Maaribu

Two Brands, Two Strategies, One Shared World: Maaribu operates as two distinct brands under one roof — a home goods showroom and a South 1st cafe — and each needed a completely different strategy to reach a completely different audience. The showroom called for aspirational, design-led storytelling that could support retail behavior and in-store visits. The café needed something more accessible, habitual, and community-rooted that could build a regular local following and grow on TikTok. I led strategy, content planning, and paid media across both brands — developing individualized approaches for each while building a broader marketing ecosystem that expanded from organic social into paid digital and experiential.

Key Objectives:

• Break Maaribu Home out of a year of stagnant audience growth and push past the 10K milestone through a combination of stronger content strategy and paid social testing.

• Test Meta shopping campaigns integrated with Shopify for Maaribu Home to understand whether paid could support real product sales and site traffic — not just awareness.

• Build Maaribu Cafe’s own distinct social presence and voice, separate from Home, across Instagram and TikTok.

• Grow TikTok as a genuine foot traffic source for the Cafe, not just a content channel.

• Develop influencer and PR partnerships that could extend reach organically and drive in-store visits for both brands.

Tactics:

• Brand Separation: Developed completely distinct content strategies for Home and Cafe — different audiences, different platforms, different content jobs. Home content was aspirational and design-led, built to support product consideration and in-store visits. Cafe content was community-rooted and TikTok-native, built to drive regular foot traffic from a local Austin audience.

• Shopping Campaign Development for Home: Built and managed Meta shopping campaigns integrated with Shopify for Maaribu Home, including creative development, audience targeting, and performance reporting. Tested product-focused ad creative against awareness objectives to understand where paid spend drove measurable business outcomes.

• TikTok Strategy for Cafe: Developed a TikTok-first content approach for Maaribu Cafe rooted in drink culture, café atmosphere, and South 1st community storytelling — creating a discovery channel that gave the Cafe its own presence outside of Home's established audience.

• Influencer and Creator Partnerships: Coordinated creator collaborations, including a Berry Bestie Latte campaign with @caitlinmmolyneux that became one of the Cafe's strongest-performing posts. The collaboration reached 6,313 accounts — 90.9% of them non-followers — and drove 74 comments, signaling real audience discovery rather than engagement from people who already knew the brand.

• PR and Experiential: Secured the Tribeza Interiors Tour partnership for Maaribu Home, bringing the brand into one of Austin's most credible design-focused editorial moments and driving direct foot traffic to the showroom.