Jenny (00:28)
Have you ever secretly wondered what the actual heck the word marketing means? Well, I sure did when I first started my business. And I'm pretty sure I've told this story on the podcast before, but when I first started my flower farm, I was so excited about it. I thought that it was just the perfect solution for the problems I was having because I had started a vegetable CSA and I was having a hard time selling the CSA shares.
And so I thought, okay, with flowers, this is going to be totally different. They're just going to sell themselves, but unfortunately they did not. So when I opened up the flower farm business, I put a post on my personal Facebook page saying we are officially open for business. We have flowers come and get them. I know you're so excited about them. Yada, yada. I was expecting crowds of people.
Like, yes, I was very naive, but I like really expected my Facebook friends and my friends and family to come running to buy flowers from me, to support me. And of course there were lots of people who wanted to support me and stuff, but basically I heard crickets and it was so disappointing. I just thought like, if I build this thing, if I show up, like people will come and buy. And I was so wrong. And I honestly had no idea what it even meant to.
Air quotes market my business. was just a foreign term to me that felt like out of reach. it felt like this fancy, like business term or something. And I just didn't understand what marketing meant or how to get the word out about my flower farm business. And so if you're like me and you secretly were wondering or have been wondering what that even looks like this episode is for you.
And today's episode, I'm giving you three tangible and simple ways that you can market your business and physically get more customers in the door. And these marketing techniques that I'm going over today are very, simple, but don't let that fool you. They are wildly effective. So when I started reading about marketing and learning about it, you 15 years ago, I thought that these strategies that I'm going to tell you about today were kind of BS.
Like there, there had to be some other fancy way to get customers or secret ways to run paid ads or a popular kids club that you had to buy into in order to get publicity and stuff. but over the years I've realized that this is really it.
And all the word marketing means all marketing means is just making people aware of your business, making your business known.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. There are a ton of different ways to market your business. There are social media, magazines, going door to door, just knocking on your neighbor's doors and telling them about your flowers and trying to sell them. know, farmers markets, pop-ups, websites, SEO, yada yada. There are definitely different levels of marketing and there are always new techniques and strategies to learn.
But when you're just starting out, you just have to get your first customers and start getting cash in the door. So you can start with simple, easy ways to start getting customers, and then you can dive into the fancy marketing techniques later. So today, the three marketing techniques that you can use to market your flower business right now are number one, collaborating with other businesses, number two, hosting events,
And number three, email marketing. And we're going to talk about all of these things in their own turn. So let's get down to business.
The first method is collaborating with other businesses. And this can look different and it can be done in a bunch of different ways. But basically what we want to do is get ourselves, our businesses in front of as many other people's eyes as possible. And a great way to do that is collaborating with another established business so you can be seen by their audience or their following.
The key to this is finding another business that has a similar target market to yours. So if you want to target other, let's say that you're a farmer florist and you want to target couples who are getting married because you want to sell them wedding packages, consider going to collaborate with other wedding vendors in your area. Like maybe a bridal store or a tux rental place or some sort of caterer restaurant or something like that, that also caters weddings.
The key here is to really find other businesses that are targeting the same kinds of people that you are,
You don't want to go to another business that's serving a completely different audience than the one you're trying to target. If you want to sell flowers to moms, you wouldn't go to like an auto body shop down the street and try to sell flowers to a bunch of like men who are coming in to get their, you know, tires changed or something like that. So looking for other businesses that have similar audiences to you.
