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Social Media for Garden Centers

How should garden centers tackle social media? 

Your social media presence is one of the strongest indicators of your garden center’s culture and personality. It’s a fantastic place to showcase your expertise, educate people about gardening and plant care, provide tips, reminders, and promotions.

But the most successful garden centers don’t leave their social media up to chance. Social media is far too important and time consuming to post sporadically, without a plan.

Smart garden centers ensure their social media follows a complete marketing strategy — and that every post is designed to nurture a boost in sales.

What matters for social media in 2023 for Garden Centers?

In 2023, Garden Centers on social media should focus on three things:

Short form video

Forbes said it best: “Both brevity and authenticity are winning the day on social media, with short-form videos—typically less than a minute in length—capturing the attention of 66% of consumers. Highly shareable, these bite-sized videos are 2.5 times more engaging than longer videos, and 34% of consumers appreciate the more genuine nature of the shorter form.”

User Generated Content

Nothing persuades potential customers about your awesomeness more than OTHER people saying good things about your garden center on social media. In 2023, prioritize working with influencers, bloggers and YouTubers who can come to your garden center and talk about you to their followers.

Thoughtful “Edutainment”

Garden centers who prioritize educational AND entertaining videos will come out on top in 2023. Putting the time in to ensure that each post is save-worthy, shareable, and high quality will help position garden centers as leaders in their field.

The Importance of Social Media for Garden Centers 

There’s no question that finding and connecting with customers on social media has a direct impact on your sales. Having a strong presence on social media helps people in your area discover you, and establishes your garden center as a leader in your market.

Social media helps drive traffic to your website and provides insight on the people who do discover you. It also helps you create meaningful connections with current customers by helping you humanize your garden center.

For example, 83% of Instagram users say they’ve discovered a new product or business when using the platform. Social media increasingly is an effective way for new contacts to become a customer.

McCusker’s Marketing for Garden Centers

Social media can be a challenge for independent, family-owned garden centers, which is why we are here to help.

For years, we have provided Garden Centers with high-quality marketing that tells their story and connects with their customers.

Contact McCusker’s Marketing about your Garden Center’s social media needs today!

Frequently Asked Questions about Social Media

  • This depends on who your customers are: how old they are and their habits. This also depends on your garden center’s goals. In our experience, retail garden centers thrive on Meta platforms (Instagram and Facebook), and are increasingly turning to TikTok to capture younger (but rising) audiences.

  • We could spend all day talking about this, but some of our favorite go-to strategies include:

    • Using the right hashtags

    • Partnering with micro-influencers

    • Promoting your social media on your website, email list, and other platforms

    • Actively engaging with your followers

    • Building a strong brand identity

  • When customers see a professionally-orchestrated social media presence, they experience your garden center’s digital storefront as being an engaged business that cares about their customer experience — even when they’re not in store!

    Furthermore, by hiring social media experts, you’ll be boosting awareness, growing your customer base, boosting sales, and learning more about your customers. This is far more insight and return on investment than you’ll get from having an employee randomly post.

  • There are a few reasons you may not be getting engagement on social media:

    • You’re not on the right platform

    • You’re not sharing content that people care about (always ask yourself the question, “why should people care about this?” Are you actually helping or inspiring?

    • Your posts feel unprofessional or too promotional

    We can help you boost engagement so you’re not wasting time and money on social media.

  • Social media is a great way to engage with customers in the off-season … which will encourage them to come back when your doors open again! By falling silent on social media in the off-season, you’re losing out on growing your customer base and bringing in more money during the busy season.

  • The possibilities are endless! This is what we typically include in our client’s social media feeds:

    • Helpful content - video and blog content

    • Weekly or monthly specials

    • Timely gardening tips and reminders

    • Info about any upcoming events

    • Behind the scenes content