What is Social media?

This module is all about Social Media.

There are lots and lots of platforms for Social media, but they all have one thing in common, They allow you to write, and publish to the internet very quickly.

This has wonderful potential for reaching customers at all points in the marketing funnel, but it also means that there is a potential for you to post information without thinking about it in detail. 

When we say social media, we mean various platforms

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Google groups, Facebook groups, Pinterest, Youtube

being just some of them ( these are the ones I use, so have the most knowledge about)

I’ll be talking about the plus and minus points of each of the platforms in more detail in the audio at the end of this module,  but in the following pages, we're going to go into more depth about what you should be posting, so you never ask

"but what should i say?"

Your Website

My 2021 Website homepage - Hosted with Shopwired

My 2018-2020 Website homepage hosted with Squarespace

Websites have been around for 30 years now. Back then they were pretty basic, even for very large companies (My husband designed and coded one of the first BT websites back in 1993) They often Shouted at you with Headlines in Bold, and lots of writing, and it was debated whether you really needed one in a small business. Now they are able to be more sophisticated, look better, and more importantly play a huge and low cost part of the end of your Marketing funnel.

Your Website is the place that should close the deal.

Your Website needs to be your property, and the place that ALL other forms of marketing send your prospective customers to.

Your Website needs to be clear and easy to navigate, and each page needs to entice and allow it's readers to take action.

Your Website needs to be able to be changed regularly and quickly by you.

and especially if you don't have a physical shop that lets people buy from you, it needs to be the place that allows people to order, and if possible takes the money.

I’ve been told several times recently that Social media marketing is taking over from websites, and you don’t need one of your own. But those people are paying large sums of money to 3rd party websites (like Eventbrite or Square) for hosting shops / events that could be hosted for lower costs themselves.

If you already have a website, it's now time to do a website review - use the downloadable resource.

To be able to have a wonderful website that Fulfils all your marketing objectives you need 4 key skills.

If you don't have these skills then it is worth paying someone else to provide this technical assistance, but we will  be covering them all in this module.

1. The look, Graphics, Images and Layout

2. The Tech programming

3. The copywriting : So important to get your message across

4. The SEO : Search engine optimisation or how to get your website found online

Within the last 5 years, and particularly the last 2 years, the templates for websites have improved dramatically. This means that for most small businesses, by using a Template website programme such as Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress, or One and One websites, the vast majority of the Graphic Design / Layout and the Technical programming are done for you. You can choose a professional looking layout, and just add photos and your text. Large website template companies and also help your SEO, because of the way they are programmed.

Your website photos

Your Graphics and Photos are the most important part of your Website. Particularly for us as flower growers and florists we have a wonderful aesthetic product to sell, and so it's very important we make the most of it. If you use a template website the graphics are taken care of, make sure that the fonts and colours suggested are both legible, and appropriate for your brand. 

Then you move on to the photos

The following are the minimum that you need to have on your website, even if you only have a very small 5 page version. 

A picture of you, and your team

A picture of your location

A picture of what you do

A picture of what you create

Customers need to be led through that funnel with information and interest. Telling stories helps with that interest, - read more here about story telling

Copywriting - without Wee-ing all over the internet

Copywriting is the art of Writing to entice your customers to buy from you.

It is quite an Art form, and one that takes practice. It's something i've sent myself on several courses to learn about in the past, and i've paid professionals to do some writing for me at times when I needed to get it right, because i've needed fast results. I'm always learning.

The first thing to learn about writing for your website is :-

You don't want to be writing about You. You need to be telling your customer what buying your product will do for them. Here are some great examples of this

Not - We’ll send you food, - “it’s like having an allotment without the digging”

M&S before Christmas - not We’re open until Christmas Eve, - “It’s not too late for you to find a gift”

The Brand Stylist - who taught me a lot of tricks about marketing and copywriting.

Often, the home page of a website look something like this (this one was just a random pick from typing in the keyword Accountant and my local town!)

Wee - ing all over the internet

This is known (by me) as Wee-ing all over the internet. 

