The Floral CEO

 Hello flower friends. This is Jen, and on this week's mini sode, we're gonna talk about five ways to market your floral business without breaking the bank. I often, I, I manually do all the approvals for the floral CEO Facebook group and it asks someone where they're at in the process, and so many people want to start their floral business.

And one constant kind of theme is, you know, like, I just don't know if I can afford to start a business right now other than filing your business with the Secretary of State. Uh, you could build a floral business for literally nothing. Uh, I think people are, are really, you know, clouded with, they need all these fancy things.

They need to buy Google ads. They need to spend a bunch of money on going to every single marketing thing in the world. And frankly, I think that just isn't true. I have built. I have never done Google ads. I have never done Facebook ads for my floral business. Uh, I think that, I mean, the, the companies that I know that do do it definitely are trying to break into luxury and I get that.

Or they're, you know, a brick and mortar who are just trying to drive. Getting their self in front of. But if you were trying to build a wedding floral business, there are so many ways that you can do this for free. So I want you to focus on, you don't need a huge budget. If you have been wanting to start your floral business or wanting to grow your floral business, I want you to know it does not cost a ton of money to do so.

With creativity and effort, you can reach new clients and grow your business using low cost or free strategies. So the first is probably like, duh, I know this, but often it is not executed upon Instagram, Facebook, social platforms. I think it often feels overwhelming. You often can feel. Hurt when something that you spent a shit load of time on doesn't take out off, and you're like, I spent an hour on doing this and got 30 likes.

Those are still 30 people who came up to your virtual storefront and said they liked what you had to say. So my kind of focus areas on Instagram is focus on visually appealing content. I can usually look at someone's content and if it is dark, looks like they took, the photos aren't edited, you know, are really kind of raw, like that person is probably not gonna get a lot of traction.

You need to make sure that things, when they look like it, it looks like Instagram. Another thing is using location tag. Tagging other people. Get your content in front of others by tagging, and that person hopefully will then share it in their stories. Everyone who is following them is going to see your content and hopefully then follow you or bring or gain brand awareness of you.

Create some engaging posts like behind the scenes before and after a mood board to creation, client testimonials, things like that that really can pop out. And you know, somebody's like, oh, like that was really kind of interesting and fun to know about. You want to create interesting content. I call it shareable content.

I forever went and did talking head videos for the floral business, all about creating value, creating shareable content, creating something that I knew a wedding planner or somebody else would want to share. That is the type of content that is going to help you get in front of all of these other people's audiences.

People love. To have something they can actually share. And so if you have something that is relevant to their audience, it is going to be shareable. And that's really what. Is going to help move your business forward. If you get two people to share that content and they have a thousand or 2000 or 3000 followers or 500, and in their stories, let's just say 20% of their followers see their stories, that could potentially be 200 people seeing your content.

If you even convert like 5% to follow you, that would be amazing. The, you would be exponentially growing your following count if you consistently delivered that type of content. Plus, who doesn't wanna see like how cool something is to make? Who doesn't wanna see that before and after of a room? So like, create systems so that when you are.

Doing a job here is the before stand in the same place, pan the same shot at the end, stand in the same place, pan the shot the other way, so you can create interesting content that really will help support the brand that you want, make you relatable, and just fill your feed with valuable content. Okay.

Leverage stories and reels, Instagram and Facebook stories to engage. Use those to engage. Like show the person you are, show some behind the scenes show like, Hey, look at this beautiful thing. Create social like awareness that, hey, look at, I am doing jobs. I am a wanted, you know, uh, someone that creates amazingness, like you wanna work with me.

And use short videos to create, to showcase those design sneak peeks and day-to-day operations that will keep your followers interested and don't just do it once and then go, this didn't work. You need to be consistent. Creating consistency, even two to three times a week to stay top of mind with your audience is going to make a huge dent.

And I, I know because I have done it that. If you chip away, your follower count will grow. Your brand awareness will grow. People asking you about your product offerings will grow. You just need to start being consistent and then utilize tools like Canva to create more of like brand pillar type. Tools that like, okay, if you have a la carte, create something that talks about that.

Create a graphic that shares your reviews. Create a graphic that says that you have availability in 2020, um, five and 20, 26, whatever it is, like a plug and play graphic that you can use in your feed and then resize it for in your stories. Will be huge because then you have a consistent branding moment in there.

