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What can be the best copy to sell coffee capsules online? ☕️ coffee pods) (12)

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I am handling campaigns in FB & IG for coffee pods (ecommerce Shopify store), need help with ideas for:

-What kind of copies to use? "statements to encourage buying more stock of coffee pods"
-What kind of angles can be used to encourage buying coffee pods online?
-What kind of images? designs/colors to use

I tried messages related to moods and being awake, worked to some level, need some help to test different copies/angles/designs

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Tell us a bit about the product positioning and what you have tried. What's your price point?
Premium like Nescafé and Georges #whatelse ? Generic entry level? Speciality coffee?

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I'm using a pod coffee machine in the office and the current one I have I bought based on an online ad. The one I have is the Philips Senseo which doesn't use the plastic pods and that was the angle used that got me.

I see the coffee pod industry as a huge environmental problem... tons of plastic one-time pods are tossed daily and the ones Senseo uses are more like a tea bag, made from some paper or whatever it is... better than plastic for sure.

I'm not sure what types of pods you are using, but if applicable, use the enviro angle.

Another good one might be something like "perfect coffee every time" as it's basically impossible to mess it up since the pod is always the same.

Convenience is a good angle... it's the easiest way to make a coffee this way.

You can also present that you have way bigger choice of coffee types than a regular store, if applicable.

I would say some kind of subscription program could work well for this too... 20 pods mailed to you every week... new types of pods for trying... etc.

Some package deals... various coffee varieties in one "surprise pack".

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focus on healthy/bio cups, great angle to work with. as stated above most used cups are bad material (for environment and/or body) and people discover this more and more.
thereby more and more cups offering additional ingredients to boost health, especially those healthy tea cups with curcuma etc.

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That's a very good question jeremie

Intro:
We are a big capsules store (focused heavily on capsules online sales)

Products are capsules of 2 main bases:
-Dolce Gusto (and its compatible brands) more flavors here as the capsule is relatively bigger, get an idea here. Dolce Gusto landing page on Amazon is very helpful they covered different angles/features already
-Nespresso (and its compatible brands) considered small capsules compared to Dolce Gusto, get and idea here, very limited to dark intense coffee (Espresso). Generally no flavor, it is more about levels of roasting.. etc

Price:
As we are a big store of coffee for those 2 main popular capsules and their compatibles, price range is very wide
The original ones are more premium so higher price (also more competitive as they are popular and available in many stores online/offline)
The compatible ones at lower price (less competitive) and not widely available (better margin sometimes)

*Sometimes we have competitive prices and availability of flavors where customers don't mind to buy from us instead of trying to find them cheaper in physical stores (convince)

@matuloo
Very interesting paper pads you have

Will consider communicating about environment angles
We do have plastic and aluminum capsules (aluminum more expensive, yes some people prefer it, some people are just price sensitive they don't mind much about health/environment)

Yes sometimes we promote ourself as the biggest capsules online store

We have already considered subscription plans as we already have returning customers, they are regular to heavy pods consumers (we also have a loyalty program to go live soonest)

@stickupkid
Yes health is very important angle, some people asking about sugar, milk or requesting detailed ingredients. Some capsules come with specific kinds of tea (not just coffee)

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One more idea: I've seen some re-usable capsule types. So you just basically clean it after use and fill it with any coffee variety you like... try to source that too and add that as an option.

You might want to add some compatible products or upsells too... branded coffee cups or spoons, cleaning sets, maybe even the coffee machines itself... gift packaging, gift certificates.

Not sure about the legality of this, but how about offering a "coffee tasting" package? So you take 1 pod out of all the varieties you sell and put them into a a separate package? I would certainly buy this! I was trying several types but I ended up liking just a bunch of them, so I kind of wasted money on buying the whole packages.

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Very challenging to success, re-usable sometimes get jammed in the machine, impact the quality of the drink or may even damage the machine itself

Really good idea! Will try this, some brands are more flexible, also we are a sole distributer of a brand that we sell, would consider testing that!

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Oh yes, I was afraid this would be the case

Great! And I think your margin could be bigger on these packages, I certainly wouldn't mind paying a bit higher per-pod price in case of such a package, compared to the regular 1-type ones.

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Here is my view on this. Let’s have a look at who is your client. I am a bit sarcastic, but sometimes one needs to to understand the client :-)

Let's look a tea first as I am a tea nerd. We have 3 tea formats available:
- tea (bulk)
- tea bag
- pyramid tea bag

In tea bags, they put tea dust, which is the lower quality of tee (what is left at the bottom of the machine that classifies tea leaves by category). The only advantage of dust is that it colors really fast the water. That's is what a person with no knowledge of tea is expecting, color, fast. Broadest market in the USA / Europe / Latin America world. Not sure in Asia, where bulk is probably still bigger due to their strong tea culture.

Pyramid tea bags were invented to expand the market, while keeping the conveniency of tea bags. They put leaves parts instead of dust, so it tastes a bit better. And it looks better to someone with no tea knowledge, who is going to happily pay a premium for that.

Bulk tea is where you find the broadest range (both in terms of quality, and the most premium teas. You will find people willing to sacrifice conveniency for either 1) price per unit 2) higher quality.



