Wrap Up: Your Favorite Coffee Marketing Strategies Of 2020

We explored 49 marketing strategies in 2020 for coffee shops, roasters, and online stores. Here were your top picks.

It’s been such a wild year for the coffee industry. But we made it. The twists and turns have been brutal, but vaccines – and eventually, normalcy – are on the way.

You did it. I’m proud of you! And I’m honored you’ve trusted me with precious space in your inbox. I hope I’ve earned that trust – and I intend to keep earning it.

In 2020, we explored 49 different coffee marketing strategies. 

When we began in March, they were centered around quick wins for pickup, delivery, and online sales. During the Summer, we switched to more substantial guides, teardowns, and open ideas.

I’m thrilled to reveal what was most popular this year.

The Top 5 Strategies Of 2020

1️⃣ The 3 Things Every Coffee Ecommerce Page Needs

Taking the cake, with over 2x the visits as the next most popular article, was our breakdown of coffee ecommerce pages. This guide not only had an extra high newsletter open rate, but got picked up on Reddit and Facebook groups as well.

2️⃣ 22 Cliches Coffee Marketers Always Use (+ What To Say Instead)

Coming in second place was an article I wrote in a moment of frustration around finding the same coffee cliches used on 90% of coffee websites. Getting away from cliches is something I have to train out of copywriting clients, and I realized I just needed to make a big list of the most common ones. So I did. And you loved it.

3️⃣ Bulk Cold Brew Coffee: 4 Coffee Shops Share How To Get Started

As warm weather arrived, I interviewed four coffee shop owners on how they were using bulk cold brew coffee to lean into summer vibes. The results they experienced were fantastic: higher revenue, and higher AOV. The folks on Facebook went nuts over this one.

4️⃣ Template: Make A Landing Page For Your Coffee Shop In 5 Minutes (LinkTree Alternative)

Linktree has always bothered me as a pretty boring way to interact with customers via Instagram. So when I discovered Notion this year and started running a portion of my business through it, I quickly saw it as a linktree alternative that’s much more customizable, easy to set up, and free. So I made a template.

5️⃣ Selling Coffee Online? How To Not Get Lost In The Crowd

I wrote this next article specifically for Peter Giuliano, SCA’s Chief Research Officer. He asked on Twitter for some help finding a resource that would help coffee companies stand out online. I knew there was no good information out there that didn’t repeat cliches and platitudes, so I put together this more detailed guide — and Peter loved it!

What’s Next In 2021?

Our goal for 2021 is much the same it’s been for 2020.

Explore coffee marketing strategies beyond the obvious and cliche, from an insider’s perspective, without withholding “industry secrets”.

We’ve watched for years and thought “someone should really do this more transparently”. Eventually, we just decided to do it ourselves.

And we’re so glad we started – it’s been great meeting so many of you. We greatly appreciate the kind emails and thoughtful responses to our newsletters.

And we can’t wait to dig even deeper next year.

Happy New Year ?