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Plant Nursery 1 Page Marketing Plan

Nurseries offer improved living and work quality for homes and businesses. The market for nurseries is increasingly competitive and companies should focus on their customers and brand with a 1 page marketing plan. Let your plants breathe life into your customers and let the Profitworks team grow new business for your nursery.

We empower nurseries to reach their best clients

We've heard time and again how nurseries want advisors that take the time and care to manage their marketing as if it was their own business. Work with the Profitworks team to help more clients discover your garden centre business.

Executive summary

 - The key components of a 1 page marketing plan include messaging and channels

 - The 1 page marketing plan can be summarized as qualities my customer cares about, who is my target customer, what is my brand statement, what is my marketing budget, where will I reach my clients, and what are my marketing goals

 - The nursery industry is highly competitive with little differentiation between stores, meaning a company with the right marketing plan and execution can be the market leader

The most important thing about your 1 page marketing plan

Use your 1 page marketing plan as a compass rather than a map. As part of starting a new business and creating a marketing plan, the aim is to create something unique that others in the industry don't have. That is what truly makes an effective marketing plan that is positioned to help your team grow in starting the relationship on the right foot and getting buyers connected to your brand and team. Using this 1 page marketing plan will require periodic contact with buyers and organizational planners to understand where their needs are currently and how they might change.

Our interpretation of a 1 page marketing plan as popularized by Successwise revolves around two crucial areas:

• Message - what the predominant themes are that your target customer should know about your nursery
• Channel - where these messages should be delivered in a unique or fresh way

Creating a message that resonates with commercial buyers, homeowners, and renters

In order to create a message that resonates with clients, it is important to understand what is valued and how they would articulate these aspirations and needs in their own words. One of the best sources for this is to use Google, Yelp, or Yellowpages reviews to determine what customers find to be important when they are raving about nurseries or what expectations often go unmet and where =disappointment stems from. 

Both reinforcing these needs and addressing unmet expectations are great ways to create brand messaging that can help you better connect with your customers. Based on a search in the Toronto area, here are some things that customers really appreciate about nursery wholesales and stores.

• Knowledgeable staff that spoke and looked experienced (including seniors on staff)
• Locations away from busy intersections were appreciated, as well as accessibility of parking
• Wide variety of selection helped inspire new ideas
• Quality of plants was incredible
• Staff were helpful and not afraid to take time (up to 1 hour to help) with customers or load the car after a purchase
• Well managed customer flow is essential to brand and shopping experience - customers sometimes complained about long lineups or crowded stores
• Healthy plants and clean location added to the brand experience

The nursery and garden centre is competitive because of the sheer number of centres available in the GTA region along with the changing tastes of residents. Nurseries need to be laser-focused on harmonizing marketing from an outreach and inbound service perspective. Now that we know what resonates with customers we will establish a brand statement in 1-2 sentences.

Describe your nursery in 1-2 sentences

Being able to describe your nursery in 1-2 sentences is a great way for you to quickly connect with customers and also give people an easy way to understand how your garden centre is unique and the top choice for homeowners, renters, and commercial buyers.  For example, based on the Google feedback we've just covered, a business owner will want to highlight a team's knowledge and care for the plants and customers.

"Our nursery ensures our plants look good so that your home and office looks modern and striking, with friendly and comprehensive service that works for you." 

A nursery could emphasize cleanliness, ease of parking, and positive shopping experience.

"Our modern nursery centre is located at X with ample parking and great service so there's space to be inspired, leading to the best plant placement and arrangement for your home and office."

Given these examples, it is important to conduct first-hand research into what homeowners, renters, and commercial buyers value in a garden centre. Having gone through the process, one develops empathy with their customers, helping define who you're trying to serve based on a resonance of challenges and aspirations.

Finding the right audience to reach and where to reach them

Garden centres customers are people and often do not enjoy being categorized, but as part of empathizing with those you are trying to serve, there are important insights to draw from understanding these categorizations, some of which are detailed by business plans for nurseries.

