A&M Cupcakes Revolutionize Baking Industry in Sri Lanka with Digital Marketing

Had a great experience working with Ammar and the team of Marcabees. They helped us immensely in our marketing plans. Highly recommended for all kinds of digital marketing solutions..

– Mufaddal Saldiwala, Owner, A&M Cupcakes

Overview:

A&M Cupcakes is a premium bakery from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Founded in 2010, A&M Cupcakes are the perfect delicious retreat for Sri Lankans across the island. Started by a couple, A&M Cupcakes gives you a family vibe every time you enter their stores in the busy area of Havlock Town and Kolpetty in Colombo.

This family ran business for over 13 years has served millions of customers across Sri Lanka and are looking to expand their operations internationally. “Taste is the king and without quality materials you cannot sustain a long-term business model” reckons one the of founders of A&M Cupcakes.

Challenges:

In 2010, A&M Cupcakes launched their first store in Kolpetty, Colombo and received great response from new customers. Their unique menu combined with the sweet tooth nature of Sri Lankan audience gave them so much success over the years that they decided to launch another store in Colombo. This new Havlock Town store was expensive to set up but their customers flocked the place and they could reach the break-even point earlier than anticipated.

Everything was running smoothly for over 10 years with both the business and the customers in a happy state of affairs. But suddenly COVID-19 hit Sri Lanka and things were not the same anymore.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, A&M Cupcakes suffered huge losses in terms of inventory, customers, profits, even revenue. To add to the misery, the government restrictions put a pause on all their current operations due to the infectious rate COVID-19 was spreading across the country and the world.

Solution:

This is when we reached out to A&M Cupcakes and offered to take their entire operations online via an e-commerce website.

The e-commerce website could enable them to continue their operations the way they conducted in the past with technological advancements. Their entire inventory would now go online with customers having the option to select and pay directly on the website.

Reluctant at first, they agreed to test the waters during the first lockdown in Sri Lanka just to ensure the business continued its operations and they didn’t lose customers.

Objective:

To create an infrastructure online which ensured the menu was available virtually and customers could purchase merchandise online.

Once this first step was achieved, we were tasked to run marketing campaigns – paid and organic to drive traffic on the website like they did earlier by encouraging footfall to their 2 stores in Colombo.

Strategy:

One of the major requirements of the customer was an easy and a user-friendly backend that they could also manage to list products and their other details.

Hence, we decided to build their e-commerce website on WordPress. WordPress gives you all the tools you need to publish content and sell products from the same platform. We can create a powerful and stable online store and install more plugins to help you customize products, attract customers, and increase your sales. Payment gateway integration is also seamless.

After the website creation, we needed to establish our presence on social media platforms. For a bakery to not have a social media presence is criminal, they were missing out on a huge medium to reach their target audience.

Result:

Social Media Marketing helped the bakery drive more traffic on the website and eventually they converted into paying customers. After creating profiles on applicable platforms, our major focus area was Facebook & Instagram.

Instagram in particular was going to help us reach better and connect with the Gen Z audience. We started posting on Instagram regularly, with content that resonated with the Gen Z, which was our target audience available on Instagram.

We also started running fun activities like quiz and other contests to keep the audience engaged with our brand and with giveaways, they were more than happy to participate.

In the coming months, after effectively running our strategy, we have managed to grab close to 6,000 followers that are regularly making purchases on the website and are engaged with the brand.

Facebook was the second major focus area. Catering more to the millennial crowd, Facebook’s content had to be slightly different than the Instagram posts. Facebook has also had major success with close to 4,500 dedicated followers.

However, there is still a long way to go in terms of building a community on social media platforms with trust and loyal customers, and in the process encouraging the audience to make purchases online to their delicious desserts.