Dee Collins, Dee’s Wholefoods
We started our business at farmers markets and used feedback from our customers
to tailor our products, we brought our range of wholefood burgers to fairs, markets,
festivals and shows all around the country. We kept a list of our customers email
addresses.
When we launched our products in stores we were able to contact customers in
Dublin and tell them the products were now for sale in i.e. The Organic Supermarket
in Blackrock.
When we achieved listings with Tesco, Dunnes, SuperQuinn and Musgraves we had
to cut back on our farmer’s markets but still needed to keep in contact with our
customers.
We set up a free and easy to use email marketing template with www.mailchimp.ie
and all our customers joined the mailing list.
We send out news bulletins which link back to our facebook and twitter page.
Google is now finding twitter feeds most often – so mention your company’s
name in your tweets sometimes.
We value our facebook fans and like to share things we find out about with them, like
items on nutrition, recipes etc.
We can use our Dee’s Business Page to comment on other Business Pages via
Facebook Notes ( you must have “liked” the page you wish to post on with your
personal profile previously) you can then “TAG” other pages, so depending on their
settings, what you comment as can be seen on their walls.
We use this feature to highlight i.e. A 20% off promotion in Whole Foods Market,
Kensington – this means that we can now interact as Dee’s with not only the store,
but the customers of the store.
We use Facebook Ads to target local areas i.e. SuperValu Bundoran – our
products were launched in-store and we were able to target all women that lived
within a 20mile radius of Bundoran. Invaluable.
We have also sourced a panel of 60 from social media to take part in our NPD
team process. They are posted samples and feedback via an online survey
www.surveymonkey.com .
Twitter is a fabulous tool and our customers now tweet directly from stores if they
find an out of stock or something now right – they have become our mobile sales
army.
We can also directly communicate with people you know buy your products in a
certain area if there are any special offers or promotions on. I.e. we knew a
customer purchased in SuperValu Kilkenny and we were able to tell him go to store
on Friday as there was a special offer on.
Social media is very accessible now with the advent of the smartphone – there is no
right or wrong just try different things, some of them work, some of them don’t but
just make sure to keep your brand values clear and consistent over all
communication streams. You may want one identity for your business and one for
your brand. Social Media is great fun and for entrepreneurs can offer great comfort
and help in a crisis as sage advice is only a tweet away for computer problems,
glitches, recommendations etc. The world of entrepreneurship can be a lonely place
and it is a good forum for communication, live tv has become more interactive with
people sitting down to watch shows again as their peers will be tweeting also. It is
great fun – just don’t get addicted!