Coffee By Di Bella Digital Marketing Strategy

Updated on: Oct 3, 2017
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Coffee By Di Bella – a Digital Marketing Strategy by Hitesh Makwaney

Coffee is one of the world’s most consumed beverages. There’s something so soothing and stimulating about that first brewed drink in the morning, and coffee-drinking is the most relaxing activity for an evening out with friends.

If you’re a coffee lover and relate to what I’ve just said, you’ll likely have heard of Coffee by Di Bella. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t. And this is all the more reason to label Di Bella as one of the most successful coffee chains in the world. This is especially commendable once you consider the amount of competition they have had from the multiple coffeehouses, coffeeshops and cafes that pop up a dime a dozen.

What was it exactly that made Coffee by Di Bella’s brand stand out? And how can they further capitalise upon their success? One of IIDE‘s students, Hitesh Makwaney, answers these questions through a digital marketing strategy he prepared for the brand keeping in mind everything that makes Coffee by Di Bella what it is today. Read on to find out more about Coffee By Di Bella Digital Marketing Strategy!

About Coffee by Di Bella

Phillip Di Bella, an Australian entrepreneur and coffee-lover, started his own coffee-roasting business in Brisbane, Australia in 2002. His company, Di Bella Coffee, has been expanding and growing for the past 16 years. Di Bella Coffee has established strong roots in China, Thailand, and, of course, India as well.

Rahul Leekha owns and runs Di Bella’s Indian outlet. He was running his own successful advisory firm, Artemis, when Di Bella Coffee was looking to expand in India. They came to Artemis as clients seeking branding and strategy advice for their India branch. At the point, Leekha became a small equity holder in the company. Eventually, the previous patent-owners exited the deal and Leekha and team were free to take over the whole India wing.

Di Bella Coffee always had a leg up in the Indian market as, starting out in 2011, they had little to no competition amongst major coffee brands. Starbucks hadn’t yet entered the market, Barista was a little too expensive for the average coffee-drinker and Café Coffee Day wasn’t exactly renowned for its desserts. And so, Di Bella Coffee immediately hit it off with the Indian consumers, their hot chocolate and waffles selling like hot cakes along with their signature coffee drinks.

Coffee by Di Bella has ambitious aims of opening up 100 stores in India by November 2020. At the moment, they are looking to open 25 stores in Mumbai (currently 11 stores open) and subsequently expand to Delhi and Bengaluru. In order to help achieve these targets, our student, Hitesh Makwaney, has drawn up a digital marketing strategy that he feels will help the coffee-brewing company accomplish their goals.

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Social Media Marketing

One of the key factors towards the success of any business these days, especially those in the food industry, is, of course social media. And in 16 years in the industry, Coffee by Di Bella has certainly learned this.

Di Bella Coffee has a presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Their following on each platform has increased exponentially by May 2017. This may be because of the new stores that opened up on Kemps Corner, Grant Road that month and at Juhu, Santacruz in April 2017. In January 2017, Di Bella Coffee also had a new outlet open at Linking Road, Bandra.

In order to truly make their presence online, Coffee by Di Bella has adopted a few strategies, like making use of certain campaigns like #GOTWithDiBella, in which the brand has posted creatives of popular TV show Game of Thrones’ characters seated at a Di Bella outlet and talking about coffee. For example, The true history of the world is the history of great conversations over a cup of coffee – Tyson Lannister.

At the same time, #CBDValentine was a campaign that Coffee by Di Bella used before Valentine’s Day (Feb 14th) which encouraged their followers to tag their Valentine by using #DropAHint in the creative.

Another interesting campaign was regarding #OKCupid in which pet-owners would be encouraged to bring their pets to the outlet and receive a 20% discount on their order on Valentine’s Day.

One of the few strategies that Di Bella could further follow in order to fully grow their social media to its potential could be #Faketoids, which would involve putting fake quotes about implausible situations regarding events at Di Bella’s outlets. In the distant future, all meetings will be held at Di Bella café – Chanakya, 300 BC, could be an example. Then, users could be asked to share their own story about what’s happening at Di Bella. This campaign should focus mainly on humour.

#CoffeeBuddy is another clever hashtag Coffee by Di Bella could use to encourage users to tag their coffee companions, or favourite people to drink coffee with. These posts would increase the brand’s engagement and their relationship score with their followers.

Competitors

Coffee by Di Bella’s main national competitor is Café Coffee Day and international competitor is Starbucks.

When comparing their social media following, Starbucks has 103k followers on Twitter, whereas Café Coffee Day has 67k. Coffee by Di Bella has only 1.3k Twitter followers. On Facebook, Starbucks has 4.9 million page likes, Starbucks has 1.14 million page likes and Coffee by Di Bella has only 85k page likes. On Instagram, both Coffee by di Bella and Café Coffee Day have 26.6k followers, whereas Starbucks has 2.9k followers.

Café Coffee Day uses several campaigns to maintain their social media pages, one of which is #MothersDayWithCCD in which they encourage mothers and children to celebrate Mothers’ Day (second Sunday in May) at Café Coffee Day. This campaign runs across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. When Coffee Day introduced a new ‘summer chillers’ menu, they made sure it was plastered all across their social media, by putting up hashtags like #CitrusColdBrew and #SugarcaneRefresher. They didn’t limit themselves to only one hashtag. They post mostly on Fridays and Saturdays, and most of their posts happen to be pictures.

