Opening a flower shop requires planning, determination, and a genuine love for flowers. Flowers are great products because you can almost sell them to anyone. Even people who are not interested in flowers have to purchase a bouquet from time to time on occasions such as Valentine’s Day. Flowers are easy to sell because they are in demand by people, so florists must be among well-off and wealthy business owners.
Unfortunately, not all florists make a cash load; in fact, the average salary per year is 25 to 30 thousand dollars. Thus, if you find yourself more ambitious and determined than those numbers, prior to starting your career as a florist, you need to familiarize yourself with market strategies for a flower shop that can work wonders for your business.
If you already own a flower shop, we will show you “how to increase sales in a flower shop“.
Analyze the location of your flower shop
In today’s competitive market, you have to be realistic in order to run a successful business. Owning a flower shop means that you work in the service industry, so to have a great company, your CRM and customer services must be at the top of the chart. But is that really going to keep your business alive and running? In a world where digital marketing, social media, and online websites are dominating the field of companies, walk-in customers have yet to have the impact they used to have. One reason is that you have to spend a significant amount of time and energy for each customer. When your business is in its developing stages, you may find yourself in a situation where not only does it not make financial sense to provide services to so many customers in your shop. You have to consider the reality of what is happening every day to have a better business plan and a career.
It is possible to run businesses such as a flower shop online, but the revenue you get from walk-in customers is not something that can be ignored easily. You can analyze the potential of your shop as a place for attracting customers and then dedicate time, budget, and energy based on the potential of your shop. First, you have to consider the cultural background, socioeconomic situation, and population of the neighborhoods close to your shop. If your shop is in a middle-class area, you are likely to experience a good ratio of walk-in customers, and your pricing range can be more flexible. For a shop in an upper-class neighborhood, you must have a lot of funding at the beginning because then you have to focus on customer service in order to sell your bouquets at a higher price, and also the decoration, ornaments, design and lighting must of course be memorable and eye-catching
The population of the area where you open your shop is vital because more people in an area means more weddings and, inevitably, more funerals, two of the primary sources of your business income. Notice that if your ship is in a crowded shop, it does not secure customers, as you have to provide adequate customer service to attract customers. Also, if you get a couple of bad reviews at the beginning, you may have a hard time developing your business.
If you can identify the features mentioned in the previous paragraph, you can make a business plan based on what you expect from your shop. For example, suppose you want to spend most of your resources on a Digital marketing plan and social media. In that case, you can open your shop in a less crowded middle-class neighborhood where you can offer reasonable customer service and add to your business revenue by attracting local customers. This way, you can also benefit from customer feedback and word-of-mouth marketing.
Optimizing the online presence of your flower shop
An online presence for your shop is just as significant as your shop’s front design. It’s a hook for grabbing people’s attention, and they will eventually become your customers. There are so many different social media apps right now, so you might ask yourself which one makes more sense for a flower shop to be active in. You have to be present on every social media platform because your target audience is everyone, as we established in the first part of this article. But is it possible to be present on so many platforms? At least with a group of social media experts and content creators. Actually, you have to create a chain of social media platforms and prioritize the platform you think attracts more customers for you.
Having a group of social media and content creators can be very beneficial, and you could see progress sooner than you expected. But to be frank, why would you hire others when you can do something yourself for your business for free? With so much educational content on Google and YouTube, you can easily manage your social media campaign. Be aware that you can manage your own social media account, but there are times when you have to seek an expert guide; this does not mean hiring someone to manage your accounts, but when you are having problems grabbing peoples’ attention on social media, you can ask others for help.
YIP strategy (YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest) for flower shop
We are going to explore a strategy based on three different social media platforms. This strategy is designed specifically for people who need a social media manager but cannot afford to hire one or prefer to save money for other purposes. In this strategy, we have a chain of content that is separated into three platforms: YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. For a flower shop, content can be separated into three categories: Educational content (YouTube), promotional content(Instagram), and aesthetic content(Pinterest). Instagram works as a medium between the other two platforms because you can post almost any content on the Instagram platform. This strategy is one of the most effective market strategies for a flower shop.
You Tube
For YouTube, you can create content related to your career and the skills you need to become a florist. Your mentality should be advocating for your job. If finding ideas for videos is challenging for you, just think about why you are doing it and explain that in your videos. Be aware that you are competing with a lot of other shops, so your videos should have entertaining elements along with educational elements. For example, you want to shoot a video and teach how to make a hand-tied bouquet. You can start your video by giving a little bit of history about hand-tied bouquets and show famous characters with that bouquet. It is also essential to add your personal experience to the video as well; you can talk about a memory, like when you were first learning to make a hand-tied bouquet.
For other entertainment elements, you can use what I call a decoy. A decoy is an element in your videos that is not directly related to the content of your videos. A decoy can be a pet like a parrot or a cat; the more exotic the pet, the better, but don’t use a snake for your videos. The decoy adds context to your videos, and you are also sharing a part of your personal life with your followers or, as I like to call them, customers who still haven’t paid for your products. You should also look to see what other types of video content you can share to attract attention. ASMR videos are trendy nowadays, and you can use them to gain followers. ASMR videos may not directly attract customers, but they will attract followers. Notice that for ASMR videos, you may need advanced video editing and photography skills to create high-quality content.