There are generally a number of types of nursery shoppers, including

• Homeowners: homeowners defer to garden centres in order to create character and captivate the imaginations of house guests. Some homeowners enjoy the bounty of having fruit trees in their own yard for gifts and festive recipes.
• Renters: this segment of residential customers are focused on lifestyle and adding green and lively plant life to their homes or balconies to ensure their comfort and peace of mind.
• Commercial buyers: commercial buyers include contract builders, architects, event planners, and farmers  - for the adept, each of these segments could very well have their own one page marketing plan as they are small in number but often acquire a large volume of plants or nursery stock.

Select the top segment of customers that you would like to target as well as the plants that your centre has the most expertise in. It is important to note that choosing a specialty may provide you with a way to have a dedicated following, but, as conventional knowledge holds, common low maintenance houseplants are a large portion of sales. 

As you consider what themes impact plant and nursery stock buyers, you are now creating a brand. A brand is more than just a message; is a core set of themes and values that are held true in every aspect of your garden centre. It is the standard to which your service is held that constitutes a brand, and it is one that can help provide the most excellent level of service.

Set a marketing budget

Whether you are starting up with little money to spare or are an established centre looking to serve more customers, setting a marketing budget is important and is actually accessible to all garden centres and nurseries of all scales. Typically a business will dedicate 6-8% of their total budget towards marketing and outreach, though we understand that dedicating this amount of dollars may not be feasible for all.

This means that a nursery that makes $400,000 a year should look to spend at least $24,000 (6%) on marketing. Now, the second difficult choice is how to spend that budget, which we explore further in our next section of the marketing plan.

It is to be noted that larger nurseries will tend to have even greater spending on marketing, not because they can better afford it, but because they've seen its impact on growing their business.

Determining means for delivering your message and brand

For your 1 page marketing plan, the next section is to determine the channels through which to reach your target residents and commercial buyers with your message and brand. We cover classic channels that are used by nurseries and explore other ones that could deliver your brand and create a lasting connection with buyers.

Here are some classic channels in which clinics would seek to promote their services so as to help owners incorporate these into their plan:

• Website - is the standard for marketing and is the primary means in which centres are discovered by new residents.
• Media ads - media ads like commercials and radio spots are another method to get on potential customers' radar.
• Social media - is another way to interact and stay in touch with residents.

Here are some other great ways to reach residents and commercial clients that may help you cut through the noise:

• Send out small pouches of air packages featuring different plant varieties to provide homeowners with a "refreshing" reminder of the big difference a small plant can make.
• Create a blog featuring tips on how to improve air quality of home and office.
• Offer appointments in-person or via Skype for homeowners to get tips on caring for and tending to house and garden plants.
• Lead the movement on a local green initiative like rooftop gardens, office composting, or recycling.
• For each holiday and season, create a comprehensive campaign on how living and workspaces can be styled to match the seasons.
• Offer plant rental service where residents and offices can have a rotating series of plants on a subscription basis.

Set goals for your marketing plan

One of the main challenges that garden centres run into is a fixation on sales alone. Often sales and clinic growth occur not in response to a sole focus on the bottom line but through a focus on learning and curiosity. As part of that approach, we often encourage business owners to focus on driving insights and applying those to quickly improve service or communication, which ultimately lead to growth.

Example goals for garden centre and nursery owners:

• Learn 5 things about residential owners each quarter and seek to implement at least 2 related insights.
• Find at least 2 new potential platforms, communities, or apps that plant lovers and buyers are using to make their lives easier.
• Get at least one Google review (or choose your top review site) a month for each location.
• Grow sales by 10% each quarter.

Identifying monthly goals often times is more actionable than setting quarterly and annual goals. Depending on how dedicated a garden centre is, however, this rule is flexible.