We do this, We do that, We are so wonderful you must use us.

Admittedly Accountants have a lot harder job to sell their services in a more interesting way than we do with our flowers, However they could still entice their customers more by their writing.

Here's how i'd rewrite the first paragraph (no i'm no expert at accountancy so i may have changed the context)

““If you need someone with specialist tax skills, and the proven commercial experience to be better than compliant so you never have to worry about HMRC coming knocking on your door, then you are in the right place to find out information that can keep you safe.””

Now it's not about the Accountants, it's about the client.  You're complimenting them that they've found the right place to solve their problems, that working with you is a good idea.   The same key words have been used, but they've been turned around in the customers favour.

Generally you need to use words that represent the customers (You, your ) 3 times as often as words that represent your business (I, We, Our) to ensure you are getting a good balance that will entice the customer in.

The resource sheet has an "Imaginary" flower farm details where they've Wee'd everywhere. Have a go at rewriting it.

The tech stuff and the dark art of SEO

HTML is the website coding language.

If that sentence made your eyes glaze over, then all you need to know is - Choose a website template site and you'll never have to understand any of it, it will be done for you.

Until 4 and a half years ago, my website was coded in Html by my husband. No-one knew, It looked professional, and had all the right features, because if you know how to do the coding, you can use html as a language to make your website do whatever you want. The pictures and graphics can be situated anywhere, and the background programming could make it perfectly searchable and findable on search engines.

My 2012 website home page, all coded in Html.

HOWEVER, 

even if you, or someone you know can programme in this language, I no longer recommend that you do any of your coding yourself apart from the odd bit of "adding in widgets or apps"

My reasons for saying that is

1) Everything now needs to be responsive, and able to be viewed on Mobiles and Tablets as well as on a desktop computer. If your website is no longer responsive, then you will be penalised by the search engines, and won't get found. As the vast majority of my searches are on phone or table (69% last month) you’ll never sell anything if you site isn’t responsive. Don’t forget that you website is your shop front.

2) The Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, et al) are updating their sites more often than ever before, and Websites need to be accessible and readable on  all of these browsers.

3) The price of getting a top quality website template has fallen dramatically, meaning that it is now truly in the Low cost marketing bracket. My Squarespace website price with a webshop is £288 including VAT a year. So it falls well within the low cost category

other website companies you could use are 

1 and 1

Wix  

SEO or search engine optimisation is the way that your website is indexed and filed so that it can be found on the internet. 

Imagine a Book Library... A large building with many book shelves and thousands and thousands of books. We can find books on the topics we want, because of a system called the Dewey decimal classification. Each book is categorised when it comes into the building , divided into subject, and given a code, then it's placed on the shelves in that order.  Imagine if a box of books comes into the Library building and gets put away on the shelves randomly without being classified... - How would you find them? The answer is, you couldn't.... Unless you had limitless time and lots of resources.

Its the same for the internet. Your new website or updates to your website need to be filed to be able to be found. 

In this case, there are automatic pieces of programming (called Spiders or bots) running round doing the filing, rather than Librarians BUT if you don't give them the information to enable them to do the classifying of your website, IT WON'T BE FOUND.

To enable your listing to be found on a search engine, you need to get the right Title and content. Both for your readers who will be looking at the page information, and the words that they will be putting into their search engines

Here's what you see on a listing site if your website gets found. 

The first part which is in Bold and Purple font is title and content, the next part which is in green font is the actual URL (address)of the webpage and the next part in grey is the content .

What is shown on here is defined by an Algorithm. It will be looking at the content of your website to be able to fill in those listing parts. It will only show the words you use. 

To be able to be found by the words that are likely to be typed into a search engine, you need to ensure those words are in phrases that your customer will want to read, on your website.

If you try and trick the search engines by putting in lots of words that you'd "like" to be found under, then your customers will get a clunky sentence that doesn't work for them.

If all your customers are going to be typing "budget wedding flowers" then if you have nothing mentioning Budget wedding flowers in your descriptions (even if it's to say we don't do budget wedding flowers) then you won't get found by the search engines.

