Every community benefits from having a local garden center nearby. But if you’re the owner of a garden supply center, you know how hard it can be to compete with big box home stores. Check out these five tricks to grow your garden center business.
1. Educate Guests
Lots of people want to be better at gardening, but they don’t know how. They may also need help understanding the specific regional factors that make local gardening difficult. You can establish yourself as a fixture of the community by helping people be more successful at gardening. You might try some of these tactics:
Placing educational signs around your store
Teaching classes for free
Handing out gardening pamphlets
Selling gardening books
2. Have an Outdoor Market
There’s nothing more attractive to people than beautiful greenery and happy flowers. That’s why it’s important to put your plants where people can see them. Make sure some of your plants are outside within view of the road so that people can see what kinds of plants you have.
3. Use Social Media
Having a social media presence is a must in the 21st century. Younger people especially use social media to search for local businesses and restaurants to visit. They use videos and pictures to decide if they think it’s worth seeing a store in person. So make sure you have plenty of both on your social media accounts so that people can see what kind of flowers you have.
4. Hand Out Swag
People love getting free stuff, especially if it’s useful. As a garden center, you might decide to hand out matchsticks to help your customers’ gardens grow. When you give away swag items, you’re helping people remember your business, which makes it more likely that they’ll come back.
5. Have a Wide Variety of Goods
Something that can help boost your business is having lots of different things at your store. You want people to think of your garden center as a one-stop shop for all their gardening needs. If you’re always saying that you don’t carry things in your store, people will stop visiting and assume that you don’t have what they need.
We hope you use these tips to put down roots in your town and grow your garden center business. Every community deserves to have a garden center that focuses on local gardening practices.