1 page marketing plan table of contents

Now that we've covered the basics of a 1 page marketing plan, here is an outline to help you get started on your own:

1. Key needs and expectations I want to focus on for homeowners and commercial buyers
2. Who are the key customers that I want to serve
3. What is my brand statement (1-2 sentences about the nursery)
4. What are the main ways I will reach these customers
5. What are my goals and expected outcomes that I can review

Sample 1 page marketing plan

Download our 1 page nursery marketing plan here or contact us to help you tailor the plan.

Growing your business by using marketing as customer service

A one page marketing plan is a great way to quickly identify key priorities in reaching the families and businesses that need your centre's help. Marketing, done well, is customer service because it allows a nursery to reach and engage in an effective way to better the living and work environment of all in the community. Our hope is that our one page marketing plan for nurseries can help more professionals serve more families and professionals.

Profitworks helps organizations succeed with marketing

"I've found Profitworks to be tenacious and adaptable to the challenges our industry possesses."

-Blair - Business Owner & Customer

Read More About What Our Customers Say

We've helped passionate and caring companies across Canada and the US succeed with growth, because we believe in the beauty and meaning of every article written, email sent, and social media post crafted. Our team endeavours to create unique competitive advantages for all of our customers and would be thrilled to learn more about your mission and plans for your team. Profitworks provides marketing strategy, content marketing, branding, and social media management for great companies with a stellar product or service.

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Top 10 Marketing Audit Templates

Marketing audit templates are great ways to determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and work to date.  Business owners and leaders need an effective way to determine the viability and impact of their marketing investment. These top 10 marketing templates help leaders understand and assess next steps. Not all marketing tools all are made equal, nor are audits happening often enough to impact business value. Utilize these great marketing audit templates to improve an area for your team today.  Consult with the team at Profitworks today to turn insights into action to grow your team and client base. 

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5 Important Things Marketing Does For Organizational Success

Marketing offers significant benefits to organizations looking to promote a cause, exceed sales expectations, or simply better serve their customers. This article will survey the top 5 reasons organizational success is enabled by effective marketing. Most notably, in an environment full of similar services and products with little differentiation, marketing becomes a competitive advantage: the main reason why customers will choose your organization's service as opposed to a competitor's. Learn from the examples of WestJet and eSight eyewear how marketing drives organizational success.

Develop your competitive edge with Profitworks

Companies work with agencies and marketing teams to develop a unique sales engine and brand to reach and retain clients. Create your marketing competitive advantage today by looking at your competitor's marketing and creating a brand strategy. Work with Profitworks to become the market leader in your industry today.

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How do we choose a segment to target?

Choosing the right segment to target can make or break a new business venture or growth initiative. Learning from examples like Uber Eats and Cirque du Soleil, find out why it's important to segment well and how to avoid losing 30% of your revenues. This article offers theory and applications based on the perspective of a local car wash business. Let the work speak for itself: partner with the team at Profitworks to get your target segment laser-focused and cut through the noise.

We help choose a segment to target and reach them profitably

We've heard again and again how our business owners want advisors that take the time and care to manage their marketing as if it was their own. Work with the Profitworks team to help more great products and services get discovered.

Executive Summary

 - Choosing a segment to target is important because it can help you improve competitive positioning while avoiding unnecessary competition

 - Defining your current customer segment helps you ask tough questions that ultimately can enable you to better serve and retain your customers

 - Great companies create customer segments but better companies ask for feedback and validate their assumptions

 - Most companies need to overlay segmenting criterias (like geography, preferences, and personal aspirations) to orchestrate an effective customer profile

 - Ultimately, segmenting and reaching customers will help enterprises grow and remain focused on serving customers the way they would like to be served. Otherwise, middle platform brokers may take as much as 30% of your revenues, as seen in the restaurant industry

Why choosing a segment to target is important

Choosing the right market segment can help create an improved and sustainable market positioning for your team. It also helps you strategically choose a competitive arena to operate in, which has led Cirque du Soleil to create entirely new industries and failure to do so - led to the demise of household brands like Sears. Most industries like local enterprises may feel they are not affected by poor segment targetting because they have also had a referral network of business. Yet the greatest threat is not technology or a new startup -  the most prominent risk facing local businesses is losing touch with their core customer base or failing to recognize an upcoming demographic that they could serve. In this article, we explore the strategies that can help companies segment existing customers to better serve them and ways to position themselves to new segments.

