The intent with Ryza Grow, an at-home mushroom growth kit, was to create a product that serviced the growing audience of mushroom cultivators without looking like a start-up company that might not fulfill expectation.

Customer Service couldn't be outsourced for the sake of budget restrictions, so a healthy implementation of AI generated and user curated responses lead to a strong support system for our customers. This way a timely and effective response was always available when communicating.

Creating the E-Mail marketing templates was another aspect that created a strong foundation of perception. Utilizing AI copywriting and SquareSpaces E-Mail marketing tool we were able to create compelling and cost-effective communications that brought strong retention based on product lifecycles. One of the most effective campaigns we conducted followed a call to action that was automated to send 1 month after the product shipped- meaning the consumer would have had a chance to experience the product lifecycle then provide feedback when reached out to especially for better organic traffic.

Utilizing display advertising was our main source of lead generation. The interesting thing about this part of the journey was the target audience. When conducting our market research to understand who wanted to buy our product we were under the assumption that if people wanted to grow mushrooms (culinary, of course) they would most likely already know about mushrooms, but that was a very wrong. The target for this product wasn't for consumers to mass produce mushrooms from grow bags and buckets- it was to spark the interest in mycology. There was a void in the industry for entering the industry. Either you knew how to grow mushrooms, or it was total magic.

Product packaging took a shift here to follow this trend of people not knowing how to enter this field. We had learned from a previous start-up that investors created a "critical mass" in feedback and expectation. To avoid this problem we started with absolutely 0 capital outside of creating the first few batches of product and introductory PPC campaigns. Product packaging and website creation became tailored to an informational hub that taught you how mushrooms work and how to start this journey in the most streamlined process imaginable.

As you may notice in the above picture: the background is AI generated. This was a tactic we used in a majority of communication channels to optimize time and money while upholding a certain standard in visual storytelling. This precipitated strong visuals to grab attention and start stimulating social media algorithms. This let us post on Instagram, Facebook, and X without needing to take time away from creating product, designing collateral, and optimizing the user experience.

Now that we had our target audience, the solution to our creative, an approach to solving this industry issue, and a budget plan that allowed scalable growth we were ready to implement the first of communications.

Early on in this project we utilized Instagram to increase organic traffic to the website as well as being active on forums like Reddit to discuss and promote the effective and niche product. Ads were created showcasing how easy it is to use this product and encouraging the consumer to want to start this journey. Our packaging was sleek, high quality, and covered in a beautiful earthy color palette that screamed "this won't ruin the feng shui of your living space".

Product images were taken and imposed into AI generated worlds to showcase the earthy tones.

The most important part for this process to work was finding the right audience. Finding the potential consumers that interacted with the product enough to want to buy it. Luckily Meta's Pixel came in handy when finding out our target demographic was 30-50 years old and browsing Facebook or Instagram looking to find another hobby. Because of the small audience this industry possesses our outreach was limited by interest. Our most important KPI was if people followed to our website. A/B testing on landing pages never made as much impact as A/B testing our ads. Once a customer clicked through to our website the potential for buying a product was fairly high.

The goal with RyzaGrow started with finding a hobbyist mycologist and giving them a streamlined product to grow mushrooms and flourished into a stepping stone for hobbyists to grow their passion for mycology. Without the use of AI for copywriting and visual creative this project would have likely never gotten off the ground. While it would have been possible the barrier of entry would have vastly outweighed the potential from this small and tightly knit community.