Marketing tools and techniques change rapidly in the digital world, and it can be daunting to understand how to promote your florist business best.
This guide has been written with the benefit of decades of experience building florist eCommerce websites and working with hundreds of florists. I have updated this guide to reflect the current best practices and approaches to generating sales results for our florist customers using Flower Store In a Box.
All successful online florists use a combination of the following high-level tactics to sell flowers online and promote their business successfully:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Google AdWords
- Social Media Marketing
- Google Business Listing
- Social Proof Reviews
- Existing Customer Communication
A Basic Florist Marketing Strategy
A basic strategy that works is combining all these tactics and creating a digital marketing strategy that drives sales.
1) Target the suburbs that you deliver to:
- Build SEO Suburb Landing Pages for these on your website
- Do target Google AdWords to these suburbs
2) Claim and Manage your Google Business listing:
- Add the delivery suburbs to your Google My Business Listing
- Post images and blog articles at least once a week
3) Ask for Google Reviews from your customers after they order
- Automate the process the day after delivery
4) Post to Instagram and Facebook
- Make it about local offers for in-store pickup or delivery only; concentrate on the quality of the audience, not the quantity.
5) Market to existing customers
- Send an email once a month
- Send emails in the lead-up to Mother’s Day & Valentine’s Day
- Use SMS Marketing during the delivery cycle
6) Create a Marketing Calendar
- Brainstorm ideas for sales, emails, Instagram posts etc
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation encourages the search engines to rank a website favourably for chosen keywords and key phrases. We primarily focus on the Google Search Engine as they lead the pack in the technical requirements for a website.
Essentially, we are trying to tell google that your website is relevant, unique and authoritative for the specific keywords.
This is done in several ways:
- The technical structure of the code
- Including the correct sort of technical content on the website
- Specific relevant & unique content
- Organic and Social Reach
Make sure your metadata and other content are valid.
Every page of your website needs to have valid metadata. This is specifically:
Page Title
Meta Description
They must define what is on the page, which is displayed by Google when the pages of your site are listed in a search result.
At the barest minimum, you need to have this for every page. It also needs to be unique for each page of the site, but it can be the same pattern IE for a product name of 12 Red Roses:
Title: 12 Red Roses | Florist Name | Sydney Florist
Description: Buy 12 Red Roses from Florist Name for only $99.95, we offer same-day delivery if ordered before 1 pm Monday to Friday and 11 am Saturday.
How florists should do SEO
The vast majority of people looking to order flowers online search for the suburb name/location of the floral delivery with a word like:
Florist
Florist near me
Flowers
Flower shop
Florist shop
So, for example, if they are looking to send flowers to Roseville, they might search:
Roseville Florist
Roseville Florist near me
Roseville Flowers
Roseville Flower shop
Roseville Florist shop
To appear in the organic search results for these terms, you need to create unique landing pages known as SEO Suburb Landing Pages for each suburb you deliver to. These pages must be written to include high-quality, unique content about the suburb and targeted content that contains the most important search terms in headings and metadata.
Over time with backlinks to these pages and targeted advertising, these pages will appear when people search for the keywords.
Notes on SEO Suburb Landing Pages
For these pages to work, you cannot simply copy the content from one page to another and replace the suburb name; Google is smart enough to know you have done this and will ignore the page!
Also, you cannot just create these pages with no content; Google knows this too and will ignore these pages.
You must have quality, unique content relevant to the search term. You also need to ensure that your content and headings have the specific content people are searching for.
Flower Store in a Box has many SEO Tools that can help you create Metadata on your website, along with SEO Reports and tools for quickly creating SEO Suburb Landing Pages, all inbuilt. All you need to do is add content and go!
Targeted Advertising with AdWords
To get immediate results and direct people to your website, you can pay for sponsored links or advertising on Google and other search engines.
To further accelerate the ranking of the SEO Suburb Landing Pages and to generate immediate clicks & sales, you can use targeted paid advertising. Most of the paid advertising opportunities are on Google using AdWords.
For example, using the exact example keywords from each page, you would create adverts that link to each page.
The customer searches for:
Roseville Florist
Your ad appears in the sponsored links:
Send flowers to Roseville Same day for only $50!