Defining your market segment

Defining your market segment is a challenging task because it forces an enterprise to try and empathize and understand who they are serving. To define your market segment, an enterprise must answer these questions.

1. Why the customer works with our team
2. What is the customer trying to accomplish with our product and service
3. What about our product or service retains the customer
4. What are things that can make the customer leave

Once these 4 questions are answered, an enterprise can create a customer segment profile. In the case of a car wash business, here are examples to each of the segment dimensions:

1. Customers choose ABC car wash because we pay attention to small cleaning and detailing issues that can cause long-term issues in their motor vehicles.  Our customers know and experience our detailed care.
2. Customers want to keep their cars in top visual form to ensure the comfort and safety of family and their own clients.
3. We keep track of the weather and communicate optimal times for cleaning so that a customer's car looks better longer. We allow customers to clean their car right after a bad rain storm or flurry before a break of great weather.
4. Price can affect our customers and limited knowledge of cleaning products may cause them to assume that every car wash is equal. Further, location and changes in commute routes will affect our business.

Forward thinking companies will create a segment profile, but great companies will take their initial sketches of their segment and test it against actual customers. Market leaders would have a conversation about each of these areas and understand their customer base by asking them these questions that they themselves may not consider. The second benefit to this is that this is an opportunity to have customers be affirmed in their aspirations - as in this example, where a customer's aspiration is about client and family comfort.

Identifying a market segment

If you are considering a new business or expanding your sales efforts, identifying new market segments to target is a prudent way to plan and supplement business strategies and market entry initiatives. Business Dictionary expands on market segmentation by approaching the topic in 5 dimensions:

Approaches to subdivision of a market or population into segments with defined similar characteristics. Five major segmentation strategies are (1) behavior segmentation, (2) benefit segmentation, (3) demographic segmentation, (4) geographic segmentation, and (5) psychographic segmentation.

What does this all mean?

Behaviour segmentation is how a consumer intereacts with your product or service. For our car wash customers, either they are reactive or proactive in how they utilize a car wash services.

Benefit segmentation is defining pools of customers based on what advantages are afforded. For our car wash customers, people enjoy the convenience and clean experience of having someone else do their car detailing.

Demographic segmentation is a classification of a customer or prospect base by age or economic standing.  

Psychographic segmentation denotes how prospects/customers view or value the service based on their worldview or cultures. For some cultures, like the European and Asian cultures, having a nice clean car is a reflection of your societal stature. Others may simply see the upsides in having a clean and well-maintained car.

Finding new ways to target existing customers

The 5 dimensions previously mentioned can be further multiplied based on any number of these common factors. For businesses that are confined to specific locations like a local car wash, this makes things simpler. Yet because industries continue to change, businesses should consider taking on a new venture mindset so as to not fail to capture opportunities or lose marketing positioning. One example that highlights this challenge is the fact that most restaurants are increasingly facing a sloping competitive position because of delivery services like Uber Eats and Foodora. Restaurant owners have lost the ability to better understand their customer's preferences. Now, dining revenues are reduced by 3rd-party platforms by as much as 30% on a delivered order, while also losing direct communication with their customers. This occurred because restaurants didn't take the time to segment and better understand their customers when they wanted more simple and immediate delivery options.

Focus on ways to add value to your existing customers by orchestraing and sequencing segmentation dimensions.

Identifying a segment is tough but well worth the sweat and trials because finding profitble target segments helps a company define a competitive advantage. Continuing on with our car wash example, if the local business previously was only able to conduct car washes on site, it may want to consider other channels to service.  Most local car washes work with residential and personal vehicle owners, yet understanding a commercial fleet owner would provide an opportunity for car washes to service large volumes of customers on a predictable basis. Logistically, a company should also weigh the increased challenges in operational complexity by offering on-site vehicle maintenance and after hours staff shifts.

