Case Studies
There are several examples of small businesses that have succeeded using social media for personal marketing. Each of these examples used a different aspect or technique of the social media world to market their company and gain massive success in profits.
Kogi
In 2008, Roy Choi and his partner Mark Manguera, launched Kogi, a small food-truck venture selling Korean-Mexican fusion food. Their innovations rocked the food truck industry as they reignited the trend for mobile eateries. Using Twitter as a marketing strategy, Choi generated brand awareness by informing his customers about the new locations the truck was headed to. This sparked a media-frenzy and created a game of chase where hundreds of customers would hunt down the truck to line up daily for lunch, dinner, and late-night snacks. The “chase” began to create its own subculture which captivated even more customers to try the Korean-Mexican fusion food. Everyday Kogi would tweet their 123,000 followers their exact locations and the “Chef Special of the Day” which excited its fans to follow the truck to its next destination. Within the first year of opening, the food truck venture grossed $2 million in sales.
Capitalizing on the viral capabilities of Twitter, Kogi shows just how vital social media is for small businesses to grow their ventures. It also proves startups are able to quickly grow when implementing a creative online marketing plan. Branching out to other digital platforms such as Instagram, Kogi also began trending the hashtag #tacoporn to intensify the craze on items off their menu (LA Food Truck). TIME Magazine reports, “Kogi BBQ is a perfect example of a small business not having to spend traditional marketing dollars—instead, they’re using free online tools to promote themselves. When those trucks pull up just before noon, there are already lines of people waiting for them. This is social media in action.” Choi’s fearless journey in uncharted territories show how innovation in marketing has erupted in this new digital culture. By combining daily activities of its target consumers, scrolling through social media and eating, Kogi used digital marketing to its advantage thus leveraging its business.
Three Bird Nest
Alicia Shaffer’s business, Three Bird Nest, reels in nearly $1 million dollars in revenue each year. She initially sold her creations in a small boutique in Livermore, California but demand quickly increased once she expanded her store to Etsy, an online platform that provides an e-boutique for users to sell their handmade-creations. Within a few weeks of the Etsy shop’s opening, Shaffer garnered over one hundred product requests, after posting one picture to Pinterest. Noticing the popularity that was generated by Pinterest, she began to actively use this platform to attract new customers. Shaffer could not believe how successful her shop became due to Pinterest. She thought business would slow down after the holiday season but ironically, when February came and was unable to fulfill the hundreds of orders herself and began recruiting employees. Her shop is not just successful because of her great products, she comments “it’s also about aggressively helpful customer service, attention to detail, and knowledge of how e-commerce on Etsy, which has 30 million registered users, works.” In an interview, Shaffer shares her business tips on growing a successful Etsy shop. First, the owner should “think like a shopper.” Etsy has hundreds of sources giving tips and insights for business owners to generate traffic to their shop, so she suggests that to take advantage of the consumer research that is already provided. She reminds owners to ask themselves if they would click on the content posted if they were in the consumer’s shoes. This ties in to her second advice: “photography and styling matters.” She adds, “an item photographed on a table does captivate people to click on your posts, but if a consumer sees how the scarfs can be styled, they are more likely to envision themselves wearing it, therefore clicking on the product.” Thirdly, she suggest, “don't give your products stupid names” by giving your items realistic titles, the consumers are more likely to find the business or products on search engines. She adds, "a huge mistake is naming products using obscure names like ‘Juicy Frutti Tutti Garland.’[TB7] No one’s going to search for that." Instead, Shaffer usually opts for something more general, like "Floral Garland," or "Tassle Birthday Party Decoration." This allows for the customer to search for their desired items and find yours to purchase. Lastly, she concludes, “kill customers with kindness.” She ties this advice back to the fact that small businesses do not have huge marketing budgets. Using social media effectively will generate word-of-mouth and bring consumers for the business. By personally reaching out to customers, Shaffer is able to persuade potential leads into real buyers. Three Bird Nest also adds coupon codes, giving them $5 off their next purchase to encourage future purchases. From the advice Shaffer has shared, it is very clear that customer service is priority when selling trough a platform that lacks physical connections. In order to draw potential customers in, the company must be able to showcase great service in addition to their products. Shaffer mentions that small gestures like immediate email responses or replying to a social media comment shows the company’s attentive personality..
Camp Brand Goods
Camp Brand Goods is a small business completely inspired by the founders’ outdoor lifestyle. The startup uses Instagram as a way to not only display their products but also a method of showcasing their values and passion. By posting photos of road trips, fishing, and other outdoor excursions, Camp Brand Goods differentiates themselves from typical business social media accounts. Through these outdoor-inspiring images, the brand is able to connect with the personalities of their consumers and create an emotional impression of the brand. Using this personable approach, the company is able to turn their media followers into customers. Through this method, Camp Brand Goods has seen a massive growth in their business and comments,
“Instagram is our purest form of social media interaction with our customers, in the sense that it’s less about the product than it is about sharing good times.” By posting an even ratio of photography of their products and photography of outdoor images, their business takes a different approach as their page is not totally sales driven, allowing customers to enjoy the social media posts rather than feeling targeted as a customer. A Camp Brand Goods’s employee blogs, “a large chunk of our followers don’t own any of our products yet but often times I will notice a new follower making a purchase several weeks after they start following us. Because our Instagram isn’t super sales driven, it’s opened up a lot of relationships with other Instagram users. It’s based on our lifestyle so people are excited to share our Instagram feed with their followers.” This shows that the brand has been able to create a factor of entertainment with their followers and in turn create a relationship which encourages them to purchase their Camp Brand Goods products. This no-pressure, hands-off approach seems to be working very well for the small business as their sales and social media followers continue to grow.
Another tactic Camp Brand Goods uses to keep customer connection with their followers is evident to the company’s unique hashtag, #keepitwild . From time to time, contests are conducted using this hashtag to generate brand awareness. By asking social media followers to post their own outdoor images with the hashtag #keepitwild, the company is able to generate more brand awareness, drawing new circles of followers from the different follower niche of various followers. Winners are drawn weekly with a free product award. Shown through its marketing strategy, Camp Brand Goods has created its own community of outdoor enthusiasts, not with the priority of product advertisement but by building customer relationships with its followers (Sehn 2015).