You would then link this advert to Roseville's SEO Suburb Landing Page.
Because the landing page is relevant to what the customer is looking for, you will likely have a higher sales conversion rate for the click. Also, because the page is getting traffic for the keywords you are targeting, AND the page is converting well, this will help drive up the page's ranking in the organic search.
It's a win-win all around!
Some notes of caution on AdWords
AdWords can be costly, mainly if you use the google tool that suggests keywords for your business type.
Targeting the words “flowers” or “florist” or highly targeted words like “Sydney Flowers” is expensive, and you can end up wasting your money! Targeting more keywords with fewer volumes is better if they are more relevant to your business.
How much does Advertising cost?
This depends on the keywords you are targeting, but you should expect to pay around $10 - $20 for each completed sale on your website. This is not the same as how much a click will cost you. This is the average cost of the number of clicks to get a sale.
Social Media Marketing
Instagram and Facebook are good channels for a florist to promote your website and help drive traffic to your website.
However, social media should not be the sole focus of any marketing campaign; instead, it should be used to achieve specific goals. For a florist selling flowers online, the most effective social media is to target the local community and your existing customer base.
Local Community Marketing using social media
A highly effective way of using social media is to build an excellent local following for your florist and then promote specials to your local community.
This makes much more sense than having a massive number of likes from people who do not need your services.
Remember that your targeted customers are:
- People who want to send flowers/gifts to your delivery suburbs
- People in your local community that want to buy flowers/gifts in store
So it’s much more effective to concentrate on building your local reach as it’s more likely that these people in your audience will want to purchase from you.
Social Media Remarketing
Remarketing for florists, in general, is not one of the best uses of a marketing budget. However, targeted and fast social media remarketing is useful sometimes, such as on Mother’s or Valentine’s day.
For example, if someone visits your website in the lead-up to either of these dates and does not order, you could advertise to them on Facebook or Instagram.
But in general, customers of florists don’t have long sales cycles. They need to order flowers for today or the next day, so they either order on your site or don’t.
This advice is for online floral sales, not wedding or event flowers. Then re-marketing can work for you!
Google Business Listing
One of the essential tools for your florist is a free Google My Business Listing. A Google Business Listing is the point on a Google Map that people can click to see details of your business, and it’s also the Business Information displayed when people search for the name of your business.
This listing is super important as it tells Google that you are a real business (they verify this), and you service a specific area which helps significantly in Local Search. Also, Google Business Listing is a way for people to rate your business and leave reviews which are extremely important for SEO.
Your business may already be listed with Google Maps or need to be added. The following is a tutorial on Adding or Editing this listing through the Google Business Dashboard.
Add your locations/suburbs to Google Business Listing.
You can add the suburbs you physically deliver to through your Google Business Listing. This is an essential tactic to use as it will help increase the visibility of your overall SEO Suburb landing pages for these locations.
Log into Google Business, click the blue button “Add Location,” and you can then choose whether I deliver goods and services to my customers. This allows you to add multiple locations to your listing.
Add Images and blog articles regularly.
Adding images and blog articles to your Google Business Listing is an important tactic that tells Google that your website is current and is updated regularly!
It doesn’t have to be a long post or many images; it’s more about adding content regularly!
Social Proof – Reviews
In a crowded digital space, it’s often hard to stand out as the best or unique. You are scrolling through almost endless search results looking for a florist in your location customers have to decide whether they choose to click on you.
Reviews can help get more click-through rates for your florist website and increase your sales conversion rate once they are on the site.
Reviews are more important than ever for all businesses, but not all reviews are equal.
The gold standard of reviews for florists is the Google Review associated with your Google Business Listing.
Google Business Reviews
Google Business reviews are the reviews people leave on your Google Business Listing. It’s a score out of five, and the rating and reviews are visible when someone googles your business name.
The reviewer must be a registered Google Account holder to review, but this involves setting up an account and verifying the email address. Google does state that they make take down a study that they believe is fake or doesn’t follow their policies.
However, a person doesn’t have to be a customer of your business to leave a review.
