Usui Cafe

Usui Cafe is a local cafe in our neighbouring suburb, The Entrance. Usui cafe is the brainchild of a local husband and wife who had walked past the previously operated cafe every day for years. Upon purchasing and rebranding the cafe, they had to figure out how to rejuvenate a forgotten and oft-ignored spot, attracting tourists and locals alike. This is where we came in, and we are proud to say that we have contributed to huge growth for the business with a multi-channel marketing effort over the last 1.5 years.

Check out their story below. It’s the raw, mostly unfiltered footage (22min – long but worth it!) which we love. No tricks here.

We were initially engaged in late 2019 to help prepare for the upcoming Summer, which is peak tourist season there at the Entrance. The goal being to leverage any hospitality owners curse of “seasonality” by building a marketing engine and maximising sales so that Winter could be easily sustained. Being a fairly fresh business, our offering started small but quickly grew as we began to achieve results. We began where any business owner should, by building a killer new website with crisp professional photography. This instantly differentiated Usui cafe from competitors, and so when we added Social Media Management and SEO into the mix we started to get some nice organic traction.

Fast forward to late 2020 where we added paid channels, Facebook and Google Ads to extend that reach to new audiences. Google Local Map Pack Ads were a particularly strong performer, which is understandable considering the customer journey of a would-be cafe-goer.

There was a glaringly obvious and scary challenge that we and many businesses had to navigate, and that was the pandemic. Hospitality was one of the hardest industries hit initially. We did what most businesses still kicking today did, and that was to PIVOT. Most businesses hadn’t even thought about what this would look like until the choice was taken from them, but pivot we did with Usui Cafe. We worked with the client to launch an online ordering system and we made sure that the business did not remain silent. Hibernation would have been the worst choice any business owner could make at that point, and so we pushed through. Luckily we had the previous, strong Summer to help brace us for the wild year that was 2020.

Check out the video that we took with the legends behind Usui Cafe. Note that this video was filmed in the middle of COVID, in the middle of Winter. Need I say more?

We can’t take all the credit. Marwin and Yuko are the heroes behind this success story, as a marketing provider, we are merely facilitators and supporters.

“If you compare us now, which is the worst time of the year, the middle of Winter, to the same period last year, business is up tenfold.” (Timestamp 12:30)

“Advantage has really stepped up in making sure that our bad times are as good as our good times”

Thanks for the kind words, Marwin & Yuko. It continues to be a pleasure working with you. If you’re ever in the area, be sure to hit them up for a bite to eat or a coffee – you won’t regret it.