10 tips to drive customers to your garden
centre via the internet
An exclusive guide for garden retailers!
Edwin Meijer and John Stanley
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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Index
A. About us
B. Why did we write this book?
1. Website
2. Online shopping
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. YouTube
6. Pinterest
7. Google
8. Text marketing
9. E-mail marketing
10. Smartphone and apps
C. Final words
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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A. About us
This book is written by John Stanley and Edwin Meijer, both very enthusiastic fans of garden centres
and concerned that the garden industry isn’t adapting new technologies the way they need to if they
are to remain viable in the future.
John Stanley, John Stanley Associates
International retail consultant John Stanley’s roots were teaching garden
centre management at a college in the UK. He then started consulting to
nurseries and garden centres and later branched out to the general retail
world. He now brings insights and perspectives from these other markets to
help garden centres compete with other lifestyle choices their customers face
when looking to spend their money. John offers helpful direction including:
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Selecting location and remodelling of garden centres
Selecting store fixtures
Arranging traffic flow in your centre
Creating an effective signage plan
Hiring qualified team members
Making the sales and add-on selling
Benchmarking your business
Opening a coffee shop in your garden centre
Whether you want to open up a brand new garden centre, remodel or relocate an existing one, or
are just looking to do what you do a little better, John Stanley will help you increase your average
sale, maximise your sales per square metre and grow your market base to get the most from your
business.
Go for more information to www.johnstanley.com.au.
Edwin Meijer, Garden Connect
Founder of Garden Connect Edwin Meijer has been working with
independent garden retailers in Europe for over 10 years. His company
Garden Connect is currently managing over 200 websites and webshops
of small and big independent garden retailers across Europe. Garden
Connect also works for buying and marketing groups within the industry.
Edwin is motivating garden retailers to benefit from the opportunities
the internet offers to drive more traffic and his company offers flexible
and custom made solutions to independent garden retailers:
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Websites (and provide daily news & gardening tips to keep it up to date!)
Webshops integrated with ePos systems
E-mail marketing
Loyalty program innovations
Apps and smartphone solutions
Garden Connects primary focus is to drive traffic to your garden centre so if you are still struggling to
get the most out of the internet, Edwin and his team can help you to move forward.
Go for more information to www.gardenconnect.com.
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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B. Why did we write this book?
Before we give you the tips, we would like to give you the background on this book. We both work
with garden retailers every day so we know many garden centres are still struggling with their online
marketing strategy. Meanwhile, every retailer is facing the same challenges:
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The garden business is weather dependent while the
weather gets less and less predictable. In 2013 Easter
Sunday was a record breaking low temperature in the UK
and the hosepipe ban affected sales.
Competition via the internet is increasing. Consumers can
compare your prices with 100’s of other stores and
webshops within a second and orders are delivered within
24 hours.
People opt to spent their time on other things rather
than visiting garden centres or gardening. There’s too
much competition from other shops (ever been to an IKEA
on a Sunday afternoon?) and people tend to have too
many things they would like to do.
It’s getting more complicated to predict your business. Budgets
and margins are decreasing and so are the number of visitors to
your garden centre. Despite this, we are still very positive about
the industry but we only remain positive if you change some
aspects of your business. And that’s why we have written this
book.
Many garden centre owners and managers are very conservative and are not keeping up with retail
trends. The internet, social media and smartphone are here to stay and will continue to evolve. Every
customer, whether he or she is 18 or 81, is using the internet to research purchases they are going
to make. Printing adverts in your local newspaper is fine but you should also go online to stay in
touch with the majority of your customers.
What do you think about media usage from your customers within the next 5 or 10 years?
Smartphones and tablets are common today but the smartphone was rare 5 years ago, while the first
iPad arrived no earlier than April 2010. In other words: things are changing and they are changing
faster and faster!
You need to be visible where your customers are active and your customers are online. Most garden
centres are either not visible online or they are not maximising their opportunities online. To help
you to go online successfully and to get more out of the opportunities the internet offers, we’ve
written this small guide. We have not written a complete guide as it isn’t a straightforward path but
at least it helps you to build your success.
Enjoy the journey – it will never end!
John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
August 2013
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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1. Website
The first and most important thing to start with is your website. Whatever you’re doing online, your
website should look superb and it should reflect your business.
A few key questions are enough to check if your website is superb:
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Can consumers recognise your website even if they don’t see your logo?
Do you update your website multiple times per week?
Is your website inspiring your consumers and are you providing practical tips to them?
