Andy Mead, owner of Fancy Frangipanis, has deep roots in agriculture. “Our family has been involved in the industry, my grandfather and my father. I’ve always been interested in plants. I was interested in the growing side of things in terms of flowers and flower production. It’s developed from there.”
Fancy Frangipanis is a local Queensland business with nurseries in Tully and Bundaberg. “We breed and select frangipanis, and supply plant material like cuttings and plants to retail and wholesale customers. We’ve got over 100 different types of frangipanis and 1000 different types of frangipanis coming on in our breeding program.”
Andy signed up for the Digital Solutions program when he wanted to get a better understanding of digital marketing with a focus on social media including developing a strategy, creating content and connecting with customers. “Computers have been something I’ve tried to embrace ever since they came out, but they’re not like second nature to me. In the last five to ten years, I’ve been involved in a series of projects working in the research field, so I haven’t really been involved in the digital marketing revolution that’s taken place. I’ve developed an eCommerce business – I’ve got a website set up and we’re now taking orders online which is great. Now what we’re trying to do is connect with our customers.”
Andy was paired with advisors Liam Fahey (social media marketing) and Jarryd Townson (business strategy and insight). He attended one-on-one sessions and online workshops. “I thought they were very understanding and knew their technology. The one-to-ones were really powerful. They were able to share their screens with me so that when they were using digital marketing terms, they could explain them. All these terms that people take for granted, some of us don’t understand it.”
As a result of the program, Andy was able to develop a social media strategy and start creating content for scheduled posts. “We’re going through a process of listing out 50 stories or posts that we can schedule. Then we’re going to start taking images and putting that together, then doing a structured program where we’ll just manage 1-2 posts a week going out on our Facebook page. That’ll be great.” He also learnt how to connect with customers through social media messaging channels.
Andy’s next step for Fancy Frangipanis? “We’re going to completely repurpose the website. In starting to do this work, we realised that we were offering too many things and not really focusing on who our customers are. What we’re going to do is remove some of the products from the website and spend a little bit more time trying to engage with the customers around the products we have on there. We haven’t shared much information about those frangipani varieties, like how they’ve got a beautiful perfume, how some flowers fade and change over time, and a heap of different things around the product. We could tell some more stories and inform our customers about that.”
Interested in Digital Solutions for your business? Book a free 15-minute consultation with Liam.
