Introduction to Low cost no cost marketing

This online workshop, will look at all the low cost, no cost marketing methods that you can use to contact your customers. By the end of the course, you'll be absolutely sure that you know exactly who it is you are contacting, and will have already implemented the first no -cost methods of making sure your customers love you, will keep coming back, and even better, will be helping you with your marketing to others.

If you havn't 'met' me before, I'm Claire - that's me making up the bouquet.. I'm the one who gets her hands dirty at Plantpassion in Surrey to grow the flowers that i sell. My learning curve over the last 8 seasons of growing and selling cut flowers for a living has been very steep. My background is in Horticulture (28 years) including 12 yrs in Garden Centre management (with 5 years as the Garden Centre Manager at RHS Wisley) and then 16 years of self employment, including running a  garden design and maintenance business. 

Even though I've had large amounts of experience of promoting products, customer service and sales displays, I had to work through a large amount of information when i became self employed. I needed to make sure that not only was marketing to the right customers, but that I was finding enough of them to pay the bills, and actually make more of a profit than i could make by being an employee. This workshop is the information that I wish i'd  had in my first few years about who i should sell to, and what was the best market for me to get my flowers into. 

When you've finished reading each of the "articles" or worksheets, you can get to the other sections either by clicking the later or earlier posts links below, or using the menu’s in the side bar.

I'm very happy for you to use, reuse and annotate the learning materials produced for this course for your own individual use. However, please respect the time, energy and experience that has gone into creating this course and don’t copy any of the content or materials for other people or for use in your own workshops. The course and all its materials are protected by copyright and remain the intellectual property of Claire Brown. You must not, under any circumstances reproduce any part of this course without my prior written permission.  Thank you!

Marketing - What is it?

Marketing, Selling, PR, Promotion, Advertising. These are all words that most people associate with big business, high street brands, and large corporations. But even the tiniest of businesses can use all of these things to their benefit, to increase their turnover and make them successful and profitable.

 This Masterclass is designed to give you the background knowledge you need when marketing. It will  help you to know how you can use all of these things in your small business with confidence. By the end of the course, you will have made yourself a marketing plan for 2022, you’ll know that selling is a skill that you already have, and that you don’t need to “hard sell” to get rid of your flowers, and you’ll have a series of campaigns planned that you are going to run to achieve all your budgetary aims.

What is marketing? 

The dictionary definition is - 

"the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising."

What it actually means is  (my definition)

"finding and reaching out to all those people who might possibly be interested in what you do, and by educating them, befriending them and beguiling them, persuade them that they need your products whatever price you are selling them at and you are the only supplier they should look at “

This masterclass is going to look at the huge range of low cost and no cost methods of marketing that are available to small businesses. It will show you how as flower farmers and florists we can use them all to our advantage, to reach the kind of customers we want to work with, and who are willing to pay the prices we want to sell at.

What do we sell

To be able to market to your potential customers, you first need to know what it is you sell.

I know there are some puzzled faces out there now - this is a course for flower growers and florists, of course I sell flowers........

Well no, actually we rarely just sell flowers.

We sell 

• Something to say thank you
  

• To decorate a room
  

• To cheer someone up
  

• To celebrate a special day in someone’s life
  

We don't sell something that people NEED, we sell something that people want.

When i was setting up my flower farm, I was telling a friend about how i was gong to be organic, and sustainable, and different, and she said "Claire, people just want beautiful flowers to make them smile"

That's what we're selling....

So your first exercise (download the resource sheet to help you out)  is to write down all the things that you sell as the customer will want them .... This is known as thinking about the  benefits, rather than the features of the product.

You need to be thinking about what it can do for the customer? How they will use it? How will it make them feel?

Here is my example

Features

I sell stems of quality flowers, fillers and foliage to florists , they can buy as many or as few as they want, order them by email phone or text, collect them or get them delivered, they'll all be freshly picked to their order.

Benefits

By buying from me, the florist can be confident that i'll pick them seasonal flowers that are of the highest quality and are the best of the field. Their order will include stems they won't be able to buy at market, so they can create show-stopping displays that show their individuality and will make their brides go "wow"

The customer journey

The Marketing funnel is a piece of Jargon that is used to describe the journey customers will go through before they will buy from you. Customer's won't normally buy from you just by seeing you mentioned once, so this journey is the reason you want to do any marketing or promotion.

It used to be thought that there was a "rule of sevens" and that people needed to have heard about you seven times before they were likely to buy from you.

