#TheFallEvent2018 - Garden Answer's Laura and Aaron present...

"YES YOU CAN Reach Your Customers through Social Media!"

Laura and her husband, Aaron, started Garden Answer, a YouTube how-to gardening channel filled with style, expertise and helpful gardening knowledge, in 2014. Today, they attract over 300,000 YouTube channel subscribers and have generated over 25 million views of their YouTube gardening videos. Garden Answer has 2.2 million followers and over 450 million video views. Garden Answer has become quite a sensation in just a short  time, and the numbers are continually growing!

Their tremendous popularity has prompted industry brands like Proven Winners, Espoma, Gardener's Supply, and others, to partner with Garden Answer to reach consumers.

Reeling in the Non-Gardeners


An excerpt from Ball Publishing's GreenProfit
(With comments by Danny Summers)

This past week GreenProfit published an article as titled above. They posed the question: "How can you attract non-gardeners as new customers" to the three finalists in the 2018 Green Profit/Dümmen Orange Young Retailer Award competition, sponsored by Dümmen Orange and AmericanHort!

Value Up! Eliminating Value Confusion – (Part 2)

By Sid Raisch

In the first part of this article we discussed why the word “value” is easily misunderstood, and how this misunderstanding confuses our people. CLICK HERE to read it.

Now that we've cleared up the definition of value, let's use the word in its highest value. The best way to do this will be to get clear on the levels of value.

Eliminating Value Confusion

By Sid Raisch

We need to clear up some confusion over the word “value”.

We Americans are a confused lot. Our language does this to us. Some other languages have one meaning per word. We have many.

Dual meanings are confusing. I have learned that it is a sign of intelligence when toddler’s pickup dual meanings of words. Understanding of multiple definitions of a word is also a sign of intelligence among adults. So let’s understand the simple word “value”, in all its wonder, and amazing complexity, beginning with the textbook definition.

I have no idea where the dictionary is, so we’ll Google. Maybe the definition of value has changed with the Internet? Right from the beginning, the cause of confusion is evident. Value is both a Noun, with two definitions, and a Verb with two additional definitions.

Let Your Center's Brand ROCK! 

by Tom Kegley

In case you missed the GROUPtalk-Live session last Tuesday, "Let Your Center's Brand ROCK!" by Tom Kegley, you still the opportunity to see and hear what Tom has created. The session has been recorded and you have an invitation to view the entire presentation below. I want to stress a couple of points here... This is MUCH MORE than simply a redesign of a logo for America’s Best Flowers (which looks fabulous by the way). It begins with  a study of the "essence" or "core values" of the company. For America's Best Flowers, one word that was always in their logo and message was... Joy. Tom says there is so much of what we sell that creates Joy and how we experience that Joy is multifaceted through many senses. Creating a new logo incorporated the "essence" he and the staff at ABF agreed with and Tom also kept a rainbow of colors in the concept, except in a different way.

 

A Hefty Dose of Reality

by Robert Hendrickson

One of the coolest outcomes of my career is meeting some of the smartest people on the planet. While the list continues to grow as a result of knowing someone who knows someone who introduces me to the next big brain person I meet, David Wolfe remains the one person that impresses me most with his knowledge and insight, especially when it comes to marketing. David sent me what I consider to be one of the top three business books ever written, Ageless Marketing (it so happens David’s other book Firms of Endearment is also one of my top three.) After reading his two books my approach to marketing has remained forever unwavering.

Over the last several years David and I worked together several times, at The Group’s 2007 Fall Event then at other workshop sessions where I invited him to speak. David died of cancer this past February. His perspective and straight forward approach to marketing and consumer insight will be sorely missed.

Let The Battle Begin


by Robert Hendrickson

I knew exactly what to expect. In fact I could have scripted the entire meeting word for word before we started. I've been asked numerous times by garden center owners to play good cop/bad cop with them and their ad agency. No surprise which cop I play. Even after garden center owners finally realize they've been wasting money, losing momentum and being misled by their ad agency representatives, they still want someone else to do the dirty work. Telling an agency they're no longer needed isn't that difficult. I've done it dozens of times. You send a letter to the CEO and simply say their services are no longer required. But for some reason these same garden center owners feel obligated to schedule a face to face meeting with the agency to share the bad news.

Big mistake.

Tell Me a Story - Part 2


by Robert Hendrickson

[Continued from Part 1. If you want to return to Part 1, CLICK HERE]

My last article ended with my belief that the future of the garden center industry depends on  these eight words... 
"Our future is in the stories we tell." But why stories and why stories now?

Tell Me A Story - Part 1

by Robert Hendrickson

To understand the message in this article I need you to stop reading and watch Johnnie Walker "The Man Who Walked Around The World. This is a Watch the six minute video then come back and continue reading what I'm about to say. Ok? Good.

Integrate Your Marketing Communications for More Impact

by Tom Kegley

 

With so many ways to reach out to your customers– advertising, email, direct mail, in-store signage, events, social media, and more– it’s easy for your marketing communications to become diluted or disjointed. In today’s ocean of messaging, the isolated message gets lost.
 
No Message is an Island is a macro communications approach for today’s media. If you identify your big message, weave it into every channel you use to speak to your customers, and coordinate the execution, your marketing becomes so much more effective. Whether your campaign is for a weekend, a season, or the entire year, make it stronger by connecting your islands of messages into one giant continent.
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Learn why and how No Message is an Island in 7 minutes in Tom’s moving online presentation.