These reviews are pretty critical as they will display:
- When your business name is searched
- Google Maps Local Searches
- Google Maps Google Searches.
They are pretty simple to do and should be a part of your overall Marketing Strategy.
Automate asking your customers for a Google Review
You should set an automated process to ask your customers to review their experience with their website and create a link directly to your Google Reviews.
Your Flower Store In a Box Dashboard can automatically send your customers a review request after the delivery date. It’s a perfect way to improve your SEO rankings and gain valuable reviews for your business.
Show reviews on your website
There is a multitude of plugins that you can use to show your Google (and other) reviews on your website. Most are simple to set up and can be dropped into the site quickly and easily.
Showing reviews on your website can help customers who are on the fence about ordering flowers through your website to complete their purchases.
Beware of using in-built review modules on websites; most consumers rightly ignore free text reviews or reviews that are added directly to a website.
Existing Customer Communication
Your existing customers are one of your most significant assets in marketing. It’s relatively cheap to market to your existing customer base, and there are many different tactics:
Email Marketing
@@@@@
SMS Marketing
There are, however, parameters that you should adhere to in marketing to your existing customer base via either of these mediums.
Never let a list go cold.
If you haven’t marketed to an email or SMS in more than three months, the contact will be “cold”. You should use email marketing frequently with great new offers, every couple of weeks at least!
SMS marketing is more task orientated
SMS marketing is much more intrusive than email marketing, so it should be used sparingly and targeted.
Event reminders
Whilst event reminders can be great; they also have a dark downside. Relationships break down, people pass away and having a business remind customers of their loss can trigger a hostile response!
We have found little sales benefit from the effort involved in managing these and setting them up.
Create a Marketing Calendar
To help you achieve your marketing goals, a simple marketing calendar can help you immensely.
A marketing calendar is just a list of the marketing things you will do by date for a quarter or a year.
It might look like this:
Date |
Subject |
Channel |
1 Jan |
Store Re-opening Specials |
GMB |
14 Jan |
Pre-Order for Valentine’s Day 4 Weeks Away |
GMB |
28 Jan |
Early Bird Valentine’s Day 20% off |
Web Banner GMB |
Brainstorm subject ideas with staff, and then set a date you need to create the collateral and the date it needs to happen.
If you plan three to six months out and prepare as much as you can (or get someone to do it for you), it will make it much easier to achieve your marketing goals!
Marketing Guide Summary
So, in summary, the best practice for florists to achieve success are:
1) Target the suburbs that you deliver to:
- Build SEO Suburb Landing Pages for these on your website
- Do target Google AdWords to these suburbs
2) Claim and Manage your Google Business listing:
- Add the delivery suburbs to your Google My Business Listing
- Post images and blog articles at least once a week
3) Ask for Google Reviews from your customers after they order
- Automate the process the day after delivery
4) Post to Instagram and Facebook
- Make it about local offers for in-store pickup or delivery only; concentrate on the quality of the audience, not the quantity.
5) Market to existing customers
- Send an email once a month
- Send emails in the lead-up to Mother’s Day & Valentine’s Day
- Use SMS Marketing during the delivery cycle
6) Create a Marketing Calendar
- Brainstorm ideas for sales, emails, Instagram posts etc
Flower Store in a Box
Flower Store in a Box is a professional florist website solution and dashboard to manage your website, market to your customers and manage the ordering process.
Flower Store In a Box has all the tools to market your florist website! It’s a one-stop portal for managing your website and your florist marketing!
Realistically, you will need help to set up and write your SEO Suburb Landing pages and your Google AdWords. But Flower Store In a Box helps you achieve the tactics on your website by providing easy-to-use tools.
In Built SEO Tools
Page Title Suggestions based on your information
Easy to build SEO Suburb Landing Pages
Easy to view SEO Reports for missing and required content
Email and SMS* marketing
Automated SMS & Email notifications during the delivery and ordering process
Simple Email Marketing
Automated Reviews
Send automated Google Review Requests.
Marketing Tools
Coupons
Free delivery offers for suburbs, products and product categories.
Customer Loyalty
Segment your customers and offer loyalty discounts!
SMSs are charged at .10 cents per notification.