20 Best Marketing ideas for an Ice Cream Shop

If you own an ice cream shop, one of the ways to continue to generate revenue from the business is to continue to welcome customers to the business.

No doubt, when an ice cream shop opens its door for business, some customers might walk in to buy ice cream from the shop without any effort from the owner.

But if an ice cream shop wants to make good returns from their investment, then the business owner must be deliberate with marketing his or her ice cream shop.

In this article, we will look at some of the best marketing ideas for ice cream shops; these marketing ideas have been proven to work globally and they include;

Best Ice Cream Shop Marketing ideas

1. Create and Promote Special Packages on a Regular Basis

One of the ways you can attract customers is to ensure that from time to time you come up with promos that will be too tempting for customers to resist and at the same time will not deep into your profitability.

For example, if your competitors are offering to buy one cup of ice cream and get the next cup free, you can give a free cup of ice cream to a customer who refers a customer to your shop.

2. Partner with Key Stakeholders That Will Help You Attract Customers

You can partner with different corporate organizations, businesses, and social media influencers who have the capacity to send clients your way.

Please note that you can reach an agreement with them on the percentage they stand to get when customers come through their referrals.

3. Develop Mailing Lists and Leverage Email Marketing

Of course, before launching any business, you should have in mind the people who are likely going to patronize your ice cream shop hence you should be able to develop a mailing list to market your ice cream shop.

4. Spend More on Advertising and Promotion 

If indeed you want to make more money from your ice cream shop business, then you must be ready to spend money to be in the faces of your target audience.

You are expected to advertise your ice cream shop on national dailies, local TV stations, and local radio stations. You are expected to promote your ice cream shop online via blogs and all available social media platforms.

Make use of attractive handbills to create awareness and also to give direction to your ice cream shop. Position our signage/flexi banners at strategic places in and around the city.

5. Leverage on Short Videos on Social Media

In recent times, you cannot do much on social media without leveraging short video content to drive your narratives. You could create a short but sweet video that explains the uniqueness of your ice cream shop, and your unique ice cream recipes.

You could dive deep into a topic that relates to your business, as your potential customers might be searching for how-to videos that give you an opportunity to catch their attention.

6. Get All Your Employees Involved in Marketing Your Business

As an ice cream shop that is serious about making money, part of what you need to do if you want to continue to welcome customers is to ensure that all your employees are directly or indirectly involved in the sales and marketing of your business.

Ensure that you create provisions for your employees to earn commission when they bring in business for the organization.

You can also create a business model that will enable freelancers to work with your ice cream shop especially as it relates to bringing in corporate business.

7. Form Strategic Marketing Alliances with Players in the Key Industry

As an ice cream shop business owner, if you want to continue to welcome customers, then you should look towards forming strategic marketing alliances with major players in the key industries.

Good enough, there are opportunities for ice cream shops to form strategic marketing alliances with other players in the food and beverage industry, events and party planning industry, and even schools, and facility managers.

8. Build a Good Business Network

Networking is perhaps one of the most effective and creative marketing ideas needed to build your clientele base and you have to put plans in place to leverage all your networks if you truly want to do well with your ice cream shop business.

In view of that, you should look out for gatherings where you can network with corporate executives, entrepreneurs, parents, college students et al. These are the people that will likely patronize your ice cream shop.

9. Develop a Customer Referral Program

This is actually encouraging word-of-mouth promotion of your ice cream shop business. Interestingly, customers that you get via referral will definitely become satisfied customers which will help you attract other customers.

10. Engage in Guerilla Marketing.

Guerilla marketing emphasizes creativity over budget, and strategies are often cheap and easy to implement, especially when localized.

Broadcast your Twitter handle with sidewalk chalk, use an abandoned storefront as a canvas for street art, or plaster custom stickers on urban décor that make those who stroll by look twice.

There is a ton of room for invention here, and you do not need a big budget to be successful with guerilla marketing for a business such as an ice cream shop.

