Business Meeting Spaces in Brisbane

Meetings in Brisbane

Queensland State Library

Whether you are from out of town and visiting Brisbane or a local looking for a convenient spot to meet and a cafe doesn’t have the required level of privacy then consider the Queensland State Library meeting spaces. Most are free to hire and they seat from 4-8 people. Larger spaces on level 4 are big enough for training and large corporate meetings. The first level has spaces for hire with kitchen facilities also.  Audiovisual equipment resides in some and most have beautiful views of the Brisbane Riverfront and city.

Book the rooms here: Meeting Room Spaces Brisbane

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When you’ve got the best product or service but people go elsewhere

Occasionally you need to step outside your business and be your customer, so you understand the experience you deliver.


4 MIN READ

Today my cafe breakfast had me considering the customer experience. I love a good cafe breakfast. Whether it’s around my home suburb or when I’m travelling, it’s something I really appreciate. Today I was in an inner Brisbane suburb and the breakfast cafe I usually go to was closed for good (replaced with a Yo-chi of course). This forced me to look elsewhere and I noticed the place had changed a lot since I was last there. Changed demographic of course meant shops had also changed. It wasn’t easy to find another cafe with a classic breakfast menu.  I tried three new cafe’s on consecutive days, that I wouldn’t return to. On the fourth day I headed to one I knew in the next suburb. It was worth the short drive. When I got there, in contrast to others on the same street, it was empty. Odd. Previously I’d been there after lunch and it had always been busy.

I ordered coffee and breakfast then sat down. The interior was open, bright,  relaxing, très cool and the music mix fabulous just as I remembered. The same friendly barista greeted me and we chatted. The smell of the beans being ground for my coffee was wonderful and the coffee even better. The best I’d had over the last few days. So why was this Brisbane business not as busy as the others I wondered? It got me thinking and as I left and walked back to my car I pondered this question and looked at the other cafe across the road.

Why was this cafe not as busy as the cafe on the next block? I knew it had better food and coffee, excellent music and friendly service, so what made the difference?

 

I considered the experience the other cafe offered from what I could see outside (and I had been there the day before) and I was reminded how important the customer experience is.

Your products and services are only part of the equation. How you serve your customers is just as important, if not more.

It didn’t take long for me to see a few obvious reasons for the success of the cafe up the road. They had clearly noticed, understood and catered to their clientele.

These are the marketing and business lessons I was reminded of whilst reflecting on the situation:

1. Welcome customers in

When I arrived near the cafe I love, I wasn’t sure it was open. There were no people outside, I didn’t see chairs and nothing caught my attention to indicate they were open. I checked the Google listing to see opening hours before getting out of the car. Yes they were open, so I headed over. But, if I hadn’t been there before I might have just gone to the other cafe close by which was clearly open with customers outside lining up. So the lesson here is to be obviously open for business and welcoming to customers.

2. Understand the marketplace you operate in

I could see from observing the people walking around the cafe location that morning, they clearly fell into distinct customer groups (target market segments if you will).

  • People heading to and from the gym
  • People walking their dogs
  • People heading to work
  • People taking their kids to school

This basically defines the cafe customer types for the morning. These people were all in transit. Note that I was not really one of those as I lead a more leisurely life in the morning and was just visiting the area.

The business and marketing lesson here is that if you know your customer types you then have the opportunity to cater your products and services to better suit their needs.

2. Know the daily life of your customer

The busier cafe up the road had catered to these customer groups making their cafe more convenient in the following ways:

They had a coffee counter open to the street so you could walk up and talk directly to the barista without going inside. This provided immediate and more convenient service that suited customers in transit.

This also showed they were open and people could see coffee being served and people chatting so it looked inviting and the ‘place to be for coffee’.

They had individual chairs you could pull up and rearrange on the street and water for dogs. So dog owners could sit while waiting and chat, making it more convenient and enjoyable to wait and clearly showing that dogs and their owners were welcome. I looked on Google maps and noticed a dog walking club up the road so this was really smart.

The chairs outside also worked to show they were open even when no one was outside or at the counter.

The lesson here is that making it easy to do business with you and adjusting your service or product delivery to suit the lives of your customers delivers a more attractive experience and ultimately more customers.

3. Occasionally you need to step out of your business and be your customer.

Perhaps my preferred cafe here wasn’t interested in more coffee business in the morning, they were clearly winning the day in the afternoon but they WERE open at 6am, where the other’s opened at 8am so I couldn’t help wondering why and what would happen if they adjusted their service delivery to truly suit the morning market. Granted, it could have just been one quiet day in an otherwise busy week.

The lesson is that as an owner you need to be curious and aware of what’s happening in your business. Many of us are doing the work every day but we really need to take time to stop and reflect often.

4. Some owners will never know

If your team are front of house so-to-speak and they aren’t asking questions and noticing or passing that customer experience information back to you and/or your marketing team, I think you are missing a huge opportunity to improve your business. This is why it’s important to have your team on board with your goals and not afraid to collect feedback at the point of product and service delivery. Small changes can deliver big results for small business but you’re not going to know what needs refining if you don’t step away and regularly test the experience you deliver, or at least set your team up to do that for you.

 

QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU APPLY THIS KNOWLEDGE NOW:

Have you experienced your own service and are you an owner who is open to feedback? Think of your ideal customer. What is their daily life like and when would they come into contact with your business and buy from you? Follow that path / process and reflect on the experience you provide.  Are you obviously open for business and inviting customers in? What changes will improve your customer experience and make it more convenient to do business with you? Are your team collecting feedback as they deliver your products and services? Are you responding to feedback and the market as it changes by adjusting how you do business? Why do you think your top competitor is doing well and why is this relevant to their (and your) customers?

Feel free to give me a call if you want to discuss.

First look at Threads by Instagram

This past weekend saw the launch of a new social media platform called ‘Threads’.  It’s a text based app that is being hailed as a Twitter replacement (apparently Twitter is threatening to sue).  The app was built by the Instagram team.  This new social space was quickly filled with unprecedented user sign ups within hours, beating every other platform ever launched.  So what’s it all about and how will Threads social app feature in the greater scheme of digital marketing for business? Read on. Continue reading →

How to market your local business with Google My Business

If your business serves clients locally in Brisbane or perhaps a smaller part of Brisbane then you’ll notice that the Google map listings feature prominently in search results related to your business.

For any business, but particularly for a small business serving local clients, the Google map listing is an important signal for location and relevance to a local search.  These listings are managed in Google My Business (GMB).

It’s actually pretty easy to follow along the steps that Google provides to claim and set up a Google My Business listing but here is a quick ‘how to’ with pictures so you feel a little more familiar with it.  You can then ask someone to help you claim your listing or have a crack at taking care of it yourself.

You might also want to take a look at the Google My Business app which makes ongoing management a breeze. Continue reading →

End of Financial Year 2020 – Growth despite the challenges

It has certainly been a year.  Trying to come up with an appropriate adjective in that opening sentence –  I decided to just leave it out altogether!  I’m sure you understand where I’m coming from.  At the end of the 2020 financial year I am grateful that although I did lose a couple of clients during the Coronavirus lockdown period, my business sustained significant growth for the 2020 financial year.  I know this is due to the focus and consistent work I put into planning each quarter and ensuring I did everything I could to help my digital marketing clients continually improve.

I’ve helped a number of new clients realise their digital plans with new websites this year and learned a lot in the process particularly when working with clients who were start-ups (not projects I usually take on) or had established businesses but were new to marketing in the digital space.  Those client situations highlight areas where I can be more effective.   For example Continue reading →