Jenny (00:29)
most flower farmers think they need more Instagram followers. More reach, more reels, more engagement, but here is the real problem. You probably don't need more followers. You need more owned attention. Because when the algorithm changes, and it will, your audience on social media can disappear overnight. Anyone remember when Instagram used to just be posting pretty pictures and it was so easy?
⁓ and overnight it changed into reels, people's businesses got crushed because they didn't keep up with the trend. Now that's not saying that if that's your thing, I'm not telling you to stop doing that by any means, but today I'm gonna walk you through the exact marketing strategy we use to turn strangers into email subscribers and those email subscribers into real paying repeat customers.
and I'll show you how you can use this whether you sell at a farmer's market, a CSA, you book weddings, or even for people who sell wholesale. So the first thing is to just stop renting your audience because like I said, if all your customers live on Instagram, you don't actually own your audience. spoiler alert, we're gonna be talking about how to warm up your audience and level up your marketing outside of social media.
because social media can be great for marketing and for brand awareness and for even generating sales sometimes, but it is borrowed land. You can't control who sees your posts, you don't control when your reach drops. And on the other hand, if you have an email list, people have given you full permission to contact them via email, which means...
If the algorithm changes, Instagram and Facebook shut down tomorrow, you still have a way to reach them. Now, I'm not saying in any way that social media is bad or it shouldn't be a part of your marketing strategy. All I am saying is that you can form a deeper relationship with people and mitigate risk in your marketing and in your business by building up your email list. And one of the...
biggest questions I get asked the most about is like, people say, okay, great, I know I should have an email list, Jenny, but how exactly am I supposed to do that? How do I get people on there? And so this is the strategy I'm gonna tell you about today. Because the other piece of this is, if someone buys from you once, but you don't collect their email or their contact information, you may never reach them or see them again, and you're losing out on an opportunity
to potentially have a repeat customer. So if you're not focused on that, it's a more fragile business model. So I want you to know that your email list is a business asset. Most of the time, the bigger and the higher quality your email list is, the more revenue your business will bring in. It is direct communication between you
and that person. Obviously your email might go to spam sometimes or they might market as spam, but overall the deliverability of emails is like, you know, my email list, I have at least a 50 % open rate and with social media, like two or 3 % of my followers see my posts. So as you can see, it is like exponentially an easier way to reach people who are your customers or potential customers.
There's no algorithm gatekeeper that's like, you're real, didn't fit today's trend. So not going to show it to anybody. And quite honestly, every serious business owner I know builds an email list. So instead of asking, how do I grow my following? I want you to think about how do you get more qualified people on your email list? And when I say qualified, this is important here because sure, you could grow a huge email list with like
all kinds of different tactics, but you want them to be qualified customers, meaning people who A, want your flowers, B, have the money to buy them, and C, have the means to get them in their hands. So somebody could, you know, let's say you live in New York like me, and somebody on social media could love your flowers in California, but like, if they can't physically buy them and get them in their hands, then it really doesn't do you any good.
So you want qualified people on your email list. So here's the simple strategy we use to get people on our email list and become friends with us, which makes them become customers of us. And I'm not gonna over complicate this. Here's how this works in plain, simple language. One, you give something helpful away for free. Two, they give you their email address.
Three, you build a relationship, and four, you make offers. That's it. It's not complicated. Not at all. Just strategic. Because most farmers skip this step and just try to go straight to selling. They're like, buy flowers for me, buy flowers for me, buy flowers for me. Or the opposite. They're like, look at all these pretty flowers. Look at all these pretty flowers. But they never actually ask people to buy them. So that's usually the two camps that people fall into.
But here's the thing, a lot of people rarely even buy the first time they hear about you. They usually buy after they build some trust with you, some familiarity with you, some repeated exposure to you and your business. And emails allow that to happen. And the other piece of this is what I mentioned earlier, that if someone buys from you once, you don't want them to just kind of forget about you and never come back. You want to form a relationship with them so they come back and buy from you again.
because trust me, it is a lot cheaper to keep a customer coming back than to acquire a new one. Stats on that are for a different episode, but that's how it is. So let me walk you through this simple structure. Basically, when you offer something for free, so first step, give something helpful away for free. This is what is called a lead magnet or also called an opt-in or a freebie.
