Before you invest your marketing dollars, take the time to generate a marketing plan that defines your marketing objectives and strategies. Your plan should:

Define your target market. Use the demographic data you gathered in earlier research to identify the specific audience you want to attract to your business.

Analyze your competition. Find out what they are doing to promote their coffee shop operations, and create a strategy to improve and differentiate your plan.

Define your marketing objective. Set specific goals to achieve with your coffee shop marketing plan. Example: I want to increase my sales to the office workers in this building by 30% over the next three months.

Enlist professional help. Once you have determined what you would like your marketing dollars to accomplish, consider having an ad agency or media buyer review and refine your plan to ensure that it will achieve your requirements. Consider using a professional graphics artist to assist with the layout of your promotional materials.

Select your media. Your advertising dollars should be spent on media that will suit your marketing needs, and are cost effective.
   
Determine your advertising budget. Acquire information about costs for various forms of advertising. This information can be obtained from your ad agency, media buyers, and media rate cards. Determine your budget and assess the effectiveness of different media combinations.

Your budget for advertising should be analyzed as a component of your income statement. Consideration must be given to sales that the advertising is expected to produce, as well as the impact this expenditure will have upon your bottom line.

Typically, 2% to 5% of gross sales are expended on advertising by food-service operations. Your percentage may be higher in the early months of the life of your business. This will be due to two factors:

1. Your level of sales will be relatively low in the beginning, so the dollars spent on advertising will appear high when compared as a percentage of sales.
2. During the initial campaign to expose your business, you will need to advertise with greater frequency and in multiple media.

Explore cost-cutting options. Attempt to trade your goods ad services for the advertising you desire, or at least for a portion of that expense. In may instances you will find you can trade a certain dollar amount of food and beverages in exchange for advertising. Bartering for services can be very cost-effective. Remember, if you exchange $400 of product (at menu prices) for services, and your cost of goods is 25%, your actual expenditure is $100.
   
Be involved in the design and preparation of your ad materials. Make sure your ads project the character and image of your operation in an accurate and effective manner.

Measure the results and make revisions. Use coupons, customer feedback, and other means of measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaign. Compare the results with your marketing targets. Make modifications in your program and then measure what happens when you make the adjustments.

With experience, you will learn how to evaluate and modify your marketing strategies to gain and maintain optimum performance.