Is your website an online showroom for your garden centre with relevant product
information?
If one of the questions you answered was “no”, you’re missing chances to drive more customers to
your garden centre via the web.
We often see outdated information on websites or pages with
a lot of text. You’re a garden centre so you should inspire your
visitors with your beautiful products and plants and not with
text and words. Add slideshows, inspire your customers and
interact with them via your website.
Your website is your shop window and most consumers look
at your shop window before venturing into the store.
Use photos of fresh perennials and annuals, your garden
furniture department and your Christmas show. No doubt
you will be putting a lot of effort to make your garden centre
look superb so take photos and put them on your website!
Don’t do it once a year, update your photos every week. Use
your smartphone to take them, smartphone camera quality is
good today. Consumers want to see something fresh every
time they visit your website.
Nowadays people are understandably more money conscious
and will be looking up information online before they decide where to buy . Your garden centre
should display what you offer to them online. You do not have to put every single product on your
website, but at least a range of products per product group. If consumers can’t find what they are
looking for on your website, you are giving them a reason not to visit your garden centre.
Last but not least. Your website is a key knowledge hub. Provide gardening tips, news items, tutorials
and more information to your customers. It will help them while they are researching the internet to
prepare purchases but it will also help them to make better usage of the products they have bought
at your centre. If you sell them a plant and you educate them how to treat it so it will last longer and
bloom better, it is certainly more likely they will come back sooner or later!
Look here for inspiration
Know the facts
- www.thegardencentergroup.co.uk
- www.scotsdalesgardencentre.co.uk
- www.bbc.co.uk/gardening
- 84% of UK adults are online at least once a week
- It is called the World Wide Web, but 97% of traffic
is local
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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2. Online shopping
As a garden retailer you might think running a webshop is too complicated but it isn’t at all. Instead,
it can be a major traffic generator for your garden centre! Do not be afraid of selling online, look on it
as an improved mail order catalogue. As an industry we used to sell plants 30 years ago via mail
order and we can do that again via the internet.
Nowadays, consumers are orientating online before they decide where to shop or they buy online as
well. The majority of consumers still prefer to buy in garden centres that inspire them rather than
ordering everything online. So how do you integrate your webshop and store? Some essential tips:
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Don’t try to compete with Amazon, Tesco and other major
online retailers. If you think you can move boxes from
warehouses to consumers as they do, forget about it. You
won’t win that game unless your budget is near unlimited.
Focus on your local area and on your existing customers.
You probably already deliver bigger products like garden
furniture to your customers so limiting the area you’re
shipping to helps you to keep control.
Your webshop is an online showroom. Customers
orientate online but often buy offline so encourage them
to visit your centre. In every product description you can
add a line such as “Visit our garden centre if you want to
see, touch and feel this product.”.
Don’t focus on price, focus on service. Add testimonials
from your existing clients to your webshop and add
practical tips. This helps customers recognise you are not
just another webshop but a knowledge hub for gardeners
and have customer advocates.
It’s really surprising how easy things can be. Imagine you’re delivering garden furniture to your
customers home. What Amazon provides isn’t always deemed as a good service. They ask the
delivery driver to dump 7 boxes with tables and chairs you ordered on your doorstep, ask for a
signature and drive away. Good luck!
Since you’re a retailer who looks after his clients, you can ask your own delivery guys to unpack the
boxes, install the furniture, put a nice flower on the table and take the rubbish away. It might cost
you an extra 10 minutes and £2 for the flower but it’s adding value to your business and will increase
customer satisfaction. Easy, isn’t it?
Click and Collect is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your garden centre. You can setup a
webshop, collect orders from the web but you don’t have the hassle of deliveries. Surveys confirm
that Click and Collect is getting more and more popular and at present is the most profitable model.
Consumers don’t have to walk through your entire centre and are assured of the availability of the
products they ordered. You can add a free coffee coupon to encourage them to come back soon to
make a longer visit .
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- www.plants4perth.com.au
- www.gardeners.com
- Retail sales are estimated to keep growing at least 10% per
annum the upcoming years
- The challenge is the delivery system, not the webshop
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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3. Facebook
Facebook was found in 2004 and grew within a decade to the most important social network in the
world. It won’t surprise you that a lot of your customers are using Facebook and as a business you
should be where your customers are, shouldn’t you? Do you have a good, effective Facebook
strategy? Or are you just playing around and struggling to make it really work for your business?