There's a lot of different names. It's all the same thing. Basically, you're just giving something away for free. And this something you give away has to be relevant to what you sell. And it has to be something that your customer really, really wants or genuinely will appreciate. Something that gives them obvious value or solves a very narrow problem for them and allows them to see that you could be the solution
So when you give this thing away, in exchange, they will give you their email address. Okay, so a way for you to contact them. They are giving you explicit permission to contact them. So you don't wanna be sneaky with this. In a lot of places, there's like laws against, you know, just like putting people on your email list and stuff. So you wanna say, you know, you will get this thing for free if you get on our email list. So be very clear, transparent about that. No one likes sneaky people. And then you want to give them,
a little bit of like a little welcome sequence. So you wanna email them three to five emails, letting them get to know you, introduce yourself, give them more value, help them out with their situation, give them some education, whatever they're looking for. It's gonna be different for everybody's customer. And then they'll get on your regular email newsletter. And so occasionally on those email newsletters, you will make clear sales offers. Maybe not everyone.
maybe not once a year, but pretty regularly. So I wanna reinforce here that this is a system that you put in place. It's not just a random tactic for you to use. Like if you are going to have a lead magnet that you give away for free, it has to be a part of your bigger strategy, your bigger system for getting people into your business, for marketing your business and converting them into customers.
So here's what this looks like in real life and how this has changed the game for so many of my students. So let me make this practical and I'm gonna give you real examples here that you can steal and you can use on your own.
Jenny (09:09)
Hey, real quick, I made something special for you for being a loyal listener of the podcast. Because one of the things I find most frustrating about the education available to farmers out there is that it's just random information without any context as to what you should be focusing on in your specific situation and your stage of business. So I've spent the past several years analyzing a lot of different flower farmers' journeys, including my own, and created a way to give you a personalized
Profitable Flower Farm Roadmap. It's all free. All you have to do is answer a few questions and we will send you a personalized roadmap that tells you exactly where you're at in your business and what you need to focus on to grow and most importantly, what you can ignore for now because it's not gonna move the needle. So if that sounds interesting or helpful to you at all, go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap. Again, that's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap.
I'll also drop the link in the show notes.
Jenny (10:12)
So let me give you some real examples here. I'm gonna start off with farmers market because that's what I do the most of, but we'll also talk about weddings and wholesale. So if you have market customers,
you'll know that a lot of them buy once and they disappear, because they're just there for like the day or to check out the market or to see what's up. But if you don't capture their information, you might be starting over a lot of Saturdays and missing out on a lot of potential repeat sales. So to solve this, you will offer them something for free in exchange for their contact information. So remember what I said before, something that gives them obvious value or solves a very narrow problem for them.
So one of my first lead magnets I ever made and offered was a free cut flower care guide. This is a simple like four page, I don't even think it's four pages. Like all the bulk of the information is on like one page. Simple PDF, just how to care for your cut flowers, how to keep them alive longer. And I made this because people were constantly asking me at the market, they're like, how do I keep these flowers alive longer? How do I get them to last? And so,
Aha, I will make them a free guide to give them. And then when they ask me at the market, I'll just say, ⁓ sign up for my email list and I'll automatically send you a free cut flower care guide that will help you keep your flowers alive longer. And then you can also use it to get people on your list. So if people buy from you say, hey, would you like to be on our email list? When you sign up, you get a free cut flower care guide that will help these flowers last longer. And you'll be surprised at how many people are like, yeah, that sounds great.
So this worked super well for me, still works super well for me. I have it up on my website and I use this at our market a lot. Another thing that's worked really well is offering a monthly bouquet giveaway. Now giveaways in some states is considered like gambling or something, so you wanna check with your state laws and regulations, but this has worked really well for us.
You know, we just have a little sign at our checkout that says, want to win a free bouquet, sign up for our email list. And people can either write their email down, write that in there. So they leave their name in their email, or we can do it automatically through our point of sale system. So the other thing is you can also just ask people like, Hey, would you like to be on our email list and just collect their emails? ⁓ you don't have to make it over complicated here, but it does help if you like sweeten the pot a little bit.
and give them something valuable for free. And so one thing I want to make clear before we move on from this is that we're not just trying to like just get people on our email list, not like tricking them onto it. We want to genuinely build a relationship with these people and give them something valuable to help them. So even if they never come back again, at least for me, I know that I did something that helped them or made their life better or gave them like a little bit of a boost. So
That's how I come at this from and how I think everybody should as well. So obviously very simple and really easy to get people on your list. And then you can start sending them weekly emails. Like here's what's going on in the farm. Here's some cool information. Here's how to, you know, I don't know, make flower bouquets from your market flowers. Here's what we're bringing to the market this Saturday. Very simple, direct, profitable, and all of this can be automated.
Let's move on to my next example for weddings. Because engaged couples don't always book the first florist they see. And if you are in a competitive market and you wanna book more couples, this is going to help you do it. They research, they compare, they look around a lot of times, or for a lot of people, they just go to the florist that was recommended to them by their friend or their aunt or whoever. So if you are the first person to help them out,
in some way, they are way more likely to book with you. So all you have to do is give them something that will help them on their journey. So you could create a lead magnet, a little PDF guide for how to budget for wedding flowers or three ways to get luxury wedding flowers without overspending or whatever, something like that. And then send them helpful wedding planning tips.