What you need to include on your website

Your website needs to be the place that closes the sale.

As well as telling your story, getting people's interest, giving them masses of information that befriends and beguiles them, you must tell them how to and enable them to place an order and buy.

A Website has to include

• How to contact you - make it as easy as possible, a link to an email address, or a responsive telephone number, or preferably a contact/ order form

• Exact details of what you sell, the prices and availablity

• What information they need to order

You need to make it easy. KISS (Keep is simple stupid) is the order of the day here.

If you need more than 3 clicks from entering the website, to being able to order, you are making it too difficult for your customers.

Here’s an example from one of my favourite website marketing examples - Riverford

Here’s the homepage, - this is where i’ll usually go if i’ve looked them up “organically “ on a search engine - this means you’ve decided to look at Riverford, and have typed them into a search engine, or found them on a search engine by putting in a search term - e.g organic vegetables.

Then you’ve decided that you like the look of the homepage, and that fresh organic vegetables (without the allotment digging) would be a good idea - you’re not sure what yet, BUT

They’ve got a “See the range” button to click

Now you can see that they do 4 main sizes of Veg box, and you can work out how big your household is, and which you’ll need - Now you just need to click and choose one of them - i’ve chosen medium.

Here, it’s given me 2 choices, a Seasonal box, - mostly UK grown, and a Quick choice box, - more salad type things, - Most importantly it’s now given me the “Buy Me” option of add to basket.

Having the ability to buy via the website is now absolutely needed, and is a key marketing tool. The year after I put pay by credit card options on my website, my direct sales to local customers went up 247%.

Permission Marketing & GDPR

As we've already learnt, to be able to get someone to buy from you, You usually have to be in contact with them multiple times.

Even if they like what you're offering, and are a keen prospect, if they have no Need for your flowers, they are unlikely to buy them.

Permission marketing is how we get them further down the Funnel, and give them more knowledge of our business by contacting them by email or text.

If your social media marketing platforms fail, or you are locked out of your account, how many of your Fans and Followers could get hold of you?

This is where permission marketing comes in, - particularly with regard to email marketing.

I've been sending emails to my customers since i started my business 13 years ago. For the first few months I sent out a pdf attached to an email. It was basically an electronic magazine. But very soon I realised I needed something that looked professional and could be set up to provide me with something that looked good and was easy to use. To start with I used Constant Contact as my email tool. Then I started helping run a local business network, and we needed a Free email tool, so I used Mailchimp for them, and liked it so much that I changed my business emails over to them. There are also other email tools out there Here's a great recent article about others free programmes that might help you with email marketing.

So how do you get permission?

Sign in sheets - photo

Since I started giving talks and holding open days, I've been using a signup sheet like this. Also good if you are having a stall at Farmers markets or Local Fairs. This is a two fold marketing tool. We have a welcome table with a bouquet on it, which we deliver to someone at the end of the day. (several recipients have become regular customers) It quite clearly states that I will be sending them flower information, or they can choose to opt out. The physical act of having to sign in a sheet ensures that they remember that they've given me permission to contact them.

This is the other method of getting customers onto my list - from my website. This is explicitly telling them I will be contacting them, and is linked to my mailchimp account, so the information goes straight in without me having to do anything.

Do you currently have an email marketing list?

If not, how are you going to get the first 20 customers on to your list?

If you do, how are you going to get 20 more this week?

Here's one method that Cel at Forever Green Flower Company uses

GDPR stands for General Digital Protection Regulation, and is a new piece of legislation which came in last May  that is aimed at ensuring customer's private data is secure.

This is due to many data breaches at companies that have resulted in customer information being stolen, which can lead to identity theft.