With the mass of information available in this digital age, it's now almost certain that people need to hear about you and feel they "know you" even more.

if you think back to the definition

"finding and reaching out to all those people who might possibly be interested in what you do, and by educating them, befriending them and beguiling them, persuade them that they need your products whatever price you are selling them at and you are the only supplier they should look at “

The finding and reaching out  bit is at the top of the funnel. You need to put lots of people in at this part of the funnel, so that there are plenty of people out there with a knowledge and awareness that you exist.  This is where we gather up all the people who might possibly be interested in buying from you at some point, - this includes, 

• People in your location (Village / town / county)

• People who have a shared interest with you (Club / Pub / School / sport / Interest group)

• People who already buy from your competitors

• People who have a similar interest (Gardening / Sustainablility / Flower arranging)
  
  
  

The educating and befriending them bit comes next in the consideration part. This is where you tell them all the back ground to you and what you do. You let them know when they might need you, and you give them masses of interest and information so that they really feel that they know you (even if they've never met you)

When they've been in contact with you a few times, you can convert them into customers by beguiling and persuading them. You'll now know all about them so can ensure you tell them about things that will be especially interesting to them, and will fit in completely with their desires.

However they need a reason to buy from you, and so sometimes people who have a knowledge of you, and know what it is that you sell, need time before they will go further through the funnel. However if you keep marketing to them, then as soon as they have an appropriate opportunity to buy, you will get sales. That’s were the conversion happens.

This will then lead to them becoming fans, (Loyalty) and wanting to buy from you, again and again.

If you continue to market to them, they'll come back, and more importantly will start marketing for you as well referrals (Advocacy)

Exercises

“1) Make a list of all the places you think you are likely to find people to put into the top of your marketing funnel.
”

What's the definition of No cost and Low cost marketing?

When I worked in Retail, Marketing wasn’t low cost. I was told that to advertise a garden centre, you needed to spend AT LEAST 10% of turnover on marketing.

The key methods of marketing (back then in the 1990’s) were Leaflet drops, Newspaper and magazine advertising and Radio and Television marketing. It was also expected that you routinely gave away large amounts of “freebies” to encourage customers in.

Now we’re in 2022, the internet is on our side, and there are now a lot more methods of advertising yourself / your business in a low cost manner.

For the purposes of this course, our definitions of no cost and low cost are

NO COST

“No further investment in materials or resources than you have already purchased, the only investment is in your time.”

(ok I realise that there is a cost associated with your time, but we'll talk more about that later on)

LOW COST

“Less than £360 worth of investment  (£300 plus VAT) in materials or resources in one calendar year.
”

Obviously there are a lot of other marketing activities that will fall beyond these boundaries. We'll touch on what they are on this masterclass, but we won't go into them in depth.

Now is the time for you to get scribbling.

Before i give you the answers, i'd like to you think of as many No cost and Low cost methods of marketing as you can think of. (there's a sheet to print off to guide you)

remember my definition again

"finding and reaching out to all those people who might possibly be interested in what you do, and by educating them, befriending them and beguiling them, persuade them that they need your products whatever price you are selling them at and you are the only supplier they should look at “

How many methods of marketing have you used in the last year (count all forms of social media as only one of the methods)

less than 3

3-5

5-10

more than 10

Low cost Marketing

So our definition of low cost is less than £360 spent per year, and obviously for some things you can spend as much or as little as you like dependant on quality. However these are things that i've managed to get hold of to promote my business for this low cost amount.

This list is generally in order of expense, cheapest first.

• Email address

• Email signature

• Putting an advert in Newsagents / local community boards

• Business cards

• School fairs

• Signs outside properties

• Chalk boards

• Banners

• Photo posters

• Local magazine adverts

• Leaflets and flyers to deliver locally

• Van signwriting

• Named Packaging

• Branded Uniforms

• Website

• Photosshoots

• Wedding fairs

• Branded gifts

• Sponsoring local teams

• Business networking groups

No cost marketing

so how many marketing methods did you get up to? - 10? 20? 30?

When i've curated this exercise at workshops, we've got into big numbers - I think 56 was the highest. 