First of all, social media is a bit different than most other marketing because you have to interact and
engage with people, so it isn’t a once-a-week task in your agenda. The good thing is that you spend
your time communicating with your customers which can only grow sales!
Secondly, you should be enthusiastic about Facebook
and social media in general but do not overestimate the
number of messages people want to read from you. Are
you interested in 7 updates per day from your local
hairdresser? Probably not and your customer won’t
appreciate too many posts from you as well. So just
post once or twice a day and a bit more during special
events and bank holidays but don’t overdo it.
How can you drive traffic to your store via Facebook?
Here are some examples which can be copied by every reader of this book (and no, we won’t talk
about the boring “Like & Share”):
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Use coupons which are only available to your Facebook friends. This will increase the number
of followers and you can encourage your friends to come to your store and use the
coupon(s).
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Do a flash sale. Just reduce 1 popular product in price for 2 or 3 hours for (say) 70% and only
announce it once on Facebook.. You will be surprised how many people rush in to your
centre to get that deal! One of our clients did this one with great results and major upselling.
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A pre-Christmas opening is always appreciated by loyal customers. Invite your Facebook
friends to visit your Christmas department the evening before it officialy opens and give
them a 10% discount on everything. A client of ours did this and out of 2,000 Facebook
friends he got over 400 visitors, with just 1 post!
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Every member of staff within your garden centre should take at least 1 photo during his or
her working week of something attractive, new or inspiring. You can use these photos to
show your customers what’s happening in your centre. The majority of your team will love it
and you get your products directly on Facebook with photos, plus it’s free .
These are just four random tips and you can use them today or tomorrow! They all drive traffic to
your centre and that’s where a lot of businesses are missing an opportunity. They are using Facebook
but they don’t have any idea how to drive traffic to their store. We showed you how easy it can be
and look forward to see what you are going to do.
Follow these centres for inspiration:
Know the facts
- Cleeve Nursery
- Ferndale Nursery
- UK Social Networking growth is the strongest among
middle-age and senior internet users
- 2/3 followers of garden centres on Facebook are women –
your most important group to target!
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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4. Twitter
We like Twitter but why would we recommend you to use Twitter? It’s text based while your
business is colourful and inspiring , anything but textual. However, a lot of your customers are using
Twitter or are reading Tweets without having an account so you can’t ignore this network.
Twitter is as easy as Facebook so don’t make the mistake in linking them together. Tweets are
different than Facebook posts. Being lazy never resulted in a lot of new customers so just copying the
updates from Facebook to Twitter or the other way around won’t work in this case either.
Tweets are short messages of 140 characters or less, so we’ve got some quick tips for you to use:
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Setup an account with your business name but add the name of the person posting tweets in
your description.
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Interact. The “social” part of “social media” means you have to talk and listen. Most
companies know how to talk but they don’t listen and therefore they don’t interact!
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Be helpful. People are asking a lot of question about gardening and plants on Twitter.
Answer those questions. You’re the knowledge hub which the high street department store
isn’t.
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Ask questions to your followers, they are your customers.
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You don’t have to follow everyone back. As a golden rule you should have more followers
than accounts you’re following yourself.
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Post photos, you can do it from your smartphone within a few seconds.
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Put a nice, inspiring picture on your Twitter page. Get rid of the common blue background,
you should inspire your visitors from the first second.
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Don’t tweet offers only, no one is interested in a digital advertisement of you. You can do it
once in a while but social media is like a family reunion, people talk about everything and
nothing and no one is interested in your promotions all the time.
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Let customers know what’s going in your centre. New plants coming in, new gifts available, a
great planter your staff has created - it’s all interesting!
These are just some easy tips you can use to get started with Twitter. A lot of the garden retailers
aren’t using Twitter or other types of social media in case people complain about their business.
Well, they probably complain about you anyway and the benefit of being on social media is that you
know exactly who’s complaining and you can respond immediately.
For most consumers a complaint isn’t a problem, the real problem occurs when you don’t solve it in a
satisfying way. We have also found that consumers who were complaining continuously about the
service of a garden centre, who were not willing to look at the solution, were corrected by other
customers of the centre. It won’t get more social, will it!?
Follow them at Twitter for inspiration:
Know the facts
- @homedepot
- @shootgardening
- @eemeijer
- @john_stanley
- 1 or 2 tweets/day gives 40% higher engagement
- About 30% of the Brits uses Twitter to read and/or
share information
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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5. YouTube
Imagine you are a typical consumer. You come into the garden
centre with a problem, the team member explains how to solve
your problem and you go home trying to remember everything
you were told and in the right sequence of events.
