CASE STUDY

How we got Native followers from 100 to 800 on Instagram

Commercial
Consumer Intelligence
Client Background

Native Hard Sparkling

Native Hard Sparkling is New Zealand’s first hard seltzer, made with sparkling water, natural sugar cane vodka, and real fruit, resulting in a drink low in carbs, calories, and sugar.

The brand is dedicated to supporting local conservation projects, specifically focusing on planting more native trees across the country.

Challenge/Opportunity

What’s the problem?

After its immense success in New Zealand, Native wanted to expand its business globally. The company entered the Japanese market with the help of strategic partners who imported the drinks and distributed them to select supermarkets and food service outlets.

Seltzer is not very well-known among Japanese consumers, and as a result, Native’s presence in the country remained limited.

So, a primary objective for the company was to increase awareness of the brand in Japan by encouraging trials of hard seltzer. The company specifically wanted to target consumers in their 20s and 30s who enjoyed alcoholic beverages similar to hard seltzer.

Native also wanted to focus on digital activities for brand awareness and performance marketing. The idea was to build Native’s digital presence from scratch in Japan and leverage that presence to encourage consumers to come to food service locations and select supermarkets to try out their products.

Expert
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For this project, GourmetPro reached out to Yuji Yamada from our collective of experts.

Yuji is a digital marketer who specializes in ad management through social media and search display. Aside from SEM, SEO, and Programmatic, Yuji is highly experienced in content localization. Extremely familiar with all kinds of Japanese audiences, he combines his digital marketing expertise and research skills to tailor his content and campaigns to appeal to various audiences, both broad and specific. More specifically, he creates quality content by doing extensive keyword research to generate traffic and followers for websites, as well as to create brand awareness for various brands.

Solution

What’s the solution?

Yuji's primary focus in this project was to boost Native’s following on Instagram and Facebook. Given the relative unfamiliarity of hard seltzer in Japan, the challenge included a scarcity of photos and videos for social media content creation, compounded by limited resources.

To tackle this issue, Yuji recommended unique promotions to increase followers and engagement on social media platforms. These initiatives involved promotions such as offering participants a chance to win the drinks for free in exchange for following, sharing, and liking.

RESULT

What is the result?

Over a three-month period, with Yuji’s support, Native won 700 followers each on Facebook and Instagram in Japan.

GourmetPro has been outstanding to work with. Communication, timing and finding the right expertise is key for entering a new market. GourmetPro has answered all three and continues to support Native's growth in Japan.

Guy Hobson
CEO & Co-Founder

Contact us if you would like support on your own digital and market entry strategy.

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