supermarket Shelf
When you shop for a coffee in a supermarket, how long does it take you to make a decision? Probably relatively short because, as a coffee brand owner, you know a lot about the available choices. Standard customers take a minute or two longer. They will either choose a brand they are loyal to or pick something new.
However, the available packaging designs don’t really help with the decision making process. Most of them are brown, traditional-looking bags or boxes with gold or white descriptions. Some brands like to add white or gold typography. Other ones add a little bit of red color to attract more attention. These designs aren’t ugly though or ineffective and it’s okay that they seem to be similar.
You, however, should see it as an opportunity. Brand owners like to believe that it’s not the cover of the book that leads to its success but very often that is the case. Try to stand out on the supermarket shelf with a unique packaging design.
4. Remember Brand Identity Design
Most probably your brand already has a designed logo and packaging. If so, that’s great. If not, you should think about it as soon as possible. However, you should also consider investing in brand identity design.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the team, it is an extension of your logo. Brand identity includes designed business cards, letterheads, envelopes, compliment notes and defines the brand’s colors as well as used fonts so that all of your merchandise and promotional items are consistent. It doesn’t only make your job easier but also contributes to brand recognition.
5. Make Your Labels Understandable
It is key to include all relevant and important information about your coffee on its packaging, website and other promotional products. However, make sure that the labels you use are understandable. For you, the various used coffee terms are every-day language. Customers aren’t as familiar with it.
Let’s say you want to include some information about the processing method of your coffee beans. Throwing a one-word message like ‘dry’ or ‘washed’ processing won’t really give any clue to your target audience. Unless, of course, your target customers are big coffee enthusiasts. There are two options you might want to try. First one is to explain to them what the term stands for. The second one is to simply use a more colloquial language. People like things they can understand!
