Interview with Feey AG

How can I get engagement online as a startup? What sort of resources and work do I need to put into online marketing?

Startups and small businesses wonder about these and many other questions. That’s why we briefly interviewed Feey Ltd. on this topic.

Some may know Feey Ltd. from the TV show “Höhle der Löwen” – a Swiss adaptation of Dragon’s Den. However, as I don't watch the show very often, Feey Ltd. caught my attention via social media, and I think that this is the case for a lot of people.

Not everyone can get famous by being on TV and subsequently attract their own target audience to other platforms, so as a marketing agent you need to adapt to your own target audience.

To give you the benefit of not just agencies' experiences but that of a startup as well, we arranged an interview with Feey Ltd.

Please feel free to give us any feedback in the comments.

How did you start with online marketing? It must be a big challenge to distribute plants online. Did you all have a plan or was there an agency which supported you? Or did you just start publishing posts and see what was received well?

We built our online shop ourselves on Shopify and started by displaying ads. So, we had to learn on the go, without an agency or IT. From the very beginning, we focused strongly on content marketing. Primarily because selling plants involves a lot of consultation and also because we wanted to become less dependent on ads in the long term.

Our content team tailors the content to be search engine optimised (for Google). So, we had to ask ourselves what people searched for the most in the context of plants and how we could help people and provide support in their decision-making.

Right from the start, we didn’t just want to show off our visually attractive products on social media – that is, the plants – but us as a company as well. We’re not a blackbox. People can see us and talk to us. Things don’t always go perfecty, and we share that too. This authenticity has allowed us to build trust and a loyal community.

How much time and money is invested into social media posts and stories?

We create a lot of high-quality base content. We can recycle and adjust this base content with relatively little effort. Otherwise, it’d be too expensive to produce so much content at that level of quality.

It was definitely a bigger investment to have a full-time position dedicated to TikTok so early on. But it was absolutely worth it from our point of view.

Which one have you had the better experience with?

Both are important. Content is relevant to organic sales in the long run and is the basis for social media. It reinforces trust in our expertise and therefore increases the number of returning customers.

Social media ads are very important in acquiring new customers, particularly in the short term.

You’ve also made a lot of videos for TikTok in the meantime. It’s generally considered a place for younger target markets. Is it worth making videos for TikTok?

For us, absolutely! It’s where you can find a generation with a lot of purchasing power who buy from brands they’re familiar with, think are cool and whose values they support.

Also, things have changed a little bit, as for a while now it’s not just been young people on TikTok. In our opinion, TikTok is a must for businesses, just as Facebook and subsequently Instagram were.

Do you use these videos for other purposes?

We generally try to generate content in a way that allows us to use it on as many platforms as possible: social media in general, in blog posts, on YouTube, as well as for support, for example for queries sent to the plant doctor.

Do you also get feedback on your posts? What do people usually say?

We mainly get asked a lot of questions! Plant care is one topic that we could discuss for hours.

For example, a snippet about fungus gnats sparked a lively discussion in the comments, where people were helping each other, saying which methods work the best and what preventative measures you can take.

We actively encourage this spirit, for example, in our Facebook group, where plant fanatics help each other and exchange ideas.

We can also see what topics are garnering a lot of interest and what our community is up to. The content team can then address these topics in more detail in order to give them the best support possible.

Which platforms work best for you?

Every platform has sections that are relevant for us. We target precisely these sections when publishing our content. This means that, for example:

• TikTok is for short, informative yet funny plant content
• Facebook and Instagram is for entertaining brand content and inspiration
• YouTube is for tutorials about specific plant topics

You also have a separate newsletter as a kind of plant workshop. I’ve subscribed to this newsletter, by the way, and think it’s great. Where do you get these ideas? Are they customer requests that inspire you?

We are of course pleased to hear that.

A lot of it is actually requests or suggestions from the community. For example, the idea to go on “Höhle der Löwen” came from the community!

The idea for the PlantSwap app (in German) came about organically. Time and again we were asked whether we accepted returns on plants that had grown big or whether we could offer cuttings.

Even if the Plant Course (in German) is free, it’s not completely without a self-serving motive, since giving the people the chance to develop their own green fingers and solve their plant-related on their own issues ultimately reduces the number of support requests we get.

Are there any tips and tricks you can give our readers?

Our top tips are:

• Buy a plant that suits you and your lifestlye. Do you spend a lot of time at home or not? What are the lighting conditions? Do you have pets and/or kids? Use our plant finder to find suggestions in seconds.
• Start with an entry-level plant. Almost all successful plant parents started with at least a golden pothos, for example.
• Get help if you’re unsure. Our plant doctor isn’t just for emergencies; they’re happy to answer any seemingly trivial questions too. We all had to start somewhere.

What have you learned or are you learning?

Just go for it and stay true to your own values. We’ve been sticking to that till this day. Showing who’s behind the scenes always goes down well. The community is super important and building it up involves appropriately focusing our efforts on the brand and content.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers? Not just to do with social media but in general.

Plants are a source of joy! 😄 We and many members of the ‘feeymily’ can attest to that.

And if you have any plant-related questions, get in touch.