7 Innovative Tips for Florists: How to Increase Your Profit This Summer

Listen up, floral professionals. Slow summer doesn’t have to mean slow sales. 

This seasonal “break” offers time to explore new opportunities, reevaluate your processes, brainstorm new marketing and sales channels, and work on adding additional revenue streams that are not tied to the market demand.

Let’s put bad summers behind and think of a long term strategy your business can adopt. To change your course of action, explore ideas that you have not considered before. You have to evolve with the modern times.

Today, we are sharing some of the outside-the-box ideas that may help you increase your summer profits and actually grow your floral business during the off-season. Get your pencils ready!

1. Do you have an online presence?

One thing we know for sure is that the digital era is here to stay and if you are not embracing it, you are being left behind. The number one thing every business must have is a beautiful, modern website with visually captivating images, mobile-friendly interface, and stellar user experience. Use the slower summer months to build or improve your outdated site to appeal to the modern consumer. If you are not able to handle this task yourself, outsource it to a local freelance web designer or digital agency.

Consider adding an e-commerce shop to your website where your existing customers can pre-order flowers for pickup. Even better, have the ability to make local delivery? Offer this service to your community to test this model as a potential avenue for your business.

Lastly, make sure you are present wherever your customers are. Embrace social media and stay active. Social media channels like Facebook and Instagram are now part of the modern customer’s day and play a big role in decision-making and staying top of mind in front of your audience.

2. Have you built a personal brand in your niche?

Are you proud of your craft and sharing it openly with the world, or are you hiding behind the scenes? Remember how back in the days people bought from the local vendor they genuinely liked because they established a credible relationship? Well, nothing has changed, only the medium people use had advanced. While you may have a stellar local reputation with your existing customers, new customers may be completely unaware that you even exist. 

You need to build your credibility using the current tools like social media, YouTube and establishing your presence within your community. You have to become “the expert” in your neighborhood on all things flowers and events. Your knowledge and expertise could help many others when you start sharing them freely. 

Start a weekly how-to series on your Facebook or IGTV. Set up a YouTube channel where people can easily view your entire video library. Look up local podcasts and events that others are hosting and volunteer to speak on panels that are relevant to your craftsmanship and business experience. For example, there may be a small business owners pop-up event in your city and you could simply ask to speak about your experience in your industry. It’s a win-win and gets you exposure and credibility. You can then share that news to get your own followers to see that you are doing new and exciting things. 

One side note, do not AIM for overnight success. Even gurus like @Jeff Leatham and @FloretFlower (Erin Benzakein) took years to establish their influence by doing the hard work day to day and never backing off.

3. Do you have a skill set that others may benefit from?

Building on the above, the next step to expanding your personal brand is sharing your knowledge with others to help them gain new skills. If you are an event planner, you have an expertise that someone who may be considering that profession could benefit from. You can try by hosting one day-seminars, weekend workshops or even creating a whole retreat. Don’t get caught up in creating the perfect workshop. Make it simple, fun and affordable to share what you love with other floral enthusiasts, and they will take notice of you.

Furthermore, there may be people in your community who are looking for something fun to do on a weekend. Try hosting flower arrangements or flower-crown making workshop for the public. It’s super simple and you can turn this into the perfect family affair or date night idea within your community. Have you seen those BYOB Painting workshops? Think along the same lines and give it a try!

4. Are you hosting events?

Have a beautiful storefront or workshop space? Are you using it wisely after hours or during slow times? There are so many ways to open your space to the local community and welcome them in – not to sell them flowers but to make them aware of your business. Global chaptered events like CreativeMornings and Sofar Sounds are wonderful opportunities to open up your space, create bonds with the local community and showcase a bit of your work in the process. The best part, you don’t have to put any time or effort into putting on these events. The organizers will set up everything for you and give you a few minutes to say a few words to the crowd.

5. Are you making Google your friend?

Google My Business is the #1 free tool that exists for any local business, especially when the competition is fierce. Google My Business manages your local listing and gives you the ability to customize it, manage photos, answer questions, respond to reviews and feedback and much more. All you need to do is claim it and verify your brand on Google if you haven’t done that yet. To learn more about that, visit this page: https://www.google.com/business/

6. Do you have a membership program for clients?

You cannot thrive on one-time orders. Getting a customer to buy from you is a lot of work, but having to spend more effort to re-engage them has a hard cost associated with it. Have you considered offering a membership program to your existing clients where they can get a monthly bouquet shipped to them or picked up on a certain day? After securing their commitments, you can even strategically reduce your flower waste by using leftover florals you have from the week to create one of a kind pieces. 

7. Are you following the local shopping trends

Summer green markets and farmers markets are great opportunities to reach your local community. With added foot traffic, you will gain visibility and credibility as the go-to florist in your city. You can further reduce waste by selling your leftover floral at these events, in addition to your standard arrangements. 

Lately, food halls have been a major attraction across many big cities. These establishments gather a lot of traffic, especially on weekends. It may be a golden opportunity to get your flower stand there to benefit from the massive exposure.

Not all of these ideas may work for you, but we hope that they get you thinking about how you can differentiate your flower shop or floral design business from the rest. We hope that instead of waiting out the slow season, these ideas may help you spruce up to action and try something new and bold. Have any input or feedback to share about your own innovative methods? Let us know in the comments below.