Meet and Drink With La Horchateria Sept. 14th–28th, 2022

— A 2-Week Mini Marketing Campaign — #Meet&DrinkAtLH

Background

This locally owned coffee shop is located in Raleigh, NC off of New Hope Church Rd, and provides customers with a traditional Latin experience infused with an American twist. This culturally rich atmosphere allows customers to enjoy their overall experience with one-of-a-kind beverages and freshly made cuisine. La Horchateria aims to offer locally roasted espresso, lattes, Mexican hot chocolate, smoothies, agua frescas, and horchatas! Or if you’re craving something sweet, La Horchateria provides an array of desserts including mini pancakes, churro sundaes, baked-to-order churros, and a variety of delicious ice cream sandwiches! This coffee shop has been actively receiving positive reviews as they provide customers with great service and a friendly staff that is always ready to help you!

Purpose

Our goal is to increase sales by 15% through promotional events, social media engagement, and driving traffic.

This two-week campaign is focused on increasing customer engagement and customer outreach. As of right now, La Horchateria has an overall Google rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. Though there are many positive results that appear when searching for this locally owned coffee shop, potential customers may be unaware of this store’s existence. Therefore, our campaign will demonstrate to small businesses how we can aid in widening the scope of interest in their business. We’re here to support, leverage, and guide small businesses toward success through powerful content with purpose, interactive elements, and social media connections.

Our micro campaign aims to increase customer engagement by incentivizing potential customers to buy more coffee through the use of punch-cards, coupons, and promotional events boosting sales activity by 15% by the 28th of September 2022.

Measurable goals and objectives: Though this is a short-term project, our goal is to provide tools for lasting success. Our goal will be sought through the mission to increase La Horchateria’s click-through rate by 3% and increasing La Horchateria’s overall social media following by 1,000 followers. We aim to establish these goals by informing customers of La Horchateria’s delightful experience, persuading customers to come back for more by instilling a coupon or punch-card service with the prize of a free beverage or pastry, and, lastly, displaying to customers how La Horchateria can assist in their horchata needs!

Plan

Determine Target Audience: Over 50% of Americans over 18 years of age drink coffee every day, so our target market resides within the Baby Boomer, Millenial, and Generation Z populations. Though we have a wide target age range, when analyzing local coffee shops it is important to understand how skewed the market really is. Research has determined that individuals within this segment crave specialty coffee drinks. La Horchateria caters to variety of individuals who want quality coffee for a good price. With low prices and a unique experience, La Horchateria is an ideal spot for families, students looking for a place to hangout, or older individuals scoping the city!

Target Persona: Sara is a 21-year-old college student who enjoys spending time with family and friends and is always interested in trying something new! When she’s not studying for her business classes, she’s working part time for a local consulting firm, earning a salary of $30,000 a year. Sara drives a 2014 Honda Civic and loves finding new places to visit. Even though she was born and raised in Wake Forest, NC, and hasn’t traveled much, she still thinks that NC is the best state to live in! As a Gen-Z, Sara finds herself often scrolling through Instagram reels to discover the lastest trends and social events. She,too, enjoys posting on her social media accounts and even considers herself a part-time influencer in her community!

Who We Need to Make the Campaign: The individuals needed to make this campaign happen include:

• The brand manager to aid in providing details of the entire brand, and planning the campaign by constructing the attributes of the brand, giving insights into what the brand is all about.
• The creative director will supply the production of the campaign. La Horchateria’s creative director would provide the designs and brand centric elements of the store for promotional ads and posts on social media.
• The creative team will enforce the overall promotion of the campaign. This team will aid in the collaboration of all the elements found and produced by the brand manager and creative director.

Relevant Research Data:

Total coffee per capita consumption in the United States in 2020 by age group(in cups per day)

• When determining who would be interested in stopping by La Horchateria research was conducted to see who is truly interested in buying coffee. Statista found that, as of 2020, people aged 70 and over drank about 2.18 cups of coffee per capita in the United States, making it the age group that drank the most coffee on average that year. U.S. coffee consumption for respondents between the ages of 25 and 29 stood at roughly 2.15 cups a day. Therefore, our target focus includes Baby Boomer, Millenial, and Generation Z populations

Content:

Daily Customer Trends at La Horchateria

• When determining what content to create, research found that La Horchateria’s business truly thrives on Saturdays and Sundays. The timeframe of these store visits averaged at around 20 minutes per visit with customers arriving anywhere from 1:00 pm to 7:00pm. This research aided in the discovery of our promotional plan. Our mission is to increase customer engagement by implementing promotional tactics, incentiving customers to keep coming back for more! We want customers to feel welcome and use La Horchateria as a spot to relax, hangout, and enjoy coffee; therefore, our content will primarily focus on increasing store visits by implementing promotional store deals through social events, as shown below.

Social Event Promo

Campaign Schedule:

Produce

As research found, one weakness for La Horchateria was the lack of customer engagement. Therefore, our campaign will focus on the production of a promotional event centered around a “Meet and Drink” social event. This event will be both in-person and virtual, as customers can gain promotional services by including the #Meet&DrinkAtLH on social media posts. We aim to encourage user-generated content through this hashtag use and engagement with the brand. Production of organic consumer content will be motivated by promotional deals, such as 5% off a beverage.

Further engagement will be achieved by the production of a punch-card promotion. The promotional event will entail a business card that the customer has punched or stamped each time a service is purchased. After a certain number of punches, the customer will become eligible for a free beverage. Proposed examples of this card production are shown below:

Front of Punch-Card

Back of Punch-Card

Promote

• Our media plan is to incorporate marketing platforms, such as Instagram ads, Facebook ads, and word-of-mouth marketing to promote our social event. The incorporation of social media platforms infused with traditional marketing methods, such as word-of-mouth, will aid in driving awareness and increasing our customer base through promo visualizations and raising consumers’ interest in the company’s products and services. Promotion techniques will be largely sourced from implementing a rewards program, the punch-card promotion, to keep customers coming back for more coffee and better deals.
• Promotional Instagram and Facebook posts will include photos of the products, customers enjoying their experience at La Horchateria, the latest deals, and new menu items!

Results

What does success look like to us? Our mission is to ensure that La Horchateria is on the path to success, and this is possible through the implementation of the improved marketing methods. We will determine whether or not improvements were made after the end of our campaign by analyzing the following succession points:

• Data collected from Instagram & Facebook ad campaigns to analyze the effectiveness of how many visitors link per click. Ideal engagement rates should range between 1%-1.5%.
• The total sales rate after the conduction of the campaign, ensuring that an increase did take place and that this incremental percentage is around the established 15% proposal.
• Measure social media engagement, including following count, likes, shares, and comments.
• Evaluate pre-campaign and post-campaign click-through rates and determine if the click-through rate was improved by the proposed 3% increase.
• Determine profitability of social media campaign by assessing profit margins and ensuring that ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) is around a 4:1 ratio.

*Note: This article is a class assignment for BUS 465 — Integrated Brand Promotion and Advertising at NCSU Poole College of Management.