During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of people around the world were left with no choice but to stay home to avoid further disease transmission. Governments in many countries imposed lockdowns that span entire cities and regions to limit peoples’ movements in an attempt to bring down the number of infected citizens.
What many people saw as a bane turned out to be a boon in disguise, particularly in the gardening industry. As it turned out, home gardening bloomed almost overnight during the pandemic situation, with businesses involved in supplying seeds, soil conditioners, and plants raking in insane profits from an otherwise bleak situation.
One such big winner is W. Atlee Burpee & Co., a U.S.-based seed production company, which reportedly sold more seeds during the COVID-19 pandemic than any time during its 144-year-old existence. The good news about this overnight boom is that it shows no sign of slowing down any time soon as more and more property owners see the need for a secure food source for future worst-case scenarios.
Now, what does it mean for your gardening business? Simple: it only translates to a steady stream of income for the foreseeable future.
Here are five simple tricks to ride in on this trend and grow your gardening business even further:
Come up with great value propositions
The short and hard truth of any business venture is that you can’t expect success if you’re just like all the other businesses in your field. Clients don’t want ordinary service providers proposing ordinary services and typical benefits; what they want is a service provider with value propositions that are just too good to pass on. As such, be the wiser and make sure to offer attractive value propositions that the other gardening companies don’t provide.
It can be about your capacity to complete a home garden setup overnight or your emergency gardening services that guarantee help when customers need them. Just make sure to keep your propositions clear and truthful since clients hate service providers that can’t deliver on their promises.
Invest in your advertisement side
While it’s true that word of mouth is among the best means of advertisement, today’s digital landscape calls for businesses to have a strong online presence particularly in social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Knowing this, you should allocate a portion of your operational budget to advertisement campaigns on the platforms mentioned.
You should pay someone to set up a professional website to maximize your reach on the internet. It won’t hurt if you’ll throw in some search engine optimization strategies like guest blogging and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Learn about your local community and establish a relationship with them
Keep in mind that your first and probably most loyal customers would likely come from just around the corner street. As such, be sure to do your homework and try to know what community members want to plant and what specific gardening assistance or services they need.
If you can, try to go beyond this step and find a way to establish and maintain an intimate relationship with your local community. You can hold an open house to showcase your best plants or give community members a chance to snag some great bargains from your nursery or store.
Show them what they want
Steve Jobs, the late genius behind tech giant Apple company, once said that people often don’t know what they actually want unless someone shows them what they want. In a lot of ways, this makes perfect sense since people don’t really see the need for something until someone else makes them understand the value of a product or service.
The idea is to make your customers understand the importance of the services and products that you offer, such as discussing with your clients the need to have the best garden soil or why aeration and weeding matters to achieve a healthy garden.
Grow your inventory, widen your scope of services, and improve your skills
You can’t expect to grow your gardening business without putting time, hard work, and money into widening your horizons. By this, it means updating your inventory of gardening materials and supplies, adding new services, and keeping yourself updated with industry trends and best practices. Your clients will surely appreciate these things and reward you with their unconditional loyalty.
Success in the gardening business may be easier to come by these days, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have to flex your muscles to achieve it. Just follow these tips and watch how much further successes you would enjoy.