Launching Mother’s Lounge
From the brand's inception to its thriving presence today, my journey with Mother's Lounge has been both challenging and rewarding. As the driving force behind all marketing efforts and social media strategies, I have been responsible for creating 100% of the content that has engaged our audience and built a loyal community. Through strategic planning, innovative campaigns, and a deep understanding of our target market, I have helped Mother's Lounge grow from a fledgling brand to a recognized name amongst those in Baton Rouge.
The initial launch of Mother's Lounge presented numerous challenges. However, my goals were clear: to grow and connect with the audience as much as possible leading up to the Grand Opening. In this section, I will guide you through the first several social media posts I created for Mother's Lounge, explaining the reasoning behind the designs and tactics used. We'll explore the successful brand launch, driven by these goals and supported by social media data from June 1, 2023, to June 17, 2023, leading up to the Grand Opening.
The First Post
On June 1st, 2023, I was given the green light to make the first post to Mother’s social media accounts, with a budget of $45 for boosting, which I decided to use all on Instagram, as I didn’t want to spread the small budget too thin. The problem? The interior of the business was still being finished and I had no photos that could show off the beautiful space. I decided to go with a simple graphic, using two of the assets provided to me in the branding kit, along with a caption that would showcase the brand’s voice, to create some buzz around the upcoming grand opening.
In marketing, we occasionally encounter unexpected opportunities that significantly impact our strategies. One such instance occurred after my initial post on Mother's Lounge's social media accounts (pictured above). I observed that gradually unveiling elements of the new business sparked meaningful engagement and conversations in the comment sections. People were eager for each new post, intrigued by the unfolding story of this mysterious new brand. This was indicated by the 14 comments, 48 shares, & 88 new followers across Facebook & Instagram.
Recognizing the potential of this approach, I strategically maintained this theme in all subsequent posts leading up to the Grand Opening. The next post (pictured below) featured the first look at the bar’s interior and invited the audience to tag the person they’d bring to the red booths, followed by another post teasing the Grand Opening date. Building on the initial success, I decided to use the new interior pictures as a way to expand our reach. With approval for a $125 advertising budget, I allocated $75 to Instagram and $50 to Facebook, targeting our primary audience—21- to 45-year-olds with mid to high-level income within the Greater Baton Rouge area—interested in pop stars, disco music, LGBTQ+ rights, and nightclubs. These examples illustrate how I effectively leveraged this tactic to sustain audience excitement and anticipation.
The results were impressive: 10,613 impressions, 7,053 accounts reached, 46 comments, 164 shares, and 123 new followers across Instagram and Facebook, achieving an engagement rate of 4.72%. According to social media experts, this falls well within the successful range of 1-5% (Sehl, 2024). This high engagement rate indicated that my content and messaging resonated with the right audience while strengthening community ties through active discussions in the comment sections.
With minimal content available at the launch, I relied heavily on designing captivating graphics to build excitement and keep the audience engaged leading up to the Grand Opening announcement. But how do you keep an audience engaged with just graphics? In the competitive landscape of social media, less engaging graphics can easily be overlooked. To address this, I created infographics that highlighted important brand values, aiming to connect with the audience authentically. The Instagram post featured below was the first of these infographics I created for Mother’s Lounge, showcasing some of the queer-owned liquor brands that the bar would be featuring.
Connecting With The Audience
The goal of this post was to connect with our existing audience and strengthen community ties. To achieve this, I chose not to allocate any advertising budget to boost the post. Consequently, the Facebook and Instagram results listed below are entirely organic.
Reach: 3,058 accounts
Impressions: 4,083 times on screen
Likes: 126
Comments: 5
Shares: 9
After my first post, I realized that using intrigue to create excitement should be part of my overall strategy. But this subsequent post confirmed that inviting the audience to learn more about our brand was equally powerful. Organically reaching over 3,000 accounts, being shared 9 times, and receiving 5 comments and 126 likes resulted in an impressive engagement rate of 4.27%. Such a high organic engagement rate indicated that I had succeeded in connecting with our existing audience.
Building on this insight, I recognized the importance of maintaining a sense of intrigue and actively engaging our audience as we approached the Grand Opening party. By leveraging these strategies, I aimed to create anticipation and excitement around the event. In the posts below, you’ll see how I executed this approach. When announcing the date of the Grand Opening, I strategically left out who would be performing, creating a sense of mystery. I later revealed the performers with an additional post, showcasing the two drag queens that would be making an appearance.
The tactics I’d used up to this point proved valuable once again. With a $50 post budget, I once again decided to only boost it on Instagram, due to engagement rates on Instagram being higher so far and out of fear of spreading the budget too thinly across multiple platforms. This resulted in 8,490 accounts reached (4,343 from ad), 260 shares, 15 comments, and 403 likes on Instagram alone. Reaching an extremely impressive engagement rate of 8.32% (steep engagement spike most likely due to the shrink in audience from using only one platform and/or due to a better connection with Instagram audience, compared to Facebook).
Continuing to use the tactic of intrigue & only rolling out bits of information, the next post finally announced the entertainers for the Grand Opening party. I did not use any advertising budget for this post and therefore all of the results are organic. I decided to partner the Instagram post with a Facebook event. The Facebook event was frequently shared to the Instagram & Facebook stories, as well as had it’s own link hosted on the Instagram page’s link section. This was in an effort to connect audiences across the two platforms. This resulted in an Instagram reach of 4,714 accounts (6.72% engagement rate) & a Facebook event reach of 3,642 (13.32% engagement rate). Together, these posts achieved 273 likes, 11 comments, and 84 shares, along with 102 Facebook users responding as ‘Going’ and 325 Facebook users responding as ‘Interested’.