2 of these no cost methods are going to get a day to themselves later in the course, so here are my suggestions - I talked through a lot of these in my No Cost marketing teleseminar, so i've included the audio file from that session. (you’ll want to advance the slider to about 8minutes so you don’t have to listen to everyone getting used to the technology)

• Social Media, (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Blogging) and

• Email marketing are the top 2 on the list,

• Telling Friends and neighbours

• Networking

• Emails

• Surveys of current friends and family if no customers yet

• pdf magazine

• Writing articles

• Giving talks

• Offering prizes for a raffle or silent auction

• Doing complimentary displays

• Giving away samples

• Taking part in country wide promotions e.g lonely bouquet / British flowers week / Flower farmers big weekend

• Word of mouth

• Google reviews

• Facebook reviews

• Online review websites

• Selling at markets

• Collaborations

• Awards

A lot of these may be "Well yeah of course" but have you actually really thought about them properly as marketing strategies?

For instance next time your friend pops round, ask them to tell you what you do. Do they know? Would you be happy with them giving that explanation to someone else? If you wouldn't, make sure you tell them what you actually do (don't forget the benefits, not just the features)

One of my best methods of marketing is Networking, and yes Business networking with formal groups of other business people is on the low cost marketing page next, but i'm talking here about those cup of tea/ waiting at a school gate/ in a queue moments that you have at various times in your week. Are you in marketing mode when that happens?

Here's an example

At this time of year I get flowers delivered to me to supplement mine. This morning my delivery driver turned up at my home address, recognised me and said "aren't you usually up the road?" (meaning my farm which is about a mile and a half away)

 I could have said "yes, working from home today" or something like that, but instead I said "no it's too cold, I was with a Bride and Groom for a meeting earlier, and it's all frozen so i can't do anything with the flowers there" This got a puzzled look from him - "Bride - as in getting married?" "Yes i was having the meeting with them about their wedding flowers in a few weeks, these ones that you deliver to me go with the ones i grow up there." - "oh" he says, "I didn't know you did flowers " (He has delivered them to me most weeks through the winter for the last 3 years, but i guess they're just a box to him!) "I'm getting married in the summer, and my fiancé wants lots of flowers" 

Bingo i have a prospect (someone at the top end of that funnel) .... He now has a business card, he'll look at the photos on my website, i'll show him my photo-book next time he deliverers, and i'll have a discussion with him each week about his wedding. He's not a customer yet, but he is in my funnel.

Getting paid to Market to people

Florist open day.

In the last few years, (Pre Covid!) i've found that 2 of my best sources of marketing have actually started to pay me money, making them minus cost marketing!

They are Open days, and talks, and i’m planning lots more of them in 2022. 

 Although they do need promotion in themselves, the prospects we get from both these types of events are really engaged and far more likely to buy quickly.

When we started the flower farm, we held an opening event at the end of May. 

Via my local village google group, and my social media, I invited people to an evening soiree. We then sent out personal printed invitations to those who replied stating the time, and that refreshments would be provided, and asked for an rsvp. We had well over a hundred people rsvp, and although the weather was awful that evening, about 80 people turned up at some point during the evening. They drank bubbly, ate nibbles, and wandered round the field. I was delighted, I got lovely feedback about the wonderful thing i was doing, and hoped we'd get lots of orders from these people. Of course i didn't straight away, it takes a while for them to work through the customer journey and we were completely unorganised on the marketing funnel front, so all that effort only got them one step through.

Now, when we host open days, we're a lot more organised. First we let people know well in advance of when the event is on, so they can book their diaries. We encourage them to share dates with friends, and get them to invite people. We put up a sign at the end of the road, and we make sure our Open days coincide with dates when we can get additional marketing without paying for it - British Flowers Week, The Flower farmers big weekend (5th -7th August in 2022) and The Heritage open days in September. 

We make sure we have a team available for the open days, so no-one gets ignored even if lots of people turn up at once, and everyone has contact with several members of the Plantpassion team. 

We have someone serving refreshments (very important, and a job that Teenagers or volunteers are very willing to help with) , Several people doing tours of the field - usually Mum and Dad.  (we've made them crib cards of what to say), Someone welcoming people and getting them to sign themselves in*.  Then i'm in charge of selling.

*very important for feedback, and future marketing, although you have to give them an option not to receive information - I use a "yes please" or "we're just here for the tea and cake" humour tick box, which means that about 95% of people tick yes please. 

Even paying staff, and making sure the refreshments are of a good standard, I now usually make several hundred pounds in flower and plant sales, and several times that in bookings for Weddings, Bouquet sales, Workshops and subscriptions.

All the different types of marketing and your starter for 10

There are so many different types of Marketing, how do you know which ones to do?

Well instead of Spray and Pray  (choosing lots of them and just firing out marketing randomly hoping some of it will work) By this end of this masterclass, you're going to have set up a Marketing campaign for each of the Products you want to sell this year and for each of your key customer groups.

