How to Attract New Customers to Your Flower Shop

Need more customers for your flower store? If so, here are some suggestions about how to make your florist shop come alive and get that sales register ringing!

First – ask yourself why the shop is too quiet and give yourself the honest answer.

Is it really because of the economy? Or is it because:

• your florist shop is in an out-of-the-way location?
• your offering is not relevant to the local community?
• it’s not clear what you do? E.g. there’s a florist shop near me that looks like a gift shop from the street – bound to confuse those who know nothing about the floristry industry.
• because business-as-usual is no longer effective? For example, some small business people have told me that yesterday’s no-brainer – placing a Yellow Pages ad – no longer gets them the results they used to rely on.

Maybe you know why already and just haven’t faced up to it yet, or maybe you honestly wouldn’t have a clue, either way the following tips may help…

1. Get Clear About Your Customers, Their Problems And How You Help Them

This is such an important factor in your businesses success – clearly defining your Value Proposition.

Stop! Before you switch off – this boring-sounding piece of business jargon is a really simple and super-important thing to think about.

Basically it just means “What solution (to their problem) you offer your customers and how well you communicate this solution to them”.

1. You have to know what problem your customers have.
2. You need to know how you are able to solve this problem.
3. Then you need to communicate this solution to them effectively.
4. Which also means you need to know where to find them!

If you are not clear on what you do, for whom and why – then your potential customers will not be clear either, and they will just ignore you. Ouch.

Get clarity – it’s totally important.

2. Realise the Lifetime Potential of Your Existing Customers

It’s more expensive to find a new customer than it is to keep an existing customer. So try reframing the problem “I need new customers” into “I need more sales”. More sales might genuinely require more customers, but then again, after a single purchase, this lucky florist may have been able to retire!

Every customer is a potential source of repeat sales. So do your best to delight your customers with unbeatable service and product quality and try to get their contact details. Once you have their name, number, postal address and email address (and permission) you have the facility to woo them back for more. Also try a loyalty card scheme for your shop too, as this can attract repeat custom.

3. Become a Destination Store by Being Remarkable

I am not suggesting that this would be easy, but if your shop is a little out of the way or in a quiet location, you might be able to beat this problem by becoming a destination retail location.

You could do this in a number of ways:

• If you have the space you could install a cafe, with tables in amongst the flowers, offering the kind of classy, feminine ambiance that could attract the daytime latte set.
• You could indulge your artistic whims in creating the most amazing floral design displays in your shop window. You could launch each new monthly display with some kind of niche-appeal evening event.
• You could move your workbench to the front of the shop so people can watch your outrageously funky staff put a little theatre into the industry.
• You could turn your store into a fairy grotto to appeal to little girls, employ some fairy-themed entertainers for a couple of hours each weekend to provide an entertainment option for parents. While the kids join in the fun the adults can browse your store.
• Why not set up your shop with a couple of iMacs loaded up with photographic wedding inspiration galore and encourage brides-to-be to come in and browse through these with no obligation to buy? The lack of sales pressure would encourage them to come in, and of course it would make sense for them to choose your florist once they get an idea what they want.

4. Awesome Customer Service

Remarkable customer service is easy in theory but not always in practice. However, even though it can be a challenge – it is vital. I recently read something that made me think hard about the doing business. The quote went something like: Businesses do not exist primarily to make a profit; they exist to serve their customer’s needs.

Now sure, the reason YOU may be in business is probably and rightfully more self-serving, for example because you love floristry or the flexibility of self-employment, but that is not the same thing as why YOUR BUSINESS exists. Your business exists to give the customer what they want and need.

I think if you can take this on board you will see what an opportunity awesome customer service is. Deliver not only great flowers but the kind of service that makes people’s day, then people will return and they will encourage others to do the same.

It’s a really simple (if not always easy) way to truly stand apart from the competition. Think about it – how often do you get the kind of customer service that makes you walk away thinking “Wow – that was amazing”?

5. Local Area Marketing

Attract more customers to your shop by getting your communications out to where your prospects and customers are. So if this is the local area – then how can you raise awareness of your business (and its Value Proposition) amongst the local population? Here are some suggestions – Local Area Marketing for Florists.

6. Use Downtime in the Shop to Sell Online

After Mother’s Day this year we will move into the quiet period for Australian florists. Why not take the time to set up a fast Internet connection in your store and get busy using it to market your business like crazy!?

You can use the Internet to sell locally and to attract business in all kinds of ways from far and wide.

In the end, selling more flowers is all about you and how much effort you are prepared to put into it. Don’t talk yourself out of it – get pro-active and send more of your beautiful flowers out on their mission to cheer up the world!
Written by Seamus – Tesselaar’s website manager and marketing nerd