Show real wedding examples, share testimonials in your emails, invite them to inquire for a free consultation after they get the freebie. You can become the trusted expert before they are even ready to book. And if you taught them something or showed that you were helpful and showed that you genuinely cared before anybody else with this lead magnet, they're way more likely to book with you rather than somebody else.
So let's move on to the next example, wholesale. Because a lot of times people are like, I sell wholesale, this is not gonna work for me, this doesn't apply to my business, and you are wrong, my friend. This applies to almost every business. So let's say you're selling to florists. A lot of times, florists don't want to try new farmers out. It's risky for them, it adds operational drag, it adds a lot of work to form a new relationship.
and it's just easier to keep doing things the way they're already doing them. This could even work for grocery too. The reality is a lot of people need warming up before they commit. And I think this is hard because a lot of people here know and they just kind of give up, but this will allow you to continually provide value to a florist or a wholesaler. So when they actually do need flowers, you'll be the first person they think of and that will open the door for you for more sales.
So this is what I did back in the day when I would sell the florists. We gave something away for free to get them on our email list on which we sent them a weekly availability list of what we had available for them to sell or to buy, excuse me, what I was selling that they could buy. So what I would do is I would show up with free samples, a free bunch of Lysianthus or a small bucket of a bunch of bunches of flowers that
is a lead magnet. It is a free offer. It's something you're giving away for free that's valuable for them. They get to try you out, they get free product. Win-win. And then, once I gave them the samples, I would say, we send out a weekly availability list so you could see what we have available. I also have a seasonal availability list that I can give you that has a list of what we expect to have every month of the year. So if you sign up for our email list, you'll get that too. Then,
Most of them would sign up. Some people would say, no, that's OK. Not our customers. And in the emails, I'd share pickup details, our seasonal flower education, obviously our availability to other florist success stories and reviews from other florists, frequently asked questions. And then once I taught them something, because a lot of florists surprisingly know very little about local seasonal flowers, and I gave them some value, like free samples, when they needed something,
They would think of me. The wholesaler wouldn't come through. Product shows up and it's bad. Whatever, somebody broke all the stems in the box when it showed up. When that would happen, they would call me. Usually with some kind of flower emergency. I would fill the gap for them and that would open the door for me and they would start buying a little bit more regularly than every single week. And then when I stopped calling or when I stopped selling to Floris, guess who they're still calling? Me.
So you're pre-selling through education and showing them that you are there consistently. You're showing them, here's my weekly availability list. If you need this, I will be here tomorrow with it. You get in the door with this freebie with a lead magnet, a free offer, and that helps you down the road sell later. So this is the marketing strategy that we have used and so many of our students have used to blow up their businesses.
And this works because you're not just shouting, buy my flowers, buy my flowers. You're saying, here's something helpful. I genuinely care. I genuinely care about you. I genuinely want a relationship with you. And that over time builds trust, authority, and familiarity. And that drives sales. Okay, not in this gimmicky way, not in this car salesman way, but like genuinely. And so many flower farmers rely on hope marketing. And this,
very simple strategy replaces hope with a real system. And I'm telling you, if you focus on this and you really focus on getting it out into the world and maybe you're gonna have a few renditions of it first, it can really, really make a difference. So if you do nothing else after this episode, do this. Sit down and just spend 20 minutes answering one question. What is one simple, singular problem my ideal customer has
that I could help solve in one page or with one offer or with one sample. That is your lead magnet or your freebie or your opt-in or whatever you wanna call it. Everybody calls it something different. Your free thing, you give away to help people and to get in touch with them. It doesn't need to be fancy. It shouldn't even be long. It should be very simple, easy to consume.
It just needs to be useful and valuable. And then start collecting emails everywhere you sell. Your future revenue, quite honestly, depends on the size and quality of that email list.
Jenny (20:08)
Hey, real quick, I made something special for you for being a loyal listener of the podcast. Because one of the things I find most frustrating about the education available to farmers out there is that it's just random information without any context as to what you should be focusing on in your specific situation and your stage of business. So I've spent the past several years analyzing a lot of different flower farmers' journeys, including my own, and created a way to give you a personalized
Profitable Flower Farm Roadmap. It's all free. All you have to do is answer a few questions and we will send you a personalized roadmap that tells you exactly where you're at in your business and what you need to focus on to grow and most importantly, what you can ignore for now because it's not gonna move the needle. So if that sounds interesting or helpful to you at all, go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap. Again, that's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap.
I'll also drop the link in the show notes.
Jenny (21:11)
So go make your lead magnet. Do it and then tell me what happens afterwards. Thanks for listening for another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Don't forget, we publish new episodes every Monday, so I will see you next week. Same time, same place. And if you thought this was helpful, please go leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Makes a huge difference and helps other flower farmers learn how to run their businesses more profitably and sustainably.
and I will just be so thankful if you leave that review. So thanks, bye for now, see you next time.