The chances are that you will get it wrong.
Now, imagine going to the garden centre. The team member still
explains the solution, but also recommends a YouTube clip that
you can watch when you get home that reinforces what you have
just been told. I bet you would be impressed and recommend this
business to your friends.
YouTube can be used in so many ways in your business. Here are
some tips to get you on the right track. Oh, and don’t be shy:
people would love to see you on YouTube!
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A virtual tour of the garden centre that can go on your website
which will say more than 1,000 words and 100 photos and can
generate traffic. People want to see your beautiful centre!
Show what is in season and new plants that have arrived.
Again, inspiration is key so don’t be shy.
Introduce your team to your consumers. Personalise their
shopping experience.
‘How to’ videos are a great way to explain how your products
work and how customers should use them.
Problem solving videos are useful, so you can explain how to
solve common problems in gardens.
Share local gardens to inspire your customers but also your
own staff.
Ask your customers to submit a video of their garden or how
they use the products bought at your centre.
An online garden school in which you teach a new subject
every week is a great tool to stimulate usage of your products.
It’s like a workshop but you can use it far more often.
The seasons are changing and so is your garden centre, so
there are plenty of opportunities to create new videos over
and over!
Are you enthusiastic but wondering how to make a video? Well, use your smartphone with a pod,
make the video and upload it to YouTube directly from your phone. Success guaranteed!
Look at them on YouTube
Know the facts
- Ferndale Garden Centre
- Terra Ontario (Canada)
- Sutton Seeds
- 23% of people watch online videos every day
- The average online UK consumer watches over 300
videos per month
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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6. Pinterest
Pinterest seems to be made for garden centres. It’s colourful, inspiring, the majority of the users are
women (who are your most important customers) and it’s all based on photos. The main benefit of
using photos rather than text (like on Facebook and Twitter) is your visitors don’t have to think too
much. They can be inspired without reading and as you know, internet users prefer to skip long texts.
Don’t underestimate this lack of thinking as surveys show that offers on a Pinterest board get more
attention because of this than offers on Twitter!
So what is Pinterest and how should you use it? Pinterest is a collection of digital pinboard. You can
collect photos and images and post them to boards. As a garden centre you know how easy it is to
get a decent number of photos which can be used on Pinterest but also on your website or Facebook
page of course. Imagine having a garden centre in the UK during the time of a royal birth. Wouldn’t it
be a great idea to post a mix of red, blue and white products on a pinboard reflecting the colours of
the Union Jack?
Or what about Christmas, which is an excellent moment to inspire your customers. Post photos of
your Christmas show on your Pinterest page so you give visitors a showcase of things you’ve got in
stock.
Another real benefit of Pinterest is that you can inspire your customers without decreasing your
margins. When you post a great photo of a combination of products, easy to setup at home and
available within the garden centre on a hotspot, you can easily see sales going up. The price
becomes less important since you have shown your customer what to do with the (combination of)
products.
Most consumers use Pinterest to discover new brands and to find new products. With new products
(plants!) coming in almost every week and with a decreasing number of visitors in garden centres
nationwide (or better worldwide), Pinterest is an excellent spot to get people back to your store!
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- Pinterest.com/all/gardening
- Pinterest.com/malmborgs/
- Pinterest users tend to spend more at your centre than
Facebook or Twitter users.
- Over 80% of the users are female – need we say more?
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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7. Google
If there’s one company that changed the world of retail we should point to Google. The search
engine changed the way you work within a decade, but it also offers a lot of opportunities to your
business. We can give you at least 50 websites of garden centres we have worked with who are
getting new customers coming in as a result of Google so even if you still think it won’t work, keep on
reading and find out for yourself.
What you should do to drive more traffic to your centre via Google:
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Keep in mind Google is reading your website. So if you’re the
best stop for consumers looking for fruit trees, you should
have information (multiple pages!) about fruit trees on your
website. If you don’t have the words on your website, you
won’t get good rankings.
Update your Google Maps profile. This is the information
shown within the results if you look up your own business.
You can add a photo, text, opening times and much more all
for free. Search for “Places for business” to do this.
Use Google Analytics. It’s a very valuable tool to see what’s
happening on your website, how many people visit your
pages, what keywords they use, etc. Even if you don’t have
any experience you should sign-up for Analytics to build up a
history of your stats. It will help you to make decisions next
week or next year and it’s free so no reason to skip this step.
