Owning or managing a nursery may seem like a dream job for those who love the outdoors, growing plants and helping people transform a barren lot into a beautiful landscape. However, a nursery is like any other business in that a marketing plan is a critical step to success. Marketing planning is the process of selecting target customer groups and designing a set of strategies and action plans that communicate the benefits your company provides to potential customers. Once a marketing plan is approved, it then becomes your business plan and must be followed to the letter.
A nursery is a huge business, which means that growing plants and keeping a website are crucial to the success of the venture. However, a nursery operates in an extremely competitive market. There are just too many players in the market, so it is important that a marketing plan is carefully thought out.
Why Nursery Marketing Plan Is Necessary
Although there are a lot of advantages to owning or managing a nursery, a common question people have is why do we need a marketing plan. The short answer is that we need to understand who our potential customers are and then create a marketing plan to reach our potential customers. Without a marketable product, we won’t be able to get our potential customers to use our business and pay for our services.
Websites and banners are a good example of a technology-focused marketing activity. On this page, we show a page with an image of a flower to attract prospects. When a visitor checks out the website for more information, banner ads are displayed on the page for future visits. The banner ads are displayed in a way that makes them easily recognizable and easy-to-find landing pages.
However, banners and online advertising can be a widely-used marketing strategy. Since banners are easily recognizable, they are often used in tandem with other website marketing activities. In addition to banners and internet advertising, a number of other methods of marketing strategy work. For example, a marketing plan can include a variety of strategies such as sending a monthly newsletter. This newsletter can be used to announce promotions, results, and achievements.
Let’s Get Started With The First Step of The Marketing Plan
Well, let’s get started.
Determine The Niche
In the early days of a business, most marketers didn’t know what to focus on. Why focus on marketing food products to female teenagers? What about marketing Home improvement products? Well, when a business owner wants to focus on a specific niche of a market, they must create a marketing plan. Once a business owner chooses their niche, they must dive into the market and begin surveying in the region where the business will take place.
There are two main types of retail outlets. Retailers that sell products to the general public, and retailers that sell to corporations. However, many products can be marketed to both categories. Business owners that want to purchase a complete marketing plan for their business must look at the market where their potential customers will reside. The more appropriate marketing plan, the more competitive the market will be.
However, a market can be diverse in terms of size and both direct and indirect marketing influences. If a business owner wants to market their flowers, they must begin to locate potential customers through various channels. These channels include the printing press, the internet, and printed shipping labels.
Create a list of potential customers
For the purposes of this step, an effectual customer is one who regularly visits the business for each of the next three months. An effectual customer is someone who will spend more than $5 on flower items.
A business owner should then create a list of individuals who they would like to visit their flower business. A sample list might look like this:
- Name
- Phone
- Email Address
- Website
- Favorite Flowers
- Flowers in Your Area
- Flowers in the Area You Want to Sell
- Flower Delivery Service in Your Area
- Flowers in Your Area
Select Target Market Areas
Once the list of individuals who visit the flower business has been created, the business owner can narrow their search in terms of size and geographic regions. The key to making this decision is to select a market that you think has the potential to be profitable, but which also has the potential to grow. A business owner who is not successful with marketing in a specific market should scour a different market and try again until they find a winning location.
Selecting Low-Cost But Prosperous Target Market Areas
If you’ve identified a group of potential customers who are willing to spend $5 or more per visit, you can then refine the marketing plan you are proposing. Everyone likes to be entertained, so you can opt to focus on the following marketing opportunities.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing
At the very beginning of the marketing plan, a business owner might choose to focus on getting the maximum number of individuals interested in the business. However, the marketing plan could also include a variety of marketing activities. This marketing plan includes a variety of activities that will show that the business can offer more than just flowers. For example, a business purchase marketing plan could require the purchase of special equipment.
