Six Questions with Mari Luangrath, owner of Foiled Cupcakes
Now more than ever businesses are experimenting with social media to build a loyal customer base during the recession. By the Bootstraps spoke with Mari Luangrath, owner of Foiled Cupcakes, a cupcake delivery service based in Naperville that has a solid social media presence. The business delivers cupcakes to Chicago and the west suburbs. Within a few months of its opening, the store has more than 2,900 followers on their Twitter page and more than 600 fans on their Facebook page.
Mari Luangrath is the owner of Foiled Cupcakes
Just how does Luangrath use social media for her business? Listen to our conversation, or read the transcript below.
By the Bootstraps (BB): What drew you to Twitter?
Mari Luangrath: I have a college friend who was on Facebook and he kept tweeting and I said what is this? [laughter] We did a quick Facebook chat and he said you need to get in touch with my friend. So he put me in contact with his friend whose name is Adrian Dayton and we had a 30 minute conference call and he said, “You need to get on this.” And I got on and I said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea what I’m doing.” And then about a week later I still had no idea what I was doing, but I had people following me and excited about cupcakes.
BB: How do you use it?
ML: My personal reason for using social media is just to reach out to people and develop relationships with them. I certainly don’t use social media strictly as a selling tool and I certainly try to balance out the whole personality of our brand along with some information about what we do and making it fun and keeping it exciting. I would say what we do is just a mix of relationship building and interaction with our consumer.
BB: What would you say is the difference between Twitter and Facebook?
ML: Twitter is definitely more real time. It’s definitely more real time. It’s easy to use Twitter just because it’s like a microblog, so you’re able to scan and see what people are doing.
Facebook it’s a little more challenging because people have to be fans of yours in order to see what you’re doing. It’s a lot more permission based but I think you probably get better leads that way if it’s permission-based marketing. You’re able to connect to the consumer on a more lengthy level. You’re not limited to 140 characters so you’re able to have a conversation that isn’t as succinct.
BB: What are the pros and cons of using social media for a business?
ML: The pros would definitely be that it’s inexpensive. It doesn’t cost anything. We haven’t spent a dollar on advertising or marketing for our business at all. Another pro would be that you’re able to meet a lot of people you necessarily would never have the opportunity to come in contact with. We’ve gotten some press just simply by being on social media and we’ve also made connections with people who have led us to our target market. Some of the cons I would say would be it’s real time, so you don’t have a lot of time to respond. If we were to put something out there saying for example, “Get a dozen free with every dozen cupcakes you buy.” If we were to do something like that, then it would be an immediate response and I don’t know if we’d be necessarily able to control that or handle that kind of growth.
BB: What do you think has flopped and what do you think has succeeded in your use of social media?
ML: When we try to promote something too hard and it comes across as not very genuine. It comes across too sales-pitchy and I think that is what a lot of people get turned off by. I know I do personally as a consumer. So we try to stay away from anything that is too sales-y and we try to focus more on the relationship with the consumer, really reaching out to try to see what they want.
For example, on our Facebook fan page, we’re putting together our fall assortment for October. I just said on our Facebook page, I said, “Ok. We’re thinking about doing pecan pie cupcakes, what do you guys think?” We got probably about 20-25 responses from people who stated their opinions about whether they liked or didn’t like it. So we’re able to do a lot of surveying, a lot of interaction, a lot of listening to what people have to say and making a product that they want.
BB: Do you have tips for small business owners who want to implement social media into their business model?
ML: The great thing about social media is that it’s definitely not one size fits all sort of solution. I have things that work for me that probably would never work for anybody else. I guess my only advice would just be to assess your business and see what your needs are and what your goals are and figure out a way to make that work for you.
[...] In an earlier post, By the Bootstraps spoke with Mari Luangrath, owner of Foiled Cupcakes, a cupcake delivery service based out of Naperville. Mari did a great job speaking to us about how her business has used social media to grow, but there’s more to Foiled Cupcakes than just Facebook and Twitter. [...]