Another segmentation approach is to understand how these segmentation dimensions play off one another. The behaviour of customers as they wait for a car to be detailed is idling or thumbing through magazines, while the location/geography of conventional car washes are based in the car wash's location/facility. In the traditonal flow of events, a customer has to intentionally come to a car wash, perhaps while driving to or from an errand or work. Yet if our business-savvy car wash owners enabled access to the detailing service at destinations customers visit, that would certainly increase access to customers while offering patrons the ability to do other things while they wait. One such example is offering a car wash at mall parking lots. Customers can have the convenience of dedicated and predictable parking while receiving the added benefit of a car wash.

Finding new customers to target

A common approach to innovation marketing or segmentation is utilizing existing resources in new applications. During the introduction, Cirque du Soleil was mentioned as an example of why effective segment targetting is helpful. Cirque du Soleil used something called blue ocean strategy to target a completely new segment that was previously not interested in the typical carnival circus routines. They combined theatrical drama, sound design, stage design, and did away with a star performer. This led to the reinvention of the circus for modern viewers as a premium experience unlike a music concert or live stage performance. Instead of competing with existing circuses they invented a new market. This led to them being the undisputed market leader in the market they created.

Finding new customers to target with your existing resources and equipment can be a great alternative to edge a crowded market. This is particularly impactful for our car wash owner who is finding that his market is highly competitive and also cyclical, which makes growing his business tough during the off seasons. Here are the steps to looking at how to market services to new customers:

1. Inventory the different resources on hand
   -Fixed and mobile cleaning equipment to maintain vehicles or polycarbonate surfaces.                                                                                         ---  --Staff that are knowledgable about cleaning practices and different types of odours or moulds in an enclosed space.
2. Other customers who may need property or surfaces cleaned
   -Car owners who have multiple cars and want a reason to drive their exotic vehicles. Car washes may offer a subscription plan for multi-vehicle owners.
   -Snow boarders typically go on weekend trips together. One new segment that can be targeted are groups of snow boarders returning from their trip.
   -Food truck owners may also find value in having a car wash focus on their needs as their exterior appeal often has an impact on their business.
3. Determine the profitability of this segment
   -Car owners who have multiple cars are profitable and in fact less costly to acquire repeat business since they already utilize the car wash's services.
   -Snow boarders are a seasonal crowd and may not provide the adaquate profitability as a large volume of snow boards may need to be cleaned while the alternative of self cleaning is always an option for boarders.
   -Food truck owners rely on aesthetics and apperance to win trust and customers. This is a value that could be offered by car washes and provide significant revenue.

Based on this brief analysis, food truck owners may be a profitable segment to select and target for future marketing promotions. The subtlely in marketing to this demographic is not simply providing a service but helping their business be more successfull by always presenting them in the best light as they meet with customers during lunch hour. This will allow your company to compete on best serving intangible and aspirational values that are often times more valuable than absolute cost competition. Most luxury brands appeal to this kind of mentality and can be helpful in supporting a sustainble business model rather than competiing on low cost provider services.

Growing your business one market a time

Determining which segment to target is great way to begin the process of growing your business. Yet, without experience and proven results, business owners can often be discouraged from venturing beyond their current markets or sales channels. As we've learned, however, from the restaurant industry, one cannot hide from innovation but rather should be open to experimenting and growing their sales through keen understanding of their customers and offering new ways to provide value to them.

Profitworks helps organizations succeed with targetted marketing

"I've found Profitworks to be tenacious and adaptable to the challenges our industry possesses."

-Blair - Business Owner & Customer

Read More About What Our Customers Say

We've helped companies across Canada and the US succeed with growth, because we believe in the beauty and meaning of every article written, email sent, and social media post crafted. Our team endeavours to create unique competitive advantages for all of our customers and would be thrilled to learn more about your mission and plans for your team. Profitworks provides marketing strategy, content marketing, branding, and social media management for great companies with a stellar product or service.