Green Industry Marketing: Skip the Small Talk...Substance Matters

Plant For Profits Column, Leslie F. Halleck

Can Your Horticulture Business Keep its Promise to Your Customers?

A few weeks ago, I wrote this Plant For Profits Column about how pushing hard to take big bold steps in your business may not always work out, unless you’ve done the hard and sometimes boring work of building up the infrastructure, substance, and stamina your business needs to back up big power moves.

In the column I used the example of trying to do a bunch of fancy and/or expensive marketing when you haven’t yet done the work of creating a solid foundation of a clear business identity and mission, and a well-mapped customer experience. Because marketing that gets attention is a specialized power flex you just may not be able to hold for long, or repeat successfully, without the substance to back it up.

And wouldn’t you know it, a perfect example of this surfaced when I was on a call with one of my garden center clients just last week. Perfect timing. This client has been admiring a newer independent garden center that opened up in their market about three years ago. On a number of different calls they pointed out the Instagram channel, talked about how they thought this other business’s social media and marketing was really good, and kept asking why we couldn’t make that kind of social media presence and marketing happen for them. In our call last week, my client let me know this other business just posted they were closing up shop and going out of business.

Well, there you have it. To my point to my client - one I’ve repeated numerous times - it doesn’t matter how good your marking looks or how trendy your social media videos are; if you don’t actually know how to run a garden center (or plant shop or garden design business) profitably, and you don’t have the actual customer experience and results to back it up profits, no amount of marketing is going to save you or make you profitable long term.

Until you build the authentic company identity that works for you and your target customer, have control over your inventory and buying practices, have a good handle on HR and have trained a solid team (or yourself) who delivers the customer experience you’ve planned and promised, it’s a waste of time and money to try and do lots of attention-grabbing social media marketing. I mean, what is there to market if you’re not actually walking your talk? What’s there to authentically market if you don’t really know “who” your business is to your customers?

So, I keep trying to walk my client back to “let’s get the real substance of what you want to sell and how you want to sell it sorted out first. Let’s start delivering and seeing progress…then we’ll dig into real marketing in action.” Otherwise you’re just peddling an overpromise and underdeliver scenario and you’ll lose customer confidence.

I really do not think that customers in the plant, gardening, and landscape world have a lot of patience or time for nonsense anymore. Especially these days. Not to mention, exposure and engagement on social media these days is downright pitiful. Plus, it’s really always been the case that authenticity and education win in the gardening world. Your staff recording videos of themselves dancing in the garden center may get you a little attention, and no doubt it’s fun; but if you don’t deliver on a relevant, successful, and fun experience when a customer actually shows up in-store, that’s probably the last bit of attention you’ll ever get from them.

This is not to say that you don’t need to have a marketing presence and outreach effort while you’re still building your foundational identity and getting your business legs under you. You do. But it can be small, slow, and steady for now. A regular reminder to your customer you exist, what you have to offer, some inspiration and education…all good. Email is best, with some consistent and simple social media presence sprinkled in to hold on to your existing market share. Of course, the sooner you nail down your brand identity and flesh out exactly the kind of experience you want your customer to have, the faster you can start creating meaningful and effective marketing to build your audience and customer base. Then, it will make sense for you to invest more time and energy in an authentic social media strategy, as well as extend your marketing tentacles into advertising or sponsoring markets that resonate with your customers.

Otherwise, your social media and marketing efforts are nothing more than expensive, boring, and likely meaningless small talk.

Don’t forget, the horticulture and gardening industry is built on long-form information and education. Generic social sound bites only get people so far. In this industry we need to commit to doing the work of not just seeking attention with our marketing, but also thinking about our marketing as substantive customer communication and education.

Our marketing is actually a part of our service. And great service in the green industry means having a real conversation about real things.