Marketing for Garden Centers, Wineries, Agritourism: Here’s What to Do with a Tight Budget
When you have a tight budget for marketing, where should you put your money? What should be the basics of marketing for garden centers, wineries, and agritourism businesses?
At McCusker’s Marketing, we know how to make tight budgets go a long way. We help independent growers (including garden centers, wineries, and agritourism businesses) attract a wider customer base, increase their foot traffic, and grow revenue. With over 15 years of experience, we know what works and what doesn’t.
So, if you have a small marketing budget (say about $1,500 a month), here are the top five things we recommend you do to get the most out of your money and where we’d start if you worked with us.
1. Get Aligned on Core Goals
Get clear on what your core goals look like and what success looks like. Without this clarity, you won’t know how to alter your path or when you’ve met (or missed) success.
Defining your goals helps you to plan paths that are logical and measurable towards those goals. Otherwise, you’re doing the equivalent of throwing stuff at the wall and hoping that something sticks.
How McCusker’s Marketing Can Help
We’ll guide you in listing specific goals, and we’ll plot out the paths that will help you achieve those goals. We also measure monthly or quarterly (depending on your preference) to determine how those paths need to be changed. After all, if you’re not measuring, then how can you know what to change and how to change it?
2. Check Visibility and Do a Visibility Reset
What is visibility, you ask? Visibility refers to how somebody engages with your business anywhere online. If someone were to engage with your business online, what would they find in the first thirty seconds? What do they experience? What do they see?
Oftentimes, online presence can be challenging for garden centers, independent growers, wineries, and agritourism businesses. However, online presence is crucial to getting customers, creating a loyal community, and increasing revenue.
According to a recent GoDaddy survey, 80% of American Millennials and Gen Z shoppers research small businesses online before choosing to shop at a business. Further, 74% of the same groups state that a lack of recent updates on a small business’s blog or social media platforms negatively impacts their perception of how trustworthy and credible that business is. This means that if your online visibility is poor, out of date, or doesn’t follow best practices, then you’re probably going to lose potential customers and revenue.
Further, if your online visibility isn’t optimized for mobile users, then you’re potentially losing out on thousands of customers since 61% of surveyed consumers stated that they conduct their internet searches from a mobile device.
How McCusker’s Marketing Can Help
We’ll do an online audit of your small business’s visibility. This includes examining your Instagram, Facebook, Google My Business Profile, website, and any other online presence your business has. At minimum, we investigate your visibility with the following questions in mind:
Does the online presence feel current?
Does the online presence feel active?
Does it feel like something is happening at this business?
Is there something that would make the customer drive 20 minutes to visit the business?
Do the social media feeds feel outdated and/or inconsistent?
Are the posts following best practices?
Does the energy of the posts match the business’s target audience?
Is it clear what makes the business special and unique in the market?
Does the online presence show the tone, quality, products, uniqueness, and heart of the business?
These are just a few of the questions we ask when auditing your online visibility. Yet, these questions are essential to ask if you want an effective marketing strategy for your garden center, winery, or agritourism business.
3. Create a Content Cadence
A content cadence is the calendar around your marketing. You must decide what you’re going to do for marketing, what platforms you’re going to market on, when you’re going to market, and how you’re going to market.
For many independent growers, wineries, and agritourism businesses, they usually have a newsletter, website, and (sometimes) a social media platform, such as Instagram. The questions then become, how often are you going to send out your newsletter? Twice a month? Once a month?
How often will you post blogs on your website? Once a month? Four times a month?
How often will you post on social media? Three days a week? Four days a week? How often are you going to be posting short videos versus static pictures?
To have an effective marketing strategy, you have to be clear on your cadence and on your deliverables. Otherwise, people typically fall into the “throw things at the wall and hope they stick” strategy, which is not effective or efficient.
How McCusker’s Marketing Can Help
For creating a content cadence, we can:
Identify what platforms best target your desired customers.
Create a customized content cadence that works for you.
Guide you on what content best speaks to your target audience and shows your business in the best light possible.
Pre-made content cadences that don’t consider your goals, your aesthetic, and your values won’t feel genuine to customers and won’t earn your more customers and, by extension, revenue.
4. Reach out to Local Creators
One of our clients’ top challenges is that many people don’t know who they are. We’ve had clients with over thirty years of experience working in the gardening industry struggle with getting people to know that they even exist as a business. So, how do you fix this? How do you get people to find your garden center, winery, or agritourism business?
One answer is to partner with local digital creators. Partnerships with digital creators are the new “word of mouth.” Someone who already has a platform that captures local attention and local audiences already has credibility and trust from their audience. So, when someone with such a platform posts about you, it’s the equivalent of a recommendation and of instantly earning trust.
For example, partnering with a local mom who documents weekend adventures on her Instagram can help you earn the trust of that creator’s followers. In fact, 92% of people polled by a Nielsen survey expressed that they trust recommendations from friends, family, and people above other forms of advertising when deciding to buy something or try out a business. Digital creators who post about you—whether that’s a reel, post, video, etc.—tap into to this large set of people who want recommendations from someone they feel like they know.
How McCusker’s Marketing Can Help
First, we will create a list of local content creators in your market and region. Then, we will reach out to these creators and inquire about creating a partnership between them and your garden center, winery, or agritourism business. We’ll iron out what that partnership would look like and work with both you and the creator to draft something both parties agree to.
5. Plan Conversion Triggers
A conversion trigger is an action or stimulus to persuade someone to take a desired action. Think of conversion triggers as nudges for your current and potential customers.
Conversion triggers give people a reason, time, or moment to visit your business. Some people confuse conversion triggers with sales, but conversion triggers are NOT discounts, sales, or desperation offers. Rather, good conversion triggers amplify demand within an audience.
Examples of conversion triggers for garden centers, wineries, and agritourism businesses include festivals, workshops, classes, expert gardening talks, wine tastings, live music Fridays during the spring months, etc. The purpose of conversion triggers is to reframe visiting your business from being solely about your products to cultivating an experience to enjoy and remember.
Interestingly, a recent survey by Simple Spring focusing on how Millennial and Gen Z customers buy plants found that inspirational plant setups, display gardens, and educational classes/workshops are among the top factors that influence them to visit a garden center more often. This research highlights the importance and power of conversion triggers.
So, for your business, think about what moments you could create for your customers. These moments don’t have to be heavy lifts. Perhaps you have a workshop on how to create a spring pot arrangement or an expert talk on perennial gardening. Think about what you can handle and what in-person events your customers would be excited about.
How McCusker’s Marketing Can Help
We’ll identify what conversion triggers would speak to your audience and your region and meld that with what you can reasonably do. We understand that each client is unique in their capacity and desire to do conversion triggers. However, the success of conversion triggers is undeniable. So, we’ll help you plan your conversion trigger and coordinate times, vendors, and whatever else you need to make the conversion trigger a success.
Reach out to McCusker’s Marketing
A small marketing budget can go a long, particularly if you have a marketing agency on your side who knows what they’re doing and has a proven track record, such as McCusker’s Marketing. We’re passionate about independent garden centers, wineries, and agritourism businesses. We love to help these businesses bloom and grow their customer base, reach, and revenue.
If you have any questions or would like to know more about working with McCusker’s Marketing, reach out to us at rebecca@mccuskersmarketing.com or call us at 440-922-9260.