Only advertise with Google Adwords if you have a webshop.
Some retailers are advertising their business via Google
Adwords but it isn’t cost effective most of the time and it’s
hard to measure the number of people visiting your centre
after clicking on ads.
Think how your customers would think to find out what keywords you should have on your
website. They often use less complicated keywords and terms than you would do. If you are
able to get this done you’re almost halfway!
Setup your Google+ account. It isn’t as big as Facebook yet but Google is pushing it’s own
social network more and more so it is only a matter of time till it’s adopted by the mass.
Understanding Google can be a major driver of traffic to your garden centre. It might also be much
more cost effective than publishing ads in a newspaper. Why? The key difference between all your
ads and marketing and getting ranked well in Google is the fact that consumers are looking for a
solution in Google – and your website is the answer. Having an ad in a newspaper only distracts from
the actual news items. For the real marketeers: you go from push to pull marketing!
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- www.google.com/think
- www.googleshopping.blogspot.com
- 58% of purchase decisions begin on search engines
- Researching products and services is the second most
popular online activity among Brits with 3 out of 4 UK
internet users doing so.
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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8. Text marketing
Text marketing is, together with e-mailing newsletters, another communication method which might
not be at the top of mind. However, most senior phone users aren’t on WhatsApp, KIK or Viber (ask
your kids if you haven’t got a clue what we’re talking about…) but they are very happy to read (and
write) text messages.
Building a database with phone numbers is a bit more tricky than an e-mail database since the
impact of a text is a lot higher. To setup a proper database you might want to add special deals. One
retailer gives a discount on a weekly basis to customers who have a phone number ending with
number 9 for example. They have to register to get the discount. Be creative and find your own way
forward on this one.
To be successful in your text marketing campaigns you should obey the following rules:
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Be focused and spot on. Like Twitter, you only have a limited number of characters so you
have to be very clear. People also might get annoyed if you send them confusing texts which
aren’t saying anything at all. So be very, very straight forward!
Your offers aren’t “amazing” so avoid words like that, since it will look like spam. Be
enthusiastic but don’t be too enthusiastic.
As a business it won’t be a positive thing to use smileys :-( :-) :x :p ;-(
It should be valid or available today, not tomorrow. Text marketing is, like Twitter, excellent
for a here and now promotions.
Make the reader feel special, use words like “you” to appeal to the recipient and try to offer
something else than in your local newspaper.
Timing is essential, since no one wants to receive a text at 7.30 in the morning, while 7.30 in
the evening is too late.
Make clear to who is sending the text. Might be an obvious one but we wouldn’t mention it if
every garden centre is doing it.
Don’t do it too often, it’s a direct way of communication.
Text marketing is a great way to interact with your customers and there are a lot of providers which
can be used to send out bulk messages. It might be an idea to add all your customers to this list but,
as with e-mail, you have to get an opt-in from your customer before you can contact them.
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- www.gardencentermagazine.com/dundee-nursery-textmessage-marketing-kim-gaida.aspx
- www.textrepublic.ie/ballyseedy-garden-centre
- Emoticons does not increase sales, it makes
you look unprofessional. Please don’t do it.
- Over 72% of the mobile phone users is used
to send and receive text messages
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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9. E-mail marketing
It’s undeniable people are using social media more frequently to communicate with relatives but email is still alive and kicking! Having an up to date e-mail list gives you a kick start if you want to
communicate new products, promotions or events you are organising in your centre.
The first thing you need to do is build an e-mail database. If you have a customer loyalty scheme,
that would be the most obvious place to start, but if you don’t have it, you can still build a decent
database. It’s important to encourage your staff and let them participate in this. Set an objective for
the first two weeks and encourage them to sign customers up at the till. You can use an Excel
spreadsheet for this or another straightforward form. Don’t set your goal for the first two weeks too
high. Having 100 customers on your e-mail list within two weeks is fine for a small garden centre.
After the first 100, go for the 250, etc.
Most customers do want to know “What’s in it for me?” so
you need to make clear what the benefits are for signing
up. A small incentive will help, like a small plant or a £2.50
coupon. You can also do a monthly prize draw with a
product or gift voucher from your centre. If you just ask
them to sign up so you can send them your latest offers,
you shouldn’t be surprised that most people won’t be
interested in your newsletter!
