How To Date Your Customer To Grow A Tea Business

With today’s technology it’s not that difficult to gain visitors to your tea business, whether it’s online shop or a physical store. It’s easy to spend money on ads using Google, participate on social media or offer great coupon deals on sites such as Groupon. What most tea start-ups struggle with the most is how they grow their business. The secret that we want to reveal in this article is that most fast growing businesses successfully apply insights from dating someone to their business.

When it comes to growing your tea business, the concept is behind it is fairly simple. It relies on two simple factors.

1. The % of store visitors will buy your product, and;

2. The % of your customers will come back and buy again.

The only way to influence these factors to work your way up to success is by offering something that your customer will love. It’s something that they are passionate about, and when you achieve that, they are unconditionally wanting it to be successful. If you get that right, the rest will take care of itself. The reality is that nobody ever gets it right the first time, even if you spends a lot of time preparing your tea offerings. Great businesses listen to customers and continuously improve their product (or services) to make it great.

In this blog post we will talk about the first factor that we listed above ” The % of store visitors will buy your product.” To make this happen, you have to treat your customers if you are dating them. With this in mind, you’re going to have to create a great first impression and find ways to make first impression things memorable.

The First Impression

When it comes to dating, the first impression matters and this is something that also holds for companies. We humans are ‘relationship-manufacturing’ creatures. Whether it’s the car you drive, clothes we buy, or even the cup of tea we drink, if it’s something you love, you feel a ‘personal’ connection with it. If you are a tea business owner, then ask yourself how you can create that first connection when presenting your tea product? The number one important factor is to make it memorable, which we discuss in the next paragraph.

Make Things Memorable

When trying to uncover opportunities that people will remember, consider the below list of ideas:

Store Impressions: Pick A Venue

When you date, you have to pick the right venue. Assume your tea store or website is that venue and ask yourself: How does it feel when a tea enthusiast enters my store for the first time? If you have a physical store, make sure you get the interior design right. If you have an online store, invest in great web-design that is user-friendly. To make it memorable, it has to be remarkable.

Packaging: Dress To Impress

It’s not only the store design or quality of the tea that matter. We tea sippers are emotional people. Not only does the tea itself has to be good, but also the whole experience around it. Like you dress up for a date, you need to offer good looking packaging for your product. Is the packaging of the tea a pleasure to look at? Does the packaging tell you stories about the tea? Is it easy to open and close? How is the appearance of the tea? How does it smell? These things all matter.

Ask For Feedback

How can I make my customer remember the tea he/she tastes? It’s safe to assume that the majority of your customers have tried many different kinds of tea in their lives. It doesn’t matter how much we love tea, our brains have limitations: we simply can’t remember all the great teas that we tried in the past. To make your teas memorable, ask your customer questions to make them actively about how they feel about your tea. Whether this is during free tasting sessions in a physical store or while you engage with customers on social media, it will make them remember.

Tell More About Yourself: Each Tea Has A Story

Do I have information about the background of the product that you are selling? Make sure you never see tea just as a commodity product. What makes tea great is the story behind it! Tell your customer about the background of the farmer, the production region, the way it’s made. These are all things that make your product memorable and at the same time a more enjoyable sip.

Get To Know Me More: Steeping Instructions

Steeping instructions are similar to user manuals of electronics, except people actually read them.  Nobody will read manuals of electronics, as most of the time the product speaks for itself. Tea is different, because the steeping ritual is as important as sipping the tea itself.

Never Give Up: Continously Improve

You can always be nervous about dating and that’s fine. Never give up. Even if the first dates fail, it’s what you learn from it that matters to continuously improve that great first impression that will attract.

NEXT: Marry Your Customer

The next step after dating and getting to know someone is that you will enter a marriage. Customer retention will become more important at that stage. More on this in our future blog posts!

This blog post belongs to a series of posts about How To Start A Tea Business