For now though, have a look through the lists on the previous pages, ticking those you think you may like to use, and crossing out those you don't want to go anywhere near. 

(I've included them all on the resources sheet below)

Your starter for 10: Where to begin?

A lot of the marketing methods we've listed require you to write about you and your products.

Actually they require you to write about Why your customer will like your products and why you are the best person to get them from.

The best Marketing literature doesn't mention the company that's selling it until they've established why the customer needs to buy it.

so the last exercise for today is to write 10 reasons why your customer should buy flowers.

then give them 10 reasons why you are the best person to get them from.

If you are on a mentoring programme with me, we’ll be talking through this, and we’ll be discussing it on the zoom call about social media

8/1/22 - This section is currently being updated, - come back next week for more

Finding your first customers

When you start your business, the first thing that you do is reach out to people that you already know. This is a no cost method of marketing, you speak to them in person, email or phone and because they already know you, your values and morals, they trust you enough to make an order as soon as they have a need for what you're selling.

As soon as you need to make more money than occasionally selling something to a friend, that's when you need to begin marketing.

Marketing should be an ongoing process. - the ideal plan for your marketing would be  the straight lines in this chart. I've been told that ideally 20% of your working time should be assigned to marketing, 60% to the "doing" the job, and 20% to admin. Whereas we're more likely to be the dotted lines that mean we're doing lots of marketing when we have few clients, and then as the number of customers gets more, our marketing falls off.

The Ideal Customer model

If you've already taken part in my prices and costing workshop, you'll be familiar with this customer model. 

I'm passionate about only working with the right people. it makes it easy and stress free for me, and means that they get brilliant customer service and a quality product. 

To know how to market to your ideal customer, you need to know who they are. 

If this is your first season, then you need to be picturing in your mind a customer that you would like to sell to. If you've already been trading, think about your best customer. Please note this is important whether you are selling Retail or Wholesale, you will still be selling to "A person"

This is not necessarily your highest turnover client, or the one that buys from you most often, 

• An Ideal customer won’t make you stressed

• You’ll enjoy working with them and look forward to the next opportunity

• You won’t be worried if you see their name on your phone

• You’ll know them well enough that you’ll look at what you’re growing and think “They’ll like that”

• They’ll pay on time

The customer is going to be the person who spends the money, so this part of the course is going to be aimed at them. (This is because flowers are often bought for someone else, but here when we say customer we mean the person purchasing, - e.g if you sell gift bouquets, then your customers may often be gentlemen buying for their wives for Birthdays and anniversary)

So please use the attached sheet (print out several if you need to) to think about 3 of your ideal customers

Customer service : How to make them come back to you

When I worked at the Plant centre at Wisley, I was in charge of the staff training for our new intake of additional temporary staff each March. We did a full day training programme with them to introduce them to the concept of Customer service. 

It's something that doesn't come naturally to a lot of people, but actually we are all consumers, so really we just have to look at our own experiences to find out what our customers are likely to want. 

We can then build this into our Marketing - and also use it as a benchmarking exercise to remind us how to give the best possible customer service to our clients.

When you are working with ideal customers you want them to be people who have similar ideas and values to you, which is hopefully going to mean that you'll be on exactly the same wavelength when it comes to customer service.

Write down 5 things that you need from a shop / restaurant or experience to make you feel that you've been treated specially

Now write down 5 things that you really don't like and that make you dubious about returning to be place.

How can you make sure that you follow all those good and bad points in your business?

Rewarding loyal customers

You remember those first customers you had? Are they still customers?

Rewarding loyalty is the best way to ensure that you keep your business growing. It's also the best way of getting people to recommend you, which is a free method of advertising.

Rewards don't need to cost money................

i've put that in bold, because the first thing that people think of is a discounted monetary value. This might be the right thing for some customers BUT, - have you tried.

• Thanking people

• Telling them about new things first

• Recommending things and people to them

And some ways you can make them think you are giving them a monetary reward without you loosing out

• Offering them any spaces that you’ve got left on workshops or tours

• Offering them free delivery if you’re in their area already

• Adding extra flowers into their delivery if you have some left over

Your current customers are the ones who are likely to buy the most from you for the least amount of marketing. and keeping them happy will make them return.

Increasing spend per head

3 sizes of gift bouquet

The Spend per head is the amount of money that each customer spends with you per transaction.

Usually the amount of work you need to do increases with the number of customers that you have, but if you can persuade the same customers to spend more, you will increase your turnover, without increasing at the same proportion the amount of work. This makes you more productive and more profitable.