The legislation covers getting data, holding data, and deleting it, as the Customer now has a "right to be forgotten"

 As small businesses legislation like GDPR can be scary, but  we need to ensure the following things

1) That we already have permission from our customers to hold information about them. - If they have signed up for email marketing they will have subscribed through your website, or will have signed a sheet to say that you can tell them about your flowers, and they know what we're going to use it for (Telling them about our flowers)

2) That their information is held securely. For us, that means that folders with Brides details are kept in a filing cabinet, email information is held in a data programme that is password protected (e.g mailchimp) and any other information stored on our computers needs a password to access it

3) As customers now have "the right to be forgotten" we need to know how to delete data. If you use an email programme, it will have an unsubscribe link on every email. 

4) That if we did have any Data breaches, they were reported within 72 hours to the appropriate government body.

In Reality, this means that we all have to Spring clean our data systems.I updated my filing systems and had a big shred - particularly of older staff data files. Did you add anyone to your files or email list without their permission? - this includes if you gathered up business cards at a networking event, or got a list from someone else you work with. Have you got details of them giving permission. examples are 

• an email from someone saying, please can you tell me more about x,

• a signup sheet from an event or workshop

• a subscribe date from an email system

  Do you tell them what you use your data for?

• A sentence on your signup sheet

• A paragraph on your website

• A sentence on each email

  Do you keep more information than is needed?

• If you're working with a bride you may need lots of information about them and family

• If you are delivering flowers, you will need an address

• If you are just informing them about events, then you probably only need name and email address

There are fees and fines for companies disregarding the legislation, but by reading, inwardly digesting and looking into this, even just be attending this workshop, you are showing that you a doing something about it. The key sentence for me is "in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data’, 

Use the attached checklist if you want to make sure you've followed best practice

Templates and Marketing automation

The wonderful and powerful thing about using an email system is that you can set your marketing to run without you having to be there pushing the publish button.

I find this particularly useful as i often write my newsletters at times of the day that people are unlikely to be reading their emails (e.g late at night, or in the middle of the day) I can then use scheduling to ensure that the information goes out at the right time.

Automation is even better. This is where an email is copywritten in a way that doesn't indicate a timescale, and then is delivered at a time that is individual to the customer. 

Automations can be triggered by dates, amount of days since a customer signed up,  whether emails have been opened or not, or if links have been clicked on or not.

Examples of Automation are 

Renewal notifications - For instance your Flowers from the Farm subscription 

Onboarding instructions - For instance when you signed up to this course you received information when you paid your course fee.

Welcome series of emails - For those who give permission for you to tell them about your business, you can send a series of information emails.

Obviously the problem with Automations is if you set them and forget them...... 

Other ways you can use Automations are to  reply in more detail to everyone who takes an interest  in information you send out - i.e All those who click on a link to send them to information about workshops gets sent a timetable of workshops and a voucher.

What information could you give in a series of 5 "onboarding" emails to customers who have said they are interested in what you do?

Conclusions

Marketing is a hugely important part of your business, unless you are just growing flowers to look pretty in your garden or field.

20% of your time should be spent marketing to ensure you've got the right, (Ideal) customers for you.

Customers need to hear your message several times from several sources to be confident enough to buy from you.

No cost and Low cost marketing are just as important as other methods and can be more effective

Don't Spray and Pray, make a plan and keep to it.

Don't be worried about "Selling". Use the techniques you've learnt to make the customers understand what your product does for them and how it makes them feel, then when they have an opportunity you will be the person they use to "Buy"

If you enjoy growing your flowers, let your customers know.... It's infectious and will make them want that too.

Smile and Enjoy marketing your Flowery business in 2020.

Claire.

Your telephone as a marketing tool

Regular contact with your customers is the best way to get them to buy from you. How long is it since you picked up the telephone?

Now i'll be the first to admit, I'm not keen on having my telephone being used to sell to me. I've cancelled calls from O2 twice today alone, but that's because i've not given them permission to call me. I don't want to be cold called.

BUT, what about warm calls, or even hot calls. Those customers who are asking for extra information. Those customers who replied to your marketing emails, or online posts.

Don't be afraid to pick up the telephone and get through to them, or email or text and ask them when you should call them, or give them a time to call you, and do all the things that we've been talking about all through this course.