11. Be Active on Online Forums

In this dispensation, a lot is going on online, and beyond every reasonable doubt, those who are going to patronize your ice cream shop are online and belong to one online forum or the other.

So, one of the ways to market your ice cream shop business is to belong to various online forums, especially forums that contain the demography of people who would readily patronize ice cream. Just be willing to answer different questions and of course, take advantage to market your ice cream.

12. Brand Your Official Vehicles

One of the ways of marketing your ice cream shop is to brand all your official vehicles in such a way that people would always want to make inquiries on how they can locate your ice cream shop.

Aside from branding all your official vehicles, you can also paste stickers of your ice cream shop on clients’ and family members’ cars. It will go a long way to communicate your brand and also to attract customers.

13. Leverage on Customer Satisfaction Survey

A customer satisfaction survey is one of the ways of getting feedback from your customers. But in an actual sense, a customer satisfaction survey is not only a great way to learn about your customer base.

It is also a great way for customers to remember you exist and a way of marketing your ice cream especially if you have a new ice cream recipe.

Trust me, if a customer is satisfied with your ice cream and service delivery, you can easily push for them to help you market your ice cream to their friends and family at no cost.

14. Partner with Social Media Influencers

Another result yielding marketing idea suitable for marketing an ice cream shop is to partner with influencers on social media to help elevate your social media presence and of course market your ice cream. Send them a gift and they might feature you in a post or on their story on Facebook or Instagram.

If you are lucky to have a family member or a friend who is a social media influencer, they can help mention or advertise your brand and product for free on all their social media handles.

15. Market Via Your Social Media Handles

Interestingly, opening a social media handle is free and you can use your handle to market your products and services as long as you abide by the rules and regulations of the organization.

This means using those channels to interact with your customers who are either reviewing you or commenting on your posts. And during the course of interacting with them, you can market your services to them.

Just ensure that you leverage the internet and social media platforms like; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google + et al to promote your brand.

16. Create Your Own Infographics

Interestingly, with all this conversation around data, it should be noted that infographics are super-powerful marketing tools—and relatively easy and inexpensive to make. Infographics are visual and easy to understand, which is why many people love to share them.

You can use online services right in your browser, such as Visme—no software or design skills required. You can also step it up a notch and pay for a freelance designer to create a set of infographics for you—which would come in as a relatively inexpensive small business marketing idea.

17. Publish Valuable Content on Various Blogs

You can become a guest blogger on highly visited blogs that cover your industry. And although you can still invest in publishing on those sites, consider alternative content distribution networks when you are searching for free marketing ideas.

For instance, Reddit is an old-school social network that bills itself as the “front page of the internet.” To market on Reddit, you need to find a niche—known on Reddit as subreddits, or message boards—related to your industry or business.

By joining professional groups, participating in industry conversations, and sharing your own content, you can reach the right kind of audience that will visit your ice cream shop. While this small business marketing idea will take some time on your part, it does not have to cost money.

18. Leverage on One-to-One Marketing Strategy

One-to-one marketing is a customer relationship strategy aimed at boosting personalized interactions with customers. With one-to-one marketing, it means you can work up to a potential customer in a gathering or in a bus and talk to them about your product and services.

19. Place Adverts on both Print and Electronic Media Platforms

You are expected to place adverts for your services on both print (community-based newspapers and magazines) and electronic media platforms.

Although this will definitely cost you money, you are surely going to get customers patronizing your ice cream shop when they come across your adverts on print media.

20. Organize Online Contests on a Regular Basis

The prizes do not need to be expensive, but the bottom line is that you should give out stuff that will make people go out of their way to participate in your contest.

As a matter of fact, contests are a great way to gather potential customer data—like emails—while also getting them to spread the word about your business to even more potential customers.

In conclusion,

Apart from the marketing ideas listed above, there are other unconventional marketing approaches you can adopt to market your ice cream business.

Some of these marketing ideas may just be unique to the location where your ice cream shop is located. For example, if roadshows are permitted in the community where your ice cream shop is located, you may leverage it to promote your ice cream shop.