And approaching them in a way that makes it mutually beneficial for the both of you. You know, the world is not out to just serve you. You really should be looking at this from a way of how do I get in front of other people's eyes, get exposed to other people's audiences and help these, these other businesses in my area. So one way that I did this was I went and collaborated with other local businesses to use.
as my CSA pickup location. So when we do our flower subscription programs, also called a CSA, we use other businesses. So we drop off our flowers to the other businesses and our customers pick up from there. And this is great because we both, both me and the partner businesses promote our flower CSA on social media, through our email lists and on other ways. And when my flowers are physically there at those locations,
People are seeing them, you know, all day, every day, and especially when we have our pickups. And so we are getting exposed to those other audiences all the time. And that was a huge one that really helped my business take off in the very beginning. We partnered with a local ice cream shop and a local coffee place and also a local wine bar. We've had a bunch of different locations over the series of our business, but It's been really.
mutually beneficial for the both of us because we are getting foot traffic in their doors as well during slow days of the week. So we do our CSA pickups on Wednesdays, which is typically a slow day of the week for a lot of the businesses that we partner with. we're getting tons of foot traffic in their door. And a lot of them are like, Hey, while I'm here picking up my flowers, I'll grab a cup of coffee or I'll grab a bottle of wine or whatever store they're in. They will grab something and buy something from them.
And so it's just a great way to get exposed to other people and grow your audience. But you can also do things like just leave a bouquet of flowers and your business cards at other businesses. went around in my local town when I started my flower farm and just asked little boutiques and shops and stuff. If I could leave a bouquet of flowers for their customers when they walked in the door, cause it'll make it look really beautiful and pretty.
With my business cards, just to try to get the word out. And some people said, no, and that's fine. It's just wasn't, you know, not for them, not for you, not for them. fine. But a lot of people said, yes. And it was really helpful for me to get really local people to become my customers. You could also do pop-up shops at boutiques or whatever kind of place you have in mind And you can also look at this as like going to.
festivals or art shows. I also went to a bunch of like art festivals and pop-ups around my location when I started my flower farm and it actually got me exposed to a lot of people. So monetarily wise, they were not always that successful. I didn't sell a ton of flowers, but I talked to a lot of people.
And everyone I talked to, or maybe not everyone, but a lot of people I talked to were like, you sell flowers. My daughter-in-law or my daughter's getting married next year. Could she use you for her flowers or, my gosh, my sister loves flowers. I'll tell her about you. know, all those kinds of conversations really led somewhere. So collaborating with other businesses that have a similar audience to your target market. Okay. The second.
way you can market your business easily without doing anything crazy or getting into really heavy marketing techniques is to host events. And this can either be an event you host at your flower farm, or you use another location to host an event at. This could be a workshop or it could just be like an informational seminar. could be a farm tour. The world is your oyster. So I used to do.
Workshops on my farm all the time. Just, it was like a pick your own flowers and learn how to make a flower arrangement or a pick your own bouquet or, you know, a Dalia workshop where people came and learned about Dalia is, and then they got to pick their own Dalia is and learn how to arrange with them. we did eucalyptus wreath, workshops. I'm trying to think of all the ones we've done in the past, but we've done a lot of them and.
I didn't really feel like my farm was this beautiful manicured place at that time to host people on the farm, but I did it anyways because everywhere I met people, they asked if they could come to the farm. although I didn't really want them on my farm because I didn't feel like it was, you know, it's my home, it's where I live, it's sort of like a private place, but it also was kind of a mess in the beginning, but they didn't care.
It was a way for me to connect with people and to get people to meet me and see my business and become involved with the business and really led to a group of really dedicated customers that have stuck with me over the years. So if your farm is in a place where you really can't hold a workshop, if something like thinking your farm isn't really beautiful or whatever is holding you back from that, the experience that they have is
more important than how beautifully manicured your farm is. kind of just consider how maybe you could make your farm look a little bit more picked up and tidy. Might be some good accountability for you and getting some things cleaned up around your farm. I know it was for me, but nevertheless, if that's just really not an option for you, consider using another location or another business to host some kind of event to drum up interest in your farmer farm.