Engage them, Give them information, Beguile them, AND, get a sale out of them without them even realising it.

This year i've made sure i've phoned back/ asked them to phone me,  all the brides who've made enquiries about 2019 weddings. So far, 100% success rate. That's up from about 60%, with just sending a brief follow up email. Not only that, but i've connected with them. They're not buying flowers, they're buying me and what i do to grow and make up wedding flowers. A bit scary, but I know they're not expecting Gypsophila and Roses, they are expecting whatever I can do best for them.

Give the phone a try this week, find one of the questions you've been asked and get back to them in person.

Your marketing campaign

So you've learnt lots about Marketing techniques in the last few modules. You now know that for your marketing to be effective, you need to

• Know who you are marketing to

• Know what you are selling to them

• Move them through your funnel so that they have all the information that they need, and have got to the point where they know all about you and your business

• Catch them again at the point when they are ready to buy

• Ensure that you reply to their queries in a timely fashion which builds trust.

To put all of those things together, today you're going to make a marketing campaign for each of the Customers you are going to sell to.

You are going to plan the (at least) 7 points of contact that they are going to have with you, and the timing that those are going to take place over. Most successful campaigns are usually conducted over a space of 3 weeks to 3 months.

You are going to use the Questions you are asked on a regular basis to fill your marketing literature, and you are going to make sure that you write about what's in it for them, not why they should use you.

A marketing plan is useless if you write it and then don't both action it, and come back to it and review it. Today you are also going to make SMART targets and put dates in your diary to both complete your action plans and review how they are working.

SMART targets are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timebased

Do more facebook advertising, - isn't a SMART target

Connect with local customers in my village, Via facebook, on at least 6 occasions during March and April, so that they know that i do Flower arranger bucket subscriptions, and can deliver them locally between April and September, with the aim of getting 4 more customers - Is a SMART target

This is where having a Social media planner can come in handy, - here’s an example for you, and a blank sheet for you to download

Here's my plan from 2015 which I carefully wrote out at the front of a smart new notebook (notice the doodles on the spine, that's what i do when i'm on the phone!).

The items on it were good, but they weren't smart targets, and they weren't dated, which was why more than half of them didn't get done. In 2016 I made a similar but more detailed list, I carried through all my plan to contact florists, and saw an 80% rise in sales. I managed half my plan for brides, and got double the number of weddings from the year before. I didn't get round to doing anything for locals except donating some flowers to a couple of events I wasn't able to go to. Unsurprisingly my sales of bouquets stayed static. Although generally my sales doubled the year before.

In, 2017 I was busy writing my book between December and March, I didn't really plan my marketing in the way i'd done before, I did do a series of emails to my florists and a couple of early open days. My florist sales rose dramatically last year, and started a lot earlier than the year before. However, the lack of plan for my brides and locals and workshops showed... By June I was behind the year before, and it was only a couple of big orders at the end of the summer that really saved my wedding sales in 2017. For 2018 I started my plan early, in October. I held several late bridal open days and got lots of Weddings planned in to early spring. My season started amazingly, but almost too well as I didn't have enough flowers for my florists, so I held off marketing to them. The beast from the east and then record scorching temperatures meant that I had less flowers than for the 2 years before, so I changed my marketing to be aimed at local customers. I updated my website so that it was a webshop, and immediately (and continually since then) I've had regular bouquet orders. During the summer I marketed my Friday flowers, and flower arranger subscriptions, and had a four fold increase in them, so that although My florist sales went down by 50%, my sales of flowers overall went up, and my profit increased

So Now's the time for you to learn from my mistakes, - make yourself a full plan for this year. Work out when you are going to do all the items on it, schedule them into your diary, book in additional help if you need it find professionals to do copywriting, printing, photography or website work if you need it.

If you’re going to do a one to one with me, Send me a copy - so I can talk you though it, and give you the confidence to get it done.

Zoom Call details and recordings

Our Spring 2022 and earlier zoom calls for Social media planning and Websites