Claire Spach

Photo courtesy of Claire Spach

Greenhouse Management: How do you use TikTok to make people aware of your business?

Claire Spach: It definitely started out as ‘what is this?’ and ‘how do we get any form of attention on it?’. We definitely had a little bit of back and forth on silly video vs. educational video and silly video won because it’s fun and still educational. We can also have way more fun on TikTok than we do on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook because there’s a little more structure. TikTok is more fun for us — you can use these silly sounds and do these silly videos that we can just have fun with and reach people at the same time.

GM: How do you handle the labor aspect of managing TikTok and other social platforms without taking away from other tasks people need to do? And how do you strategize?

CS: It’s hard because we don’t just have one set person who does it. It’s myself, it’s the general manager Sara [Ausbun], it’s a couple of the younger girls who work here who will say ‘hey, here’s a funny idea’ or ‘hey, I was thinking we could do this.’ And then we say go and show me when it’s done. They are really helpful with that because it’s not just a one person thing.

There’s some planning in advance. But a lot of it is just a moment of saying ‘this seems like a really good idea right now, let’s just do it and put it out.’ And those are the ones that usually do better. Planning usually looks like us having a meeting once a week, sharing all of the ideas that we have for our social media posts. Or I might write an idea down in a notebook to share later or text someone ‘this is a cool video, let’s do something like this.’

GM: What advice would you give to another grower about TikTok? How does it compare to other marketing methods?

CS: This definitely opens us up to a wider audience — it’s worldwide, but it’s also local. There’s older people, but also younger people — those people who don’t have access to a backyard so they want to learn how to do container gardens. [TikTok] for us is something simple that can give someone an idea of how to dip their toes into growing.

We have done newsletters and sent out coupons in the mail. And that gives us our core older generations [of customers] that have been here for years and years. That’s how they know us. But there are other people who don’t know us so well that see us on social media and really relate to us and get to know us that way. We’ve had really good success with that because social media is faster than traditional marketing. They can see on TikTok that we do have the plant they are looking for and then might come in right now to get it.