What to do when your marketing budget is $0

How to market your café when you have no money

I chose that title for this newsletter very deliberately. To be click bait. Because I honestly don’t believe a lack of marketing is a budget problem.

I think marketing gets deprioritized because of consequences. More specifically, the timing of those consequences.

An espresso machine stops working and there’s an immediate problem. No coffee. No sales. No business.

The AC breaks in the middle of summer and customers don’t stick around. Milk prices go up and margins feel tighter almost immediately. Staffing issues & supplier problems when you least expect or need them. .

Those things demand attention because the consequences are obvious.

Marketing is different.

Ignore Google reviews for six months and nothing dramatic happens tomorrow morning. Fail to build a customer list and next week probably looks normal. Stop paying attention to regulars and business doesn’t suddenly fall apart.

The consequences take a while to show up. And when they do, many try solving it with visibility. More content. More ads. More posting.

Marketing has somehow become shorthand for Instagram

Spend any amount of time doomscrolling and you’d be forgiven for assuming the cafés growing fastest are simply the ones posting the best content.

Sometimes, that’s true. A strong Instagram feed absolutely helps.

People discover cafés there. They send posts to friends. They save places for later.

Some cafés genuinely grow because they understand content.

But Instagram is the invitation. Not the whole experience.

Instagram might get somebody through the door once. The experience is what gets them back.

And more importantly, gives them something worth telling somebody else about.

That’s marketing too. Often the kind that lasts longer.

Marketing doesn’t stop once someone walks through the door

Let’s assume your social media game is on point. That people discovered your shop on Instagram.

The marketing job isn’t done once they walk through the door.

The welcome matters. The music matters. Whether staff make eye contact matters. How confidently somebody answers a question about coffee matters. How problems get handled matters. Whether someone leaves feeling looked after or simply processed matters.

Every interaction becomes part of your reputation. And reputation spreads.

Office conversations. WhatsApp groups. Neighbours. Friends visiting from overseas asking where to get coffee. Parents after school pickup.

Most of the people sitting in your shop today didn’t arrive because of an ad.

Somebody told them to go.

The most overlooked segment of the customer base

That “somebody” is probably a regular. One of the most ignored segments of the customer base.

Coffee businesses spend a lot of time thinking about new customers. Which makes sense. Growth feels visible. More foot traffic. More tags on Instagram. More people walking through the door for the first time.

Regulars are ignored because they’re already coming.

That’s the blind spot.

Regulars don’t just spend money. They shape the atmosphere. They recommend places. They bring friends. Then colleagues. Then family.

Here’s the beauty of the regular. Marketing to them costs nothing.

Loyalty is built through very ordinary moments. A barista remembering someone’s drink. Asking where somebody disappeared to after not seeing them for two weeks. Remembering a customer’s dog before remembering their name.

These things work. And don’t cost a thing.

Google is more important than Instagram

Think about how people actually choose cafés.

You’re travelling. Meeting someone. Working remotely. Trying to avoid bad coffee.

You search:

“Coffee near me.”

“Best café nearby.”

“Specialty coffee close to me.”

Then you scroll. Photos. Ratings. Reviews. Opening hours.

Then you decide.

Your Google profile is already doing marketing whether you’re paying attention to it or not. And many of you are not.

Old photos. Incorrect hours. Reviews sitting unanswered. Questions nobody responds to.

Sometimes a café loses the visit before somebody even walks through the door.

The most underrated platform

Instagram has been around for nearly 16 years. During that time, its ranking systems have changed constantly. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has publicly said changes happen all the time, not only through major updates. Nobody outside Instagram knows the exact number. But even if the platform changed just once a day, that would mean more than 5,700 changes since launch.

Yet so many cafés are trying to build their business on a platform they don’t control.

You know what hasn’t changed nearly as much?

Email.

It’s been around since 1971. 55 years old and still underrated.

I get it though. Likes and shares feel way more exciting than delivery rates and open rates.

Email feels old fashioned. Instagram feels alive.

But one is rented land. The other is a direct relationship.

A new coffee arrives. You’re hosting a cupping. Brunch launches next weekend.

You have something worth saying. Why say it only on a platform that decides whether people see it? Email lets you speak directly to people who already care.

Not everyone. Just the people who’ve said:

“Yes, I’d like to hear from you.”

A few hundred subscribers who genuinely like your café will often do more for your business than thousands of passive followers scrolling past your posts.

The difficult thing about marketing

The difficult thing about marketing is that it rarely feels urgent. Until it does.

Cafés become forgettable gradually. Fewer people mentioning you. Fewer new faces coming through. Regulars disappearing without anyone noticing.

The kind of problems that don’t announce themselves. Which is exactly why marketing gets pushed aside.

Not because you don’t care. Because everything else feels more urgent.

Until one day, marketing becomes urgent too.