Tips for Floral Professionals: 5 Steps & Tools for Planning Your 2022 Marketing
2022 is moving really fast! But how do I boost my business?
Do we have the quick answer? Well no but with so much innovation in the digital space, so many new social media platforms, and the shift in how we interact as humans, adapating your 2022 marketing plan can be a rather daunting experience, especially if you are a very busy, small business owner.
What platforms should you be on?
What marketing strategies work best?
What kind of content should you be creating?
How can you stay efficient in running your business while effectively marketing it?
Luckily for you, we are going to share some key insights with you, to help you better prepare your floral business for the new decade.
In the blog, you will discover the 5 steps and tools we use and love:
Step 1: Review past efforts and analyze results
You cannot build a house without a foundation first. Spend a moment going over your brand efforts from 2021 and prior years. Write down your main marketing efforts and rate their effectiveness from most to least effective.
- Do you have a website? Is it up to date? Is it mobile friendly?
- Did you have an email list? Are you effectively and consistently communicating with your customers? Is your list growing?
- Are you on Instagram? How is your content? Are you getting good engagement?
- Do you have a YouTube channel? Do you use it strategically?
- Do you run Facebook ads?
- What about LinkedIn? Pinterest? TikTok? Twitter? Blog? Influencers? Affiliates?
Determine that REALLY worked for you in the past and how you can grow in the future. Consider cutting down on ineffective strategies that take up time but do not yield positive results for your business. It’s okay to try new tactics, but cut your losses when you see they are not working for you.
Step 2: Write down your goals and the steps you need to achieve them
Everyone wants results, but what does that mean for you and your floral business?
Results can mean very different things! Remember, not all marketing converts to immediate sales. Consider other valuable outcomes that your marketing can yield for your floral business: brand awareness, loyalty, engagement, social following growth, email opt-ins, community building, opinion-leadership, brand differentiation, prospecting/leads, collaboration opportunities, speaking engagements, etc.
Let’s say you are a florist who wants to build a bigger email list in 2020? There are so many ways you can go about it. You can host workshops, run giveaways, try facebook ads, give webinars, collect emails on your website, start a Facebook group, etc.
So what is it that YOU are trying to accomplish this year? Write down a few concrete goals and backward-engineer the actions you need to get them accomplished.
For example, your goal may be “to launch a successful podcast to differentiate my event planning business from others.” Once you set this goal, you can begin thinking of the exact steps you need to achieve it. Then repeat this process for each of your key goals.
Step 3: Check out what others are doing
We tend to forget that you do not need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to good marketing.
There are industry leaders in every sector who set the bar high for the rest. Bigger brands have a lot more wiggle room for risk and experimentation, bigger budgets and more people to execute on the tasks. Study their successes, learn from their misses.
We are not saying you should copy someone else’s efforts. Quite the opposite! Do NOT copy! Pay attention, get inspired, look for opportunities and weaknesses in others’ strategies, and then DO BETTER in your own niche.
To begin this step, conduct a simple analysis – write it down:
- Who are the top leaders in your industry? What unique, effective strategies are they using? What are they not doing well? Can you explore that opportunity for your business?
- What are your indirect competitors? If you are a florist, are there event planners, photographers, caterers who do marketing well that you can learn from them? Perhaps you can even collaborate?
- What are other brands in different industries whose marketing you absolutely love? What can you learn from them? Sometimes we get tunnel vision within our industry, which can narrow our thinking and limit creativity. Always look outside the box for fresh, innovative strategies that no one in your industry is pursuing yet.
Finally, compare apples to apples and don’t let numbers get to you. Just because your competitor has 10,000 followers, doesn’t mean they are better than you. It doesn’t even mean that those followers are real (please do NOT cheat the system, that’s so 2015!). Look at weaknesses instead? How does their engagement rate compare? Are they getting likes and comments? You are better off with your 1,000 followers who LOVE you and interact with you daily, then someone who has 10K fans but “crickets” on their page.
Step 4: Prepare for upcoming promotions and holidays
We all know the seasonal opportunities within the floral industry, but that’s not the same as taking actionable steps. Just thinking about them doesn’t get you far. Mark them on your calendar. Create tasks for yourself and your team. Set deadlines. Create dedicated campaigns. Get your marketing and communication together before things sneak up on you!
Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and others will be here before you know it. What have you actually done to prepare for these major holidays that can help or hurt your business this year.
Plan ahead, write it down and avoid being overwhelmed by fast approaching holidays. You are better off dedicating an hour to your marketing per day instead of having to spend a whole day of your week trying to catch up on tasks that could have been finished by now.
Step 5: Use the right tools to achieve your goals
We covered a lot in the above four steps and you may be scratching your head about how to manage all these commitments while running your business. There is an expression we love – just two words: Work Smart!
There are so many awesome tools that can help you save time and money. You no longer have an excuse to say you cannot do something because you do not have the right skills. So many solutions offer “drag & drop” approach to simplify the work that needs to be done. Here are some of our favorites:
Email Marketing: Mailchimp.com – lets you send gorgeous emails, create landing pages, add pop-ups, collect email addresses and even run ads.
Content scheduling: Hootsuite, Later, Planoly – all help you plan, preview and schedule your content ahead of time. 2-3 hours on a Sunday morning over a cup of tea vs. frantically trying to think of something to post all day. We’ll take the first, please!
Project Management: Trello.com, Monday.com – whether you work alone or in teams, these tools allow you to keep things organized and structured in a workflow.
Copywriting & Editing: grammarly.com – never write another line without this magical tool.
Graphic design: Canva.com – allows you to have all your graphic templates designed and customized for your brand.
Instagram Stories Design: Unfold app – build the most beautiful Instagram stories using thier templates.
Free stock photos: unsplash.com – best “creative commons” stock photo site on the internet, hands down!
Photo editing: Adobe Lightroom (desktop or mobile app) or VSCO – get your filters on so all your photos look consistent and well planned.
Local SEO: Setup and optimize your Google My Business Account to show up on Google – read our blog about that.
This year, our goal at Tessa Corp is to create more value for our customers and followers by sharing content that goes beyond our expertise as a flower grower and incorporates what we know about building a successful, efficient and well-respected company and a global brand.
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