Getting the maximum number of individuals interested leads to higher objective sales when targeting the most profitable markets.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
If you’ve determined that you’re going to target an already-established target market, get-out-the-house marketing activities are a great idea. By getting as many family members and friends as possible to visit your flower business, you can increase the attention paid to your business. For example, you could show up at the neighborhood garden fairs, or you could host a “flora-fiesta” at your home during a month of heavy flower purchases. Other targeted get-out-the-house marketing activities could include an attempt to get your Facebook fan page opened.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
If you have a family member who is willing to carry your business to their social network, another market that could be considered is the referral market. A referral market is a group of people who know someone who uses your service or business, and they recommend them to others. When this happens, you gain a free promotion. In the example of a flower business, a business owner might refer to his or her customers or customers in his or her industry.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
If you have no acquaintances or friends in your industry, you could target “out-of-business” customers. Similar to getting-out-the-house marketing, if you can get your “out-of-business” customer to use your business, the additional revenue and attention could kick-start additional sales. Again, a certain level of cost is needed to leverage this approach. However, with additional exposure, how great is your up-selling potential?
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
Your out-of-business market has better access to your website marketing tool and can have the same targeted marketing efforts as your current customers. You are trying to attract new customers, so marketing hasn’t changed—just the target market.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
Perhaps it makes sense for an out-of-business business owner to focus on those that are currently working. You can leverage the work that your out-of-business customers aren’t doing on the business, and then take advantage of the urgency that a potential new customer might have.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
If out-of-business sales don’t offer the business owner any leverage, they can still work with existing customers to create some foothold in their existing markets.
If the potential customers purchase your flowers have been consuming your same product, it’s possible to identify new audiences by sowing the seeds to purchase flowers from you.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
Finally, there’s the out-of-business market that is located in a market that is not profitable for your current business. In the example of a flower business, an out-of-business market could be located in any type of retail market. Like potential customers, an out-of-business market also has the potential to grow. If a business owner focuses on making the best use of someone’s time, they might be able to find a business to buy soon after that person sets up an account.
Getting Your Out-of-Business Competition to Buy
If you have a family member or friend who has never considered purchasing flowers from your business, they may be willing to pay more. If they spend $20 per visit, they are paying for the same product, the basic flowers that are sold by nearly every other business. This friend now has access to your product, and could be willing to make more purchases. The cost is not much, but the potential is fantastic. Consider the following steps:
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
When someone visits your flower business, they might not spend $20, but they could spend up to $40 per visit. However, remembering that money cannot buy the opportunity to advertise, you have to offer something new, or something of value in exchange for the money. At the end of the day, hospitality is how businesses like your flower business win their market.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
Be creative as you respond to the request for new flowers. It could be as simple as picking up some care packaging items at your flower delivery site, or it could be as outrageous as adding personalized gifts to your flower stock. The idea is to provide something of value in exchange for the money. This value is either something the visitor will have, such as a free gift, or it can be something the visitor already owns.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
In a flower business, it makes sense for the business owner to focus on getting the new customer to use the services. This will lead to a sales of the flower business. If the visitor comes into your flower business and spends $40, the customer can spend an additional $240, producing the 100% profit gain.
Get-Out-The-House Marketing Activities
Although a flower business might not be a profitable business, the link between the visitor and the flower business is seen as a true success. You could leverage the opportunity to increase your business sales, but it would require not only the visitors purchase of your product, but also an increase in customer loyalty. In the example of a flower business, we have already seen that a business owner can benefit from the web visitors, but now it would be beneficial to get the visitor to use your flower business by showing them the positive aspects of my business.
With these strategies, the potential of passive and active online business is greatly increased.
Now we are ready for the next chapter in this book. It’s time to branch out and start marketing online, with new businesses.
Chapter 5
Online Businesses That Can Use the Power of the Web
It’s not so easy to start an online business. It requires a willingness to put forth the effort, and to work patiently in the beginning to build a solid foundation for your business that can support long-term growth. It requires the willingness of the business owner to make their opinion known online.
Thankfully, since we are living in an age of the Internet age, business owners everywhere are realizing that the Internet is a wonderful tool that can be applied to the propagation of their business. Anyone can take advantage of the Internet to achieve passive and active online business.
To create passive online businesses, you need to begin as an online business owner, and then move on to activities that make sense to you. However, to start an active online business, you must first have an online presence.
Online presence means the ability to sell your product online. You can show up at your favorite online retail site and purchase merchandise, or you can sell through your own online retail site. We will explore which online marketing methods can be applied to your online presence.
- The first online marketing activity we will look at is PayPal
- Converting Sales To Sales
We know that people are purchasing your online business through PayPal and transactions can be uploaded to PayPal accounts.