If you sell your bouquets at £30 and you need to make £150 this week you need to sell 5

If you sell your bouquets at £40 and you need to make £150 you'll beat your budget if you sell 4

Increasing prices is one way of increasing spend per head, but you can also 

• Add on value : e.g selling your bouquet in a vase rather than a simple hand tied

• Getting a better value price for upsizing the order, (think Supersizing in Macdonalds)

• Sell a wider range of products so they will buy more at one time

Often the way to increase spend per head is just to give those customers you already have more information about what other services and products you offer, so they will buy from you again.

We’ll talk more about communicating with customers regularly in our Permission marketing section of the course.

Prospects or Customers

Think back to the Marketing funnel of in section 1.

When marketing it's important to realise whether the marketing activity will be likely to be creating Prospects (those who are interested and engaged) or Customers (those who have a need and desire for you product and who are willing to order and spend money)

2 examples of that are

1) Beautiful Bridal Blogs, which show wonderful pictures of floral creations

If someone is in their early 20s and single, they may look at them as lovely pictures, but they have no need for wedding flowers.  This marketing activity may appeal to them and make them a prospect, but they won't become a customer.

However if that blog is shown to someone who lives in your local area, is getting married later in the summer, and had been looking for a florist who might supply local flowers, you are nearly there to getting a booking.

2) An email sent out which tells about a Pick your own morning at the farm

If someone is at work that day, then they are not available. It doesn't matter whether they want to come or not. They are a prospect, but they won’t become a customer through this marketing activity.

However if that email is sent to someone looking for a half term activity for teenagers, then you've got to them at an ideal time.

Different forms of marketing will appeal to people in different ways.

Go back to 3 of the things you picked from the No Cost Low cost marketing lists, - Think of 3 specific examples of marketing that you could do, - then work out exactly who that would appeal to.

What do your customers ask you?

Social Media has really really changed the way that people get information in the last few years and as such is a really powerful tool for marketing to our customers.  It can be used for all stages of the Marketing funnel, from bringing awareness to what you are doing, right through the selling process. Plus beyond to the Advocate stage where people are singing your praises. We're not going to be looking at the in-detail specifics of each platform -( write down your questions for during your one to one if you want) but at the messages you need to get out there, and Why

The first question you need to ask yourself before you get started are.

What do your customers want to know?

That may sound quite obvious, but when i look through the social media feeds of a lot of businesses, I see posts that elicit the response "so what" from me.

First look back through your contact with customers (emails / text etc) over the last couple of weeks (or longer if you haven't had any recent queries) and write down all the questions that they want to know answers to. Use the attached resource and please write down the actual questions, so you know EXACTLY what your customers are wanting.

My Questions have included

• Do you still do bouquet deliveries

• I’ve googled you and found you’re my local florist, can I pick some flowers up on my way home?

• Can you deliver to Guildford for Mother’s day?

• Can I buy buckets of flowers from you as a birthday present?

• Do you have availability to do wedding flowers on 9th June?

• Can I book into your open day? and where are they located?

The type of Questions you get most often are usually

• Where are you?

• Do you sell X?

• How can I buy from you?

But each business type will have different enquiries so looking back at them so you can make sure those questions are answered is really important.

“Which Questions were you asked last week/month? Were there any that were asked more than once?”

Post what they want to hear

Were the questions that you wrote down what you wanted to be asked?

When I worked at the RHS at Wisley, I was often on the information desk in the plant centre. This is where members of the public can come and bring plants to be identified, ask questions about the gardens, and order plants that they'd seen while walking around.

At certain times of the year we could guarantee that a large number of the queries each day would be about certain stunning plants in the garden. In June it was questions about the Cornus kousa 'Chinensis' tree, that was in full bloom. In Late August, it was the Dolichos Lab Lab climbing bean plant that was planted on obolisks by the long water. Because we knew those Questions were coming, we could be sure to have supplies of those plants for sale, or be able to take orders. What was more difficult is that we had no control over the labelling in the garden, so we did get asked the same question over and over and over again.

As a small business you do have control over what questions you get asked, because you can control how much information customers get hold of.  If you post what they want to hear, in the place that they are looking for information about you, your questions will be more about the details of buying, rather than about what you do.

So now i'd like you to go back to those questions and break down all the ways that you would reply to them on your Social Media Platforms. 

Here's my example

Can I book into your open day?

