A local favorite, Idego Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roaster focusing on small batch roasts, quality ingredients, and building community in their two locations, Poway California and Blacksburg Virginia. Run by the owners Paul and Leslie, for a decade now (as a Blacksburg coffee snob, that statement makes this author smile) Idego has been through many transitions. This includes a recent move to California by the owners and the launching of a new store on the opposite coast. While keeping up with their digital presence as best they could, moving their family, running a shop from 3,000 miles away, and opening another all at the same time means that social media was not the focus.
In our initial conversations, the needs that Idego expressed were…
1. Marketing of a new subscription service
2. Emphasizing quality
3. Increasing engagement on Facebook and Instagram
To achieve these goals, we developed series of content areas to help guide our creative approach when building Idego's monthly calendar.
The first of these was “Quality”
This was incorporated into our production days by featuring Idego’s process and showcasing how things are made. Visually, latte’s make for a very effective “beginning, middle, and end” story structure, and that is exactly what we followed to demonstrate quality. See examples below!
The second content area was “Community”
With any business, a sale comes from solving a need, but loyalty comes from making people feel like they are seen, heard, and a part of something. Coffee-shops naturally have an element of community. Barista’s that know your order, seeing a neighbor or friend, or having a conversation with a stranger are all things that help build the feeling of community. We are under no illusion that social media can replace a real, face to face interaction, but there are many things you can do from a social media approach to help add to that experience. We achieved this by leaning into the faces of Idego and the feelings that come from an excellent coffee-shop experience.
What this looked like as far as producing content was featuring barista’s with “Barista spotlights, or Barista Favorite’s", and showing different ways people connect with the shop (remote work, celebrating students going back to school looking for study spots, etc.) We then encouraged lots of engagement on platform, whether in the comments or on stories (sharing posts, posting polls, that sort of thing).
And lastly, we featured a more "direct-sales" content bucket into our strategy.
This included posts that directly marketed specific products or service announcements. Marketing can, theoretically, be whatever you want it to be. While communications with your audience are influenced by a number of factors, the most impactful efforts are based on the expectations that you set for your customers. This is important to consider when creating direct efforts, whether organic or paid. When developing our “direct-sales” content area, our focus was consistency of brand. While we push the quality standard in our work and bring new ideas, we are always strategic when implementing shifts in a brands messaging.
How this looks for Idego? Great question! Idego’s ideal brand elements are modern, quality, and local. This is found top to bottom in the company, from the look and feel of their retail beans, to the experience when ordering in the store. Using social media for direct advertising, we wanted to match that feeling while adding new quality to enhance the messaging. Take a look through our content below and you (hopefully!) can feel that approach.
Now what were the results? Great questions! Idego’s over all metrics sky-rocketed from engagement across platforms, to small batch subscriptions.