Take advantage of Shorts
YouTube shorts are great for your business as a florist and shop owner. Considering that it is a relatively new section on YouTube, you have a better chance of getting views and followers from the short section than your educational-type videos. But remember that you must have in-depth content to keep your followers. Your whole shop has content for short videos. When you bring new flowers, you can wear shorts. When you have arranged the front of your shop, you can post a short video. Also, when your shop is crowded a little bit more, you can post a short video to showcase the success of your business.
What can you share on Instagram to attract more customers? Almost everything! The content you share on the Instagram platform must be entertaining rather than educational because your audience on this platform does not expect education or, to be blunt, even information. So, we divide your content into two categories: Reels and stories.
Story content
Flower shops are associated with positivity and positive feelings such as vitality. Let me ask you a question: When do people need positive feelings? Well, the answer in your head may be different from ours, but mornings are a great time to share positivity. Your followers are drinking their morning coffee or taking a break in the office and checking their phones. The very first thing they see in the morning could be your story, which displays the positive atmosphere of your flower shop. It’s easy to showcase the atmosphere of your shop. You can quickly achieve this objective by taking a picture of your flowers in the morning, a picture of your front design, or a picture of your empty shop in the morning.
Do not limit the content you share on your stories to your business; you have to share pictures of yourself doing other activities like going to the gym, reading a book, or any other hobbies and interests that you have. You can share personal content when your shop is closed; nighttime is excellent for personal content as it provokes your follower’s curiosity. Remember only to share a glimpse of your life. You cannot share content that is too personal, at least not real ones.
The third type of content that is most important is promotions. You share the news of your shop based on the level of importance of their story. For example, you just brought a limited number of a particular type of lily; you put that on your story to inform your customers that you have them and provoke others to become your customers and come to your shop. Other promotions can be for specific holidays like Valentine’s. You simply inform your customers about extra services or products you are providing on Valentine’s Day.
Reels
In order to attract other users on Instagram, you have to post content that matches the Instagram algorithm. Reels are the best way to attract more followers, according to the Instagram algorithm. But what type of content should you post as reels? Videos of you interacting with customers, making a bouquet, or shipping pour flowers. All of the contents mentioned above are essential for your page, as flower arrangements and front design are necessary for your shop.
It would be best if you analyzed trends first to get ideas for reels and, second, to attract a wider audience. Finding out what is trending is easy; you just have to spend a couple of hours scrolling down reels and identifying the ones that are getting more views and likes than others. A trend can be a song or a voice-over from movies and TV series that is not really relevant to your business but is interesting for your followers. By sharing various types of Reels, you showcase that your page is not just a business page but a source of entertainment as well.
Pinterest is another platform that has been getting more attention from users. You can share the general theme of your shop by posting pictures and even videos. Before you start posting on Pinterest, you must decide what is the theme of your shop. Deciding on the theme of your shop is vital because you grab users’ attention based on the design of your shop. Do you want to convey modernity or embrace the traditional picture that everybody has in their mind when they think about a flower shop?
On Pinterest, you are more concerned with aesthetic content than informative and educational content. However, you can post short guides on methods of taking care of plants and introducing apartment plants that are easy to look after.
Use Instagram to promote your flower shop YouTube Channel
Instagram has a lot of potential for attracting followers. You can even sell your product in the shop section, but there is no direct way of making money from the content you share, such as the Monetization policies that YouTube has. You have to devote a part of your content to YouTube so you can monetize your channel. Then, you can share the links of your exclusive YouTube videos on Instagram story.
The content you decide to share only on YouTube should be both interesting and educational. Some topics that have the potential to be academic and engaging in the flower industry are: How to build your garden? How to take care of your backyard garden? Apartment plants, obstacles, and benefits: How do you identify if your plant is sick? Make sure to create a short preview of these videos and share them on your Instagram account to gain more attention for your YouTube channel.
Choosing the best delivery service for your flower shop
picking a delivery service is essential as it can influence your entire online operation. There are substantial delivery services that have turned into corporations over time, like 1-800-Flowers and FTD, which dominated the field of delivery services and made a lot of local shops close their business because they could not compete with colossal corporation pricing. Urbanstems offers higher prices for arranging and shipping compared to other services, but it has become the dominant flower shipping service among us citizens.
You can hire local delivery services for your shop, but you have to make sure that they can satisfy your customers. Your products are flowers, which are very delicate and can be ruined quickly. So, an unreliable delivery service is like a virus that can infect your business and bring it down over time.
Expand the services you offer in your flower shops
Most flower shops offer other products, such as small gifts and vases, along with flowers. Some also provide chocolate and gift boxes on special occasions such as Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Selling small gifts like teddy bears makes financial sense because people give others flowers with gifts, but in order to be better than your competition, you have to think outside the box.
One way is to make your shop a hangout place. You can quickly provide customers with coffee, drinks, and a place to sit and spend a couple of hours in a flower store. Notice that you cannot turn your flower store into a coffee shop; you are just adding extra customer services to attract more customers. You can even have small baked goods in your shop and give small packages of baked goods, like donuts, to your customers. You can even print your shop’s Instagram account QR code on the baggage of baked goods that you are giving your customers as a promotion. you can learn marketing strategies for a cafe to ease the progress of your shop.
Another innovative way to enhance your customer service is creating a small space for children in your shop. You can put coloring books and toys to make an entertaining atmosphere for children. Along with entertainment, creating informative, colorful pamphlets about taking care of plants and introducing different types of flowers to educate kids and teach them responsibilities. As a part of promotions, give small plants to your customers’ children so you can motivate them to learn about plants and, at the same time, secure the parents as loyal customers. For more ideas, you can also use AI for tips, which Is a way to make money using AI.
