Joe Vega  0:00  

It’s Joe Vega here. As we all know, marketing is a crucial part of your business success. In this episode we’ll hear from florists about the creative ways they market their shops, let’s go.

It’s summertime in the floral industry, which means plenty of opportunities to grow your business.

Our goal throughout this miniseries is to not only help you get through the season, but also gain valuable insights from professionals in the industry, our floral community and our Lovingly team.

Welcome to Flower Shop Secrets: Summer Survival. Watch now on YouTube, like subscribe and ring the bell for new episodes.

Joe Vega  0:00  

It’s Joe Vega here. As we all know, marketing is a crucial part of your business success. In this episode we’ll hear from florists about the creative ways they market their shops, let’s go.

It’s summertime in the floral industry, which means plenty of opportunities to grow your business.

Our goal throughout this miniseries is to not only help you get through the season, but also gain valuable insights from professionals in the industry, our floral community and our Lovingly team.

Welcome to Flower Shop Secrets: Summer Survival. Watch now on YouTube, like subscribe and ring the bell for new episodes. 

Poppy  0:39  

If you put yourself out there personally and let people get to know you that’s building those connections. And you know, you never have those if you if you don’t talk about it. So that social media is a powerful tool, and sharing a little bit of your life and your surroundings and, and what else you do gets you to a different audience. And that’s what it’s about, they don’t always come looking for you. So you got to, you got to put it up there. 

Neville  1:04  

I love to share the art of floral design. Information tells, while a story sells. Anyone can look something up on YouTubeor whatever and say, “I want to know how to make a centerpiece.” Well, there it is. And you can tell a story about the floral arrangement you’re making with the flowers that you’ve gotten and what it was like, what happened when you were a child or when you went to the farms in Colombia and helped pick flowers or do all those sorts of things. Or when you deliver go out to a lady because her husband, when he was alive would always give her this particular flower for all those stories, tell all those stories, because that’s that’s what brings the joy and magic alive to flowers, you’ll listen to people who can tell a story and talk about the beauty of those flowers and show the passion and love that comes with them. 

Selena  1:49  

I do have a flyer that goes out with every design that just talks about my shop. And it talks about what we do and how they can find us. And it’s like a door tag. So it’s pretty big. 

Poppy  2:01  

You think you know your business and you think you know what’s best for your business. But it’s that same evolving and adapting, adapting to posting to social media, getting those pictures out there. And sharing my knowledge about plants. You think that people know the florist is the plant expert. And the flower shop is where you go get plants. But not everybody knows that because we stopped telling them that. So you have to tell your consumers what you have and what your knowledge is and, and again, back to sharing that knowledge. put yourself out there and what you do, you know, because it’s a whole different audience that may not call you that may not come into your store to see something unique and different. It exposes what you can do to hold different group of people. 

Selena  2:47  

You know, when I took over wishing well there was not a huge social media presence. But that really was one way for me to be able to create a following. And I’m not one who wants to really be in every photograph. But there are times where you know, I will have the dog pose with something here in the shop and other marketing tool, believe it or not, she will act way by the front door. And she will purposely watch people walk by and she’ll sit there and watch because she wants him to come in and pet her it does draw customers into the store. That was not you know, originally the intention but it worked does work very nicely. 

Cameron  3:26  

I rely heavily on social media. When we first opened, we opened out of savings. By the time we got the shop up and running got the got the lease got some of the fixtures and that type of thing. There was no room in the budget if I if I wanted to survive. So I became very I taught myself very quickly how to be on social media, 

Poppy  3:50  

I actively can can tweet about sports and so then they you know, feel that they can actually have a conversation with me because I’m not florist poppy that only knows about flowers and pretty things. I think it’s given them opportunity to have a conversation with me and I’ve gained customers because of Twitter and talking about the Yankees.

Steph  4:11  

 Find the clients that get you. Find the ones that align with your values and do everything you can to keep them if they’re on Facebook, put your energy into Facebook. If they’re on Instagram, put your energy into Instagram 

Selena  4:24  

A really big free marketing tool that I use is Google My Business. So even though lovingly helps us with a lot of SEO and they do take care of a lot of those those little widgets and whatnots that we we don’t really have time for within five minutes you can update your your Google My Business even if it’s a quick picture. It’s important and it could be anything from a gift item here in the shop to my dog laying in front of the flower cooler as

People are searching for whatever reason they might be searching, it’s going to pop up in those algorithms for them. So that’s another one that I really do utilize a lot. And it’s free, because to me, it shows what’s really happening in here we have a few key things that we do. 

Poppy  5:18  

Throughout the year, we have a really big art and music community that has some local live events, my channel with them is I donate a floral arrangement. And I always do something weird, interesting, unique out of the box, whether it’s a container that we’ve created and adapted or built something or made a structure, or introduce them to a new flower that everybody at that event gets to see it. They get to raffle it off and make some money back for their event gives a little bit of exposure for us, but shows the average consumer what’s out there. 

Cameron  5:52  

We also jumped feet first into the community, which is hugely important here in Phoenixville to be part of to be part of the community and to support your community. We joined the chamber. We joined the Small Business Association we participated in in so many activities just so that way people knew that we were we were there. We participate in events at the senior center, I’ve had the opportunity several times to just randomly go up there with with flowers, then let them give them out. Which means the world to us, we’ll do it just because to make them smile. We’re very big also in supporting small, these are our friends. So we want to we want to see them do well. 

Selena  6:37  

I will say I’m very fortunate that here in like included in my rent, they do put a pamphlet and then in the newspaper that goes out to every resident here in Westland, they feature Wishing Well, just right before Valentine’s Day, right before Mother’s Day. 

Cameron  6:52  

Everybody loves our windows. So that’s that’s, that’s amazing. We have we have two fairly small windows, but we tried to do it seasonally. We have bunnies that go in the window. We have dogs that go in the window, anything to capture attention and really for us, we’re very walkable town. And there’s tons of families out there. So we figured out within the first six months, I would say that if we capture the attention of the kids, we’ve got the parents, the doors open more the merrier. They’ll just wander on in.

“I want to see the flowers,” and then they come and you know the whole family’s following after them and all of a sudden it’s something I didn’t even know you were here. Oh, this is beautiful. And so it starts a whole new conversation and somebody new just came in your door which is which is amazing. 

Joe Vega  7:44  

How do you market yourselves in this online world? Let us know in the comments.

We want to help your business bloom. Check out more episodes of flower shop secrets. Watch now on YouTube. Like Subscribe and ring the bell for new episodes.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai