7 Marketing “Must-Haves” for Your Retail Greenhouse, Garden Center & Nursery

Here at GGS, we are fortunate to have many employees on staff who, in their previous careers, operated greenhouses, garden centers/nurseries, and retail stores. This not only gives us some additional insight into what our customers expect from us, but also gives us access to knowledge about marketing in this space – what works and what doesn’t. We’ve combined that knowledge with our marketing department, which has experience marketing and advertising across several industries – to come up with a list of marketing concepts that you should keep top of mind.

1. Garden Center Curb Appeal
For retail garden centers, making the outside of your building appealing is a must. It has to be inviting, aesthetically pleasing, and most important: customers should be able to see your products from outside. GGS President Leigh Coulter is consistent in her recommendations for garden center structures. “We tell all our garden center customers the best structural advice we can give you is to make sure your front wall is glass.” Glass is more expensive, but it looks nicer and customers can clearly see what you have in stock as they drive by. Adding a nice full display garden to the front of your property also attracts customers, and gives them ideas on how to arrange the plants they buy from you.

2. Online Advertising Catches Greenhouse Customers
Google’s search market share has reached a new high over the last few months at 67%. If you aren’t doing everything possible to increase your visibility on this search engine, then you are missing opportunity. This is how a huge percentage of your customers are finding you – or your competition. Every local business should have a free Google Places listing that is optimized with a description of your business, pictures of product, store hours, and a link to your website. Google usually displays these local results to people in your area first, before displaying other less relevant results. Another advertising venue that has seen much success for local businesses is sponsored search results – Google Adwords. You can bid on key phrases such as “buy perennials”, target only customers in your area, and have your website displayed at the top of Google’s sponsored results, depending on how much you’re willing to bid per click. This is a great way to get potential customers onto your website, and ultimately into your retail store. You just need to watch factors such as cost-per-click , bidding only the effective key phrases, and your monthly advertising budget. However, Google allows you to set a spending cap over a certain timeframe, so you can eliminate the risk of accidentally overspending.

3. Social Media Helps Connect with Gardeners and Nursery Shoppers
Anyone marketing to end consumers should have a large social media presence, which should include a mix of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest. Social media is not meant to be used to push products in your customer’s face, or blast them with one-way information. It’s meant to create a dialog, a conversation with your customers. Let them be heard, and have them participate in a discussion that you lead – this is where the value of social media lies. Find out what they want to see and what they want to know about. Offer them an experience, whether it’s through entertaining posts, informative videos, or amusing pictures. One of our nursery customers has a “greenhouse cat” that they regular post pictures of, and the audience loves to see what their little mascot is up to. Simple ways to engage your audience can open the doors to conversation that can occasionally center on your products.

4. Your Garden Center Website
This brings us the digital representation of your business: your company’s website. If your site doesn’t look as beautiful as your retail store, customers are getting the wrong first impression. Your site should be full of colorful images of your product, and users should be able to easily peruse through them. Contact information and directions to your store should also be easily accessible. You may also want to consider adding a blog, which gives you the opportunity to become an expert that your customers rely on for how-tos and product information. As with social media, you need to be careful not to constantly push your products on your readers. Instead, create entertaining and engaging articles, and advertise your products only when relevant to the blog topic. This helps build loyal followers, who will begin to view you as the guru in your field.

5. Deals Sites - Offer Promotions to Attract Customers to your Garden Center
Sites like Groupon, WagJag and Living Social are a great way to get local exposure for your business. Offer an aggressive discount and you’ll likely notice new customers walking through your door. The important thing to remember is that the purpose of this type of promotion is not to temporarily boost sales – it’s an advertising tool like any other meant for branding, and to encourage repeat customers. For more information on how to effectively run a daily deals promotion, see this blog post.

6. Direct Mail/Flyers Target Existing Customers and Local Residents to your Garden Center
Even though we’re seeing advertising spend shifting heavily to online campaigns, direct mail can still be an effective way to reach a local audience. Creating a physical coupon that a customer can bring into your store adds perceived value in the customer’s mind. Another interesting way to use direct mail is to create an official invitation to an event you’re holding at your business. Whether it’s a product information seminar or community event, receiving an invitation in the mail still has a certain charm to it over other means of communication.

7. Word of Mouth Works - Make your Garden Center Memorable
Modes of advertising have shifted drastically over the last few decades, but word of mouth will always be the most effective means of spreading the word about your business. Leaving a lasting impression on your customers is important, but how is this done? You need to be different. You need to give people something to talk about.

In a garden center, this can be done pretty easily by just arranging a creative display that catches the customer’s eye. Changing the theme of your garden center and decorating for each major holiday or observance will give customers something fresh and new every time they walk into your store. Another great way to get customers talking is to come up with clever and amusing signage. We particularly like the sign one of our customers puts up when spring begins:

If you have any other ideas for marketing a retail greenhouse, sound off in the comments below!