Ok, that's a good start, they already know that i'm doing open days, now I need to make sure that they have all the follow up information they need to not only book, but have a full expectation of what's going to happen

So a short post (e.g Twitter ) could be

1. Booking now open for our fabulous summer open days for Brides and florists (link to website booking form)
   

2. Come along and see the farm at it’s best in the summer (when we’ve had a tidy up) Book with us here (link to website booking form)
   

3. Still a couple of places left on our bridal open day at the farm, come and have a tour and see if we’re the best people to supply you with your wedding flowers (link)
   

A Medium sized post (e.g Facebook or Instagram)

Our Farm is a wonderful backdrop for our Florists and Bridal open days (lovely picture of the farm) Last week we had a great Florists open day when 14 local #surreyflorists came and had a tour (lovely picture of florists wandering round the farm). It's a wonderful networking event and for studio based florists a great chance to meet other like minded flowery souls Our next Open day is on xxxxx, - do hop over the website to book to join us next time, bring a florist friend and enjoy the sunshine

We're polishing the vases this week (lovely photo of your full shelves of vases) ahead of our next  Bridal open days. These are an opportunity for you to chat to us one to one about your ideas for your wedding, and have a walk around the field to see what may be flowering on your special day (lovely photo of the plot) Bring along with Mum, Bridesmaids or friends and book an individual session to talk to us about your wedding flowers. (link)

A longer (Blog) post could be

Quotes from brides who've come to the open days, photos of the field at it's best and a description of the what the couples you met last week were looking for in their wedding flowers. (plus link for booking next time)

Have a go at answering all the Questions you've got in as many different ways as you've got patience for....

“Look back at your social media posts for the last couple of weeks, did they answer your customers questions?”

What's your brand?

When you are posting regularly on social media you need to know what  brand values you are going to get over. 

Most people do this instinctively, but i'd like you to think about this in a bit more depth now.

What are the keywords you want people to associate with your brand?

Some of these are to do with you personally, and some with your business ethic

You might be - Knowledgable, Friendly, Caring, Punctual, Artistic, Trustworthy, Responsible, Creative, Professional, Respectful, Dedicated, Dependable, Determined, Passionate

What do you want to Not be associated with?

Personally - my 3 top words I don't want to have anywhere on my social media feed are -

• Cheap

• Controversial

• Flaky

Everything I write on my feeds needs to come over as if i'm a Professional, who is clear, sure and knowledgable about what i'm doing. Because I want to be shown to be knowledgable, i'm not afraid to have conversations with people if I believe they've posted something that is incorrect, but I'm not argumentative, I NEVER use bad language, and I never use social media for complaining about companies, although I love to praise them.

“Exercise :Write out your Keywords.”

Now go back through all your recent Social Media feeds and work out if all of them keep to those Keywords

Go where your customers are

So you've worked out who your ideal customers are, and who it is you want to work with and what you want to sell them.

Now you just have to work out where they are, so you can go and market to them.

Social media tends to attract like minded thinkers, and it's important to know who uses what. - This recent report is based on US users of social media, but it will have big similarities to the UK.

There are lots of infographics out there about who Averagely uses each network, but don't forget what's important for your marketing is finding where your audience is

What I found interesting from this infographic is that i actually have a lot older demographic of customers using social media than it suggests.

My Brides Mother's, Local Business women who can afford to buy themselves flowers and Pick your own flower customers are regularly using Facebook and Instagram

In 2022, this is where your customers are most likely to be on Social media

Followers and fans, how many do you need

When you start on Social Media, you usually start slowly. A few friends, a few contacts. But then the numbers start to grow, and you get some interaction. A few likes, some comments, maybe even enquiries.

It gets a bit addictive getting new followers, and sometimes you can be tempted to do whatever it takes, - post whatever gets the most likes, or comments. The numbers can become all consuming.

Last year on the Flowers from the Farm facebook group, a post from a flower farmer from Instagram was linked.  She was asking whether it was actually possible to make a good living, because she was struggling.

The thing was, she had 50,000 followers to her instagram feed.

But they obviously weren't her customers, they might have been fans, but they weren't spending money.

If you are using Social Media for your business, then you need to see ROI (return on your investment)

Which means that you really really need to hone what you are posting to appeal to your customers.

So do the numbers matter?

Well how many of your followers are potential customers? Can you find out?

On day 5 we're going to be talking about your marketing plan and how many customers you are going to be targeting, and how to market to them more regularly through email marketing. 

For now, look at your Social media feeds - look back through the interactions that you've had on there, and work out how many of them are likely to want to come into your marketing funnel - Use the attached resource sheet to help you out.