After adding your Excel list to your e-mail marketing tool,
you can start sending out your first newsletter. We
sometimes receive newsletters with a title like this:
“XYZ Garden Centre January newsletter”
Why would we want to read this newsletter? Is it
inspiring? Is it inviting? No, it’s only commercial. Don’t do
this, be a bit more creative like:
“Do you want to have a beautiful garden this summer?”
You need to make the recipients curious about your
newsletter. You should also include links from your
newsletter to your website and don’t add too much text to
it. And don’t copy information from your website directly
to your newsletter but give the readers something exclusive. Keep it plain, straight forward and have
multiple messages in your newsletter.
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- Zanthorrea Garden Centre newsletter
- People signup for your newsletter so they expect to
receive something from you – don’t forget this.
- 68% of UK smartphone owners used their device to
check email in the past 30 days
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
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10. Smartphone and apps
Customers using their smartphone whilst shopping is
a common sight for garden centre staff to see
nowadays. Customers are using their smartphones
to share ideas, to ask relatives for advice or to
compare prices. The smartphone is the one and only
device customers go home for if they forgot it and,
together with their money and keys, the only thing
you can be sure they have in their pocket while they
do their shopping at your centre.
So how do you turn this device into your best friend?
There are plenty of things you can do.
Be aware most people use their smartphone to go
online and socialise via Facebook, Twitter and
Pinterest. Using social media keeps your brand in
their mind even while they are on the run. The second thing you should do is have a mobile friendly
website. Consumers tend to search Google for “garden centre in XYZ” if they are on the road. Have a
website which resizes automatically if visitors open it via a smartphone, a so called responsive
website.
You can also develop your own app for iPhone and Android which isn’t too expensive anymore. You
can add your loyalty card to this app or you can send out coupons for specific discounts. Having your
own app helps to keep your brand visible and it gives you an unique opportunity to interact with your
customers. Share news items, gardening tips and promotions with your customers and send them
push messages if you have a specific offer. For example when the snow starts falling, offer snow
shovels – right on time!
Most customers are “talking” via their smartphone (Texts, Whatsapp, Facebook) about purchases
before they make them, while they make and after they have made them. Be sure your brand is
visible at every stage.
Are you spotting customers comparing prices? Don’t worry! They often forget to think about the
costs for shipping. It’s an excellent opportunity - and a challenge - for you to make the sale.
Customers who are comparing prices are ready to make the purchase so use that moment if you spot
it! And remember, it’s not all about the price, even today.
Be Inspired! Have a look at…
Know the facts
- JohnStanley Phone app
- Sawyer Home and Garden Center app
- IKEA app with augmented reality
- 2 in 3 mums that own an iPhone or Android smartphone
use them as part of their shopping process.
- 71% of UK mobile phone users would be interested in
receiving mobile coupons while shopping in store.
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
15
C. Some final words
First of all we would like to thank you for taking the time to read this book. It’s a pleasure for both of
us to see you, and many other people interested in developing your garden centre. The gardening
industry needs to go online to maintain and hopefully increase its market share. With weekly
changing stock there’s plenty to show to your customers via the web!
We never intended to make a complete guide about
Facebook, Google, smartphones or Twitter but just
wanted to show you how easy it can be to go online
successfully. We also know a lot of things we suggest
are subject to heavy discussions and we’re welcome
any feedback you might have.
We showed you how easy it can be to go online, to find
new customers and to encourage you to do it rather
than waiting for your competitors to take over your
business.
Do you feel like the internet is a gigantic maze that
makes you dizzy even thinking about it? You're
certainly not the only one, but we hope that reading
this book made you realize the internet isn't a big
monster, but a great source of opportunities. Change is
necessary to get the most out of it, but change isn’t
negative. It can bring a new vibe to your centre and can
inspire your team to achieve something you never
expected.
Every tip we have provided is based on our own personal experience with garden centre managers
like yourself. We haven’t made these up! We know a lot more tricks but we will save them for our
clients or maybe for the next edition of this book.
We hope we’ve inspired you to make the next step online. Let us know what you’re doing via Twitter
@johnstanley and @eemeijer or you can drop us a line via [email protected] or
[email protected].
Enjoy the new world of marketing and we hope to see you soon!
John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
August 2013
Copyright notice
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review. Distribution of this e-book among garden centre marketing and buying
groups or associations is allowed if the book is unchanged in any way and if both John and Edwin are
informed of this by e-mail.
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
16
“10 tips to drive customers to your garden centre via the internet” – John Stanley and Edwin Meijer
17