How to Market Your Flower Shop Online
Want to know how to market your floral business in the digital age? In 2020, you can’t just open your flower shop and wait for customers to come to you. You have to go to them. Luckily, with the Internet, that’s never been easier (and cheaper!) to do.
What follows are 5 simple tips any flower shop can use to increase sales, grow their customer base, and make more money.
1. Get Your Google Profile ASAP
The vast majority of new customers find floral businesses either by walking by or by directly searching for one on Google. So make sure you’re on Google!
You don’t need a website to do this (though I highly recommend getting one). All you need is a free Google My Business profile that takes minutes to set up.
A Google profile will help you:
- Show up on Google when someone searches “flower shop near me”
- Post offers, discounts, and coupons to your store
- Let your customers leave ratings and reviews (very important), and
- Help you build your floral brand online
To start, go to business.google.com/add and type in the name of your flower shop. If it doesn’t already pop up, that’s fine — the next step will let you create your profile and verify your account.
2. Get An Email From Every Customer
Email marketing is a powerful way to send targeted messages directly to the customers that need it most. So make sure you’re collecting your customer’s emails — it’s free advertising!
An excellent marketing strategy for flower shops is to send a discount email sequence one week out from popular holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Add a heavy offer or promotion to incentivize your customers to order immediately — something like “order before Wednesday and save 20%”. This will help drive urgency and help you prepare for sales the day-of.
3. Send Monthly Promotions
Once you have a customer’s email, make sure to stay top-of-mind with regular seasonal promotions of your flower shop. Showcase your new stock, set pre-orders for important holidays, and always (always!) reward your email list by including a small discount coupon so they feel like they’re part of an insider community.
4. Try Google Ads During Off Season
Google Ads can be an awesome and cheap way to drive sales— if you’re showing them at the right time. Unfortunately, holidays for flower shops tend to drive the cost per click for Google Ads up significantly. I’ve seen them cost 3x more on holidays than non-holidays.
But remember, people don’t only look for flowers on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Take advantage of the low cost per clicks by running Google Ads between holidays rather than directly near or on holidays like most other flower shops. You’ll pay less, and get more customers per dollar (since fewer other floral business will be competing with you).
5. Get On The ‘Gram
Instagram can be a wonderful way to showcase the beauty of your floral business. Weekly or daily posts with the right hashtags and shares can help you build a strong audience and grow your die-hard fanbase (customers that do business with you more than once per month).
Use your logo as your profile picture. I recommend fully fleshing out your profile with links to your website or Google My Business page, and a short description of your location and what makes you different.
Owning a flower shop or floral business requires a tough mix of science and art. You have to be good at things like order quantities, dollar amounts, and business, while still understanding beauty, placement, and communication. After working with countless flower shops as part of my Vancouver digital agency, I can tell you they’re some of the sweetest, kindest people I’ve ever met.
To truly grow your business, don’t just stop at online marketing! Make sure you’re also capitalizing on walk-by traffic and word-of-mouth. Go the extra mile, and your flower shop will blossom into the store you’ve always wanted it to be.