You have, you know, your brand pillars being talked about. And if you don't understand what the brand pillar is, let me just go over that. A brand pillar is something that you want foundationally to talk about to support your brand, your business. So for me, my brand pillars in the floral business are full service weddings a la carte weddings.

Um, me as a person and them getting to know me and my business. And then, um, my silk flower arm of my business. So there is four. And then depending on the season, I do like educational content or I talk about growing flowers. Those are like my core content pillars and. I know if I'm posting something, if I'm supporting one of those five things that I'm staying in my, my brand pillars and that is going to keep my brand consistent with my followers.

Then also spending time responding to comments, dms, and really mentions to build a community and create trust. A lot of people just go and consume. You need to add value on social. Adding value. 'cause like you, you guys know how hard it is to get comments and if you're the co person who's going on the wedding planners posts and consistently posting something kind like that's gonna go a long way, that engage with other local business or florists to boost your online presence.

I interact with other florist posts all the time on my personal pay, on my personal floral business page because I want to support other florists. Like that is important to me because I know how hard it is and I want them to know that community over competition, uh, is something that I greatly support.

Then you could also host a small giveaway or a promotion to encourage followers to share your post like. It is so easy to create a content calendar for your social media so that you stay consistent and you're not spending much time on it because you just have a plan. Build that plan so that you just know, Hey, this is my plan.

I'm gonna take it and kick ass and take names. All. Number two, word of mouth and referrals. I have built my business on word of mouth. I didn't even do social media until four or five years ago. Word of mouth and referrals. Working with wedding planners, working with decorators, working with venues has been a huge driving force in my business.

If you have been struggling with growing your business, you're probably not talking to enough people. Networking, using, um, for one, using tools like I mentioned, for social, sharing your reviews, showing people that. You know, not only do a good job, like people are writing reviews about you, use those testimonials to showcase that you know what you're doing.

Create some type of referral program. I, for a long time when I was building my business, if you sent a client that booked their wedding, I would deliver a bouquet if they were in the um, twin Cities metro area. Just to say thank you. There's lots of ways to give benefits. Without it costing you a ton of money, then making sure you're going to networking events and things like that.

Uh, that's how you're also gonna start that word of mouth chain. All right. Collaborations with local business partner with local vendors, venues, event planners, photographers, bridal shops for cross promotion. Offer to provide a style, like some type of arrangement or something for a style shoot, for a bridal show, for a venue, um, that they're going to have, like something so that you get in front of people.

I do it with my silk flowers all the time because then it doesn't cost me any money. Like I literally have, you know, these soaked flowers that are beautiful. And I can set them up and the only thing that costs me is my labor and my gas. So that has been a huge tool for me to be able to get. In front of people, but you don't need to create a bunch of pieces.

You can be like, I'll create a centerpiece for you. Then you can photograph it, have some content, and then you can, um, you know, it can be given away at the end of the night or something like that to a potential client that's looking at hosting their wedding there or something. So there, there's lots of ways without spending a lot of money to get involved with venues.

All right. Blogging and content creation. Those are free blogging if you have it built into your website is free. If you use a platform like WordPress or something like that, it makes it even easier and those are often free. If you focus on, especially if you do a wedding at a venue, focus on doing a blog, featuring that, taking the venue.

You are going to hopefully build Google, SEO juice to show up and hopefully show up, especially when somebody's googling their wedding venue. People Google their wedding venue and pictures, um, wedding venue and a specific thing at that wedding venue, hanging installations, whatever. So you want to hopefully be that person who shows up on Google, but it has to start with posting the content.

All right. Then my last is email marketing. You can use a ton of free tools. MailChimp is a free tool, like I have email marketing built into my, um, WIC site. You can send, you know, a cadence and start just. Just start collecting emails through your website, social media in person. You could create a lead magnet that is a tool that adds value to a client.

Um, you know, 10 ways to pick Affordable wedding flowers, or, or 10 Ways to Make Your Wedding Flowers Over the top. Or something like that. Use Canva to make your actually freebie and deliver it through one of these systems. There are so many ways to grow your business. There are so many ways to grow your business for free, so I encourage you to just start taking action.

Okay. Minor actions every day are better than going big and going home, and then literally doing nothing. So create consistent action for you to grow your business. That is going to be your recipe for success. Thank you so much for listening, flower friends, and you have an amazing flower filled day.