Starbucks, too, uses several clever strategies in order to up their social media following, like #ComingSoon, a hashtag used to create hype for their loyalty app. This ran only on Instagram, along with minimalist designs. #ShowYourFlavour was a hashtag that ran across all three platforms and consisted mainly of consumers mentioning their favourite flavour of drink at Starbucks alongside Starbucks’ own creative of the drink. Starbucks posts mainly on Tuesdays, and their campaign is carried out largely through pictures, though videos do form a chunk of their content.

There is no doubt about the fact that Coffee by Di Bella needs to improve their social media game in comparison to its competitors.

Target Audience

Coffee by Di Bella caters to the age bracket of 16-35. The kind of people Di Bella markets itself towards come from upper- and upper-middle class backgrounds. The consumers may be of all genders. Di Bella caters to students and professionals. However, all consumers must share a love for coffee in order to be drawn to Coffee by Di Bella.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation refers to the usage of particular keywords in order to ensure the maximum amount of traffic on a brand’s website. These keywords are those that have the highest search rates on Google from their target customers. If a website is able to optimise itself based on the search engine’s keywords, then it is certain that they will be able to reach the maximum amount of relevant people.

Some of the most popular keywords for Coffee by Di Bella are di bella, coffee by di bella and coffee shops in bandra. This means that whenever someone searches for these terms online, Coffee by Di Bella’s results are the first that pop up.

Often, brands bid on certain search terms to ensure that when users search these particular terms on the internet, the particular brand’s page pops up as one of the first results. This may be useful for Coffee by Di Bella in reference to other words that it could really capitalise on if they were able to be one of the top results.

Some of the suggested bid words for Coffee by Di Bella are di bella bandra and coffee by di bella menu. This ensures that when someone searches for the said terms online, they are bound to encounter Coffee by Di Bella’s website as one of the first results. This makes the website more accessible to the people looking for Coffee by Di Bella’s outlets near them, which is ultimately the group of people Coffee by Di Bella wants most to reach out to. Developing an SEO Strategy has surely benefited Coffee By Di Bella Digital Marketing Strategy!

Blog Ideas

Another way to engage your customers and ensure that they stay on your brand’s website for a longer duration of time is to provide them with interesting blogs to browse through.

History of coffee and crop to cup are examples of articles that the brand could create to ensure that website visitors spend more time with Coffee by Di Bella online!

An example of listicles that Coffee by Di Bella could post on their blog could be Top 5 coffee blends, Top 5 movies about coffee, Top 10 coffee references in movies, Top 5 coffee references in TV shows and Top 5 places to chill this summer. Listicles are extremely entertaining and captivate the reader’s attention, and at the same time subtly encourage the reader to visit Coffee by Di Bella. In this case, the readers might want to drink coffee at Di Bella just for a chance to try all the cool blends they’ve been reading about! Improving an Blog strategy has surely benefited Coffee By Di Bella Digital Marketing Strategy!

Email Marketing

An email marketing system that strategically targets Coffee by Di Bella’s prime customers is the need of the hour. Our student has come up with a strategy he feels would be of benefit. He has devised an email marketing system that includes:

  • Keep your friends close and coffee closer
    This would be regarding an offer that says, ‘Buy 4 drinks and get the 5th one free!’
  • Just when you thought you were out, we pulled you back in
    This would notify the user of when he has had 9 coffees at Di Bella and offer him a 10th coffee for free.
  • Get baffled with our waffles
    This would encourage the reader to try Coffee by Di Bella’s waffles as they are one of Di Bella’s bestselling items.
  • This summer, (man)go crazy with our mango specials
    This encourages the receiver of the special mango items available at Di Bella for a limited time.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing refers to collaborating with social media influencers to promote your brand. As influencers have a large following on social media, they are an excellent method of reaching your target audience and maximising your brand’s reach.

Coffee by Di Bella could conduct influencer campaigns in which it approaches influencers to do sponsored posts. For example, Mallika Dua, Varun Thakur, or Shiffa Merchant.

Online Reputation Management

A few online platforms that could be of use to Coffee by Di Bella’s ORM could be Zomato, Twitter, Google Reviews, Quora and Yahoo Answers. These online reputation management platforms help the customers share their reviews of Coffee by Di Bella’s food and therefore spread the word!

Platforms like Quora and Yahoo Answers often include questions like ‘What are some fun things to do in Mumbai?’, ‘What coffee shops and other co-working spaces are conducive to work?’ and other similar queries. It has to be made sure that Coffee by Di Bella is mentioned in such answers! This increases the likelihood that, when someone searches stumbles across such questions, they have appositive impression of Coffee by Di Bella.

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Loyalty App

Coffee by Di Bella could also introduce a loyalty app concept in which loyal customers get reward points and get a 10th drink free after every 9 drinks. Other services, like being able to order coffee on their way to the location and being able to pay online, can also be made available.

SNG

Coffee by Di Bella can sponsor a big question with SNG Comedy podcast, inviting them to do a podcast at Di Bella. This would increase brand awareness and recall in the minds of consumers.

 

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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