Coffee follows the same trend. What do we have:
- grinded coffee (bulk)
- coffee beans (bulk)
- coffee pods (alu / plastic)
- coffee bags (like tea bag format)

Grinded coffee (bulk)
- Traditional market, decent quality coffee available. Not the best ones that need to be grinded just before using.
- Quality: low to medium
- Price range: low to medium

Coffee beans (bulk)
- For people who like coffee and are willing to take the time to prepare one.
- Quality: medium to high
- Price range: medium to high

Coffee pods
- Quality: low to medium
- Price range: medium to high

Coffee pods are a bit the same as tea bags. They bring conveniency to people who just want a coffee, fast, have no knowledge of what a real coffee is.
On top of that, Nespresso has brought a fake luxury experience with their products. Look at their TV ads, stores in malls, designed with the same codes as luxury items like bags or perfumes. The quality of the product is not good, but the packaging is, so that's enough. Exactly the same as Louis Vuitton bags sold $2,000 each, while fabricated in Romania by a worker who barely makes $500 a month, and not the best quality of leather.

I disagree with @matuloo. Re-usable capsules go against the conveniency principle I just mentioned and you won’t sell much. And if you do, you lose the client…

Marketing angles for machines:
- Simplicity: the only coffee ready in 12 seconds…
- No effort: stop making coffee, just enjoy coffee
- Fast: in a rush with kids going to school / why bother to make coffee when you could just have a coffee
- Old vs modern: assimilate the traditional coffee machine to the past / modern people use pods. Psycho trick: You can denigrate people using traditional machines. Are you still making coffee the way your grandmother did? Come on Mike, it's time to enter 21st century. This make them feel bad, which creates a need to change.

Marketing angles for pods:
- Luxury: I would try Instagram influencers who target your market. They could offer a coupon code to their subscribers. You could also invite them to a testing of your new “premium” (what a joke, sorry) coffee in a nice venue with them. You could have invitations for your best clients who want to meet their influencers, or with a giveaway for the one who bought coffee during the quarter before the event. If you sell your own products, you could use golden tickets like in Willy Wonka.
- Choice: see what Nespresso is doing. They are using name of cities, colors... Don’t even bother with talking about coffee quality or type, your client does not know the taste of a coffee. Morning coffee. Cold Winter Coffee. Mood lifting coffeee...
- Limited edition (same as Nespresso)
- Subscription only pods: make these pods visible on your store, but only available with someone who subscribe for a recurring delivery. At the moment, you are probably competing on prices with subscription. I would try stuffing the subscription with things that don't cost you much, but enhance the perceived value. Invitation to event. Free coupons for their friends. Avant-premiere / Privilege to test the new types or to participate in the selection of the new flavours. Invitation to conference about coffee fabrication (not the last one, joking...)
- Simplicity: bothered to have to queue at the nespresso store. Receive your coffee dose directly in the confort of your home.

Coffee bags (like tea bag format)
Same as previous clients, but with an environmental angle instead of the luxury angle. Yes, it feels good to use a bag instead of a plastic pod to protect the environment. This is incoherent with the fact that with an Italian Espresso machine or a French Press, you don’t generate any waste as these machines don’t need bags or filters. But don’t tell them :-D

Have in mind though that the environmental angle only plays when they buy the machine.



On a broader perspective, your product is answering to a market need of “not willing to make effort / to learn/understand”. To understand the evolution of the market, look at printed advertising for cars, phone and hifi of the 1960s and compare with the same ads today.

I have already given tea and coffee examples. I could add a note on wine. Wine in France is governed by grape variety, year of production, winery plot, AOC (appellation origine controlée). This is too complicated. One needs knowledge to read a wine menu. Most new world wines have grape variety and 3 categories (Gran Reserva / Reserva / Nothing). That’s it. In the USA, for more complex wines, James Suckling invented a scoring system to simplify life of those who don’t want to learn about wine. That is also why Rudy Kurniawan was able to forge wines so easily.

To understand better your clients, I recommend “The Barbarians: An Essay on the Mutation of Culture” by Alessandro Baricco, which explains more in depth the cultural evolution I just mentioned.
https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Es...dp/B00GQA28R6/



(I have no touched the corporate market, as this is a completely different market. Here you lease the machine with a minimum monthly coffee order. So i don't think that is your market.)

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You have a point there for sure. It just came to my mind as a possible cross sell but you are right, selling these would actually go against the business of selling one-time capsules. Or maybe now, once the people realize it's complicated to mess with the re-usable ones, they might go back to by standard capsules only

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Wow @jeremie that's some seriously good information!

Here's my contribution:

https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+coffee+pods

Not enough people are using reddit as a research tool. I've found so many ideas on target demo, ad angles and such on there.

For example - I've just gone through the first page of google results and found these:

Convince people that pods are of the same quality or higher and you're golden.


Here are some angles: Quick and easy, no mess to clean, consistent taste.


An angle that can address the "aren't these too expensive?" voice inside the prospect's head.


One thing though: The above angles are only for convincing people to switch to using machines that use pods. If your store doesn't sell machines that use pods, those angles won't really apply.



Amy

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Thanks a lot guys!

I enjoyed this interesting chat

Alright @jeremie, very good comparison with tea.. Every time I write a copy I will remember that this audience is lazy, fall in connivence, they don't know much about the real coffee or they may know but insist to take the easy quick way regardless

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