There was a business in the Rochester area where I am called the Rochester Brainery. You can look them up online. but they used to host workshops for businesses like mine. And I was super fortunate that when I started my business, I was teaching workshops through this business that literally just taught workshops. And I was able to be exposed to their audience of, I don't know, they had like a hundred thousand.
followers between like their email list and their Facebook and their Instagram and all this stuff. And so that was a huge boost for me and my business. And I was able to get in front of a lot of those eyeballs and people learned about me and ended up buying flowers from me. So there might be a place like that in your area that you could collaborate with. I also have partnered with local breweries and wineries to host little workshops in their bar spaces or in their restaurant spaces on slower days of the week.
which not only brought in business for them, but got me exposed to their audience or whoever wanted to come learn more about my business. And part of the reason why I think these events are successful is because you can drum up a lot of.
interest for one particular event. You can create a Facebook event where you can invite, you know, whoever, everybody in your whole town or surrounding towns to come to the event. You can promote it on social media through your email list. You can put it in local newspapers. You can have other businesses promote it for you. could put flyers up and your local community areas and all that stuff, but it's kind of hard to drum up a whole bunch of buzz and interest around just.
Hey, you know, I'm selling some flower bouquets today. I mean, you definitely can do that, but if you have a particular event that creates interest for people to come to, it can make a really big difference. So the second one in conclusion is hosting events, whether that's a farm tour or kind of workshop or an informational seminar, whatever floats your boat, but doing that to drum up business and get your business exposed to a bunch of other people. So people can learn and know about you.
Then finally, the third method here is email marketing. I think an email list is absolutely essential because it has been life-changing for my business.
A lot of people like to focus on social media these days, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. However, I think having an email list where you can communicate with potential customers on your own algorithm, not depending on the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever can be really beneficial. I have gotten a ton of people on my email list because I.
give away a bouquet every month to my email list. And we have a sign up at our farmers market that says, win a free bouquet, sign up for our email list. And we get, you know, not a ton of people every week, but anywhere between five and 15 signups every week on average at our farmers market. And that over the course of the season can turn into hundreds of people on my email list. And then they're really excited to be on the email list because they are
signing up to possibly win something. They love the flowers. Of course they want to get the flowers. And so now I have a way to be in contact with all of these people. By the way, that free bouquet giveaway is called an opt-in or a lead magnet or a freebie. There's a bunch of different names, but basically it's just, you're giving away something for free in exchange for getting their email.
This is really effective for growing an audience and developing relationships with your customers or potential customers. It's great because you can sell to them a lot more easily on your email list than you can on social media. On social media, it's just like kind of a gamble, whether your post goes out into the world or not, how far that reaches,
But your email list is a lot more dependable.
I'm going to be talking about email marketing in more detail on the podcast in a future episode coming up soon. So make sure you check back into the podcast to get more details about email marketing. I teach about the tech, the software and other email marketing strategies and techniques in my online course, Six Figure Flower Farming. And registration is opening for that on January 1st, 2025. So if you want to get on the wait list, visit trademarkfarmer.com forward slash S F F F, or there's a link in the show notes.
But in conclusion, those are the three concrete methods that you can use to try out and see what happens to market your business, get your business known and get the word out there. So you can start building a loyal list of customers. It's collaborating with other businesses was the first one. The second one was hosting events, things like farm tours and workshops. And the third one is email marketing and collecting emails to build a email list, a following and.
nurture relationships with those email list subscribers. And like I said, all these things sound really, simple, but this is truly what it's like when you first start your business. You're just getting your name out there, meeting as many people as possible, and beginning to form a relationship with your customers. Now, since you have listened,
to this podcast, I encourage you now to sit down and write out a plan, actually write out a marketing plan on how you will go about implementing these things. And if you want help actually making a real marketing plan to grow your business, I can help you with that through my online business course called Six Figure Flower Farming. And again, that registration opens up on January 1st, 2025.
You can get on the waitlist so you will be the first to be notified when it is open for registration by going to my website, trademarkfarmer.com forward slash S F F F or click the button in the show notes. And I'll see you next time on the six figure flower farming podcast.
