Taken from Green Profit, August 2024, page 21
Garden center owners looking for ways to increase revenue may find that the avenues available to them aren’t always obvious. However, you can discover several non-traditional revenue streams using creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. [Pictured: Health concerns prompted Vic Vanik to begin growing his own vegetables, but consumer demand made it a revenue stream.]
Even though garden centers are primarily a visual industry with bright colors and interesting textures, another sense should be considered when planning your marketing mix: auditory.
I’m a huge fan of radio advertising because it’s one medium where you can cast a net broader than anywhere else to catch new customers. The airwaves reach far and wide, and radio worked especially well for me in Colorado when I would have gone broke advertising in every small-town newspaper within our 200-mile marketing area.
This is a tale of two Garden Centers. I’ve owned both of them. The first was a small Garden Center in a rural area in small town America. Although we experienced some success along the way, it seemed like we weren’t able to grow sales the way I had hoped and projected. Since I had simply continued the marketing efforts of the previous owners – newspaper, a paper newsletter that was mailed monthly (sometimes), and a few print ads here and there, the frustration of “why isn’t this working when it worked so well for them” continued for several years. Overwhelmed with all of it, I admit I wasn’t much of a “regular gal” back then.
The second Garden Center was that same small Garden Center a few years later but by now the world had changed. Our sales numbers reflected that the previous owner’s methods were no longer effective. I switched things up, but more importantly, I made a firm commitment to a consistent schedule, even during times that were slow or when we had bad weather. Once I became a “regular gal,” things improved.