Who would have thought this rock star steamed crab business went through so many struggles? In their turnaround journey, JQ utilized social media as the marketing tool to create top-notch give away strategies. The strategy was so effective at winning a solid customer base without the need to have any physical store.

The founder and owner of JQ Foods Co., LTD, Ms. Surirat Sripornkam (Khun Oh) was the honor guest speaker at “SCB SME SUCCESS Year 6 # Growing Strong”. She unfolded success stories how a steamed crab delivery elevated internationally, at the door step of oversea customers.

Never Give In, Find a New Way

Khun Oh shared how she faced obstacles head on and never give in to sequential failures. She always found novel opportunity with strong determination to become an entrepreneur. She used to operate seafood delivery services to many Bangkok restaurants. When the orders were cancelled, she handled her leftover seafoods by steaming and sharing them to her office colleagues. She realized that this could be a viable business when many of her friends requested for more. Her business turned over a new leaf as she saw more opportunities in food business, especially in crab market. She started steamed crab delivery business by handing out leaflets. At the beginning, she was happy with just 15-20 kg. of crabs sold per day. As an active and marketing person she introduced the service on Facebook Page from recommendation of her partner.

Building Up from Fan Page

Initially, her business started from personal FB which caused most of her friends to fade away. In dismay, she followed her partner’s suggestion to launch a new FB Fan Page, Khun Oh mentioned.

The early phase of her JQ Steamed Crab Page, she studied the strategy of Khun Tan’s Ichitan Page and observe effective clicks, likes and shares of giveaway campaigns. She adapted the strategy to her Page and select Furby dolls, a popular gift as a giveaway to attract audiences.

“Once I found a channel, I constantly post reviews and introduce promotions. I observed the outcome from no. of likes and shares until began to pick up the pace. From that point on, I looked for other method to market my Page better. I tried promoting on different customer segments and launched – a trip to Korea travel campaign, which was very effective. The news of promotion campaigned attracted many media and websites and it became a free advertisement to promote our business in both offline and online media. After that, our Page became more well-known. Whenever we saw something appetizing, we give them away to our customers freely because free-giving are for free-giving.”, the owner of JQ Steamed Crab Delivery revealed her social media marketing strategy.

Steamed Crab Delivery’s Strategy to Win Social Media

Khun Oh shared her thought on promotional strategy of her Page. Promotional giveaways must be trendy. When organizing a campaign, your must clearly distinguishes between value proposition of product and trends. Follow the giveaway principle and determine trends value proposition, this will increase the chance of your campaign to be successful. Keep it simple, likes and shares would suffice. The most important thing is campaign transparency whether customer comments are positive or negative, stick to your offers.

In addition, JQ Steamed Crab Delivery did not post to hard sell their product. The stories shared on the page should be knowledgeable or staying on the mainstream trends i.e., soccer or boxing. Doing so helped uplift the Page atmosphere to appear less assertive.

Maneuvering Through Complex Social Media

Apart from proactive social media strategy on target market impact , “JQ Steamed Crab Delivery” also prepared on the receiving end. This point is crucial for the business since JQ does not have a physical store. Facebook Fan Page is the virtual store for public relation and order taking. The staff need to post updated menu every morning.  Page admins responds to all inbox orders and other touch points such as Call Center, Line Application and Instagram.


“I still see opportunities from online channel. But what important is establishing relationship and connection with our customers. I constantly emphasize this to my admin staffs to respond to customer politely, do not use rude words. Another important technique is to treat customers equally and make them feel important. We took great care of high loyalty customers because they defend us when someone dishes our page. We never have to respond to all those negative comments. This strategy creates customer confidence to our Fan Page”, Khun Oh emphasized.

The owner of JQ Steamed Crab also shared her ideas on how to manage negative feedbacks. She personally took care of complaints and contact them by phone or call back to get additional feedbacks. Allow them to give her their comments, and send them sample for critiques whenever she launched a new product. This is an alternative method of market survey. In addition, they help her promote by reviewing complementary product on their own social media before the official product launch.

A Leap to International Market

Khun Oh told us how she was fortunate to have owned a seafood raft at Surathanee province, her mother hand-picked seafood and deliver them to her. Her role was build a central kitchen to gather all seafoods and distribute all of them fresh to other kitchens until it reaches the customer’s door. She implemented the same process for all branches.


“All successful businesses will have copycats and it’s inevitable. We need to see our competitor as our business counterpart, it’s enough to sell our part of the nation. Don’t perceive them as competition but a business counterpart. One of the reason why we are always at number one is how we maintain our standard of freshness, product quality and customer service. We never stop developing our business, for example, change from foam to paper containers and in the near future we will have our own Food and Drug Administration (FDA) certified sauce factory. To enhance consumer confidence in our product, we cooperated with Department of Health to oversee cleanliness and hygiene of our central kitchens. We are also enforcing product quality control measures and keep improving to build consumer’s trust.” said, Khun Oh.

Not only standardizing central kitchen will win consumer’s confident, but the prowess of social media influences has no boundary. JQ Steamed Crab Delivery now have many oversea customers from Singapore, Laos PDR, Cambodia and Russia. Due to the success, new menus are being introduced to meet the expectant of over 600,000 customers and progressing to China market in the future. 

“Actually, this is the right moment for SME to step up their game. We still have favorable factors supporting SME growth, including social media and support from both private and government sector. We still have a lot of activities to learn from and people nowadays are embracing new and unique ideas. I would like to encourage all SME to create distinctive market offerings. It’s easier to step out of the red ocean but if you want to stay in existing market, it won’t be too hard to become memorable.” concluded, Khun Oh.