# 11. Use what you use everyday to promote yourself
Here are some inexpensive ways to promote your business; all most of these will cost you is some time:
- Use every outgoing piece of paper, and every electronic document as business promotion.
- You have business cards, but you also put out a lot of other documents in the course of doing business. Check these to make sure you’re using their promotional possibilities to full advantage.
- Business stationery is an ideal business promotion tool.
- Is your business name, logo, contact information and slogan on your envelopes as well as on your letterhead?
- It’s not just an envelope, it’s a business promotion tool! You’re sending it out anyway, so why not make it work for you?
- The same goes for outgoing faxes, bill payments, receipts; whatever paper you send out should carry your full company message.
- And don’t forget to make sure that your email has a complete signature that provides all your business information and a promotional tagline.
- Electronic documents, such as email, are also easy to update with your latest business promotion information, whether it be a special price on your product or service, or letting people know that your company has won an award.
# 10. If you’re an Internet user, spend some of your online time on business promotion.
- Posting messages in forums (a.k.a. bulletin boards) is a great way to make your business known to people you would otherwise be unable to contact.
- You can’t blatantly advertise your business on most forums, but you can show others that you’re a knowledgeable, personable individual and promote your business through your signature file.
- Getting people interested in your business and perhaps attracting new customers works best if you choose forums that are business-related or directly related to your business’s product or service.
- The other caveat with choosing forums to post in is to check their level of activity; posting
in a forum that doesn’t have much traffic or regular activity isn’t going to do much to promote your business.
# 9. Give out freebies as business promotion.
- We’re all familiar with hearing or reading advertisements that promise that the first 50 people to visit a particular store will receive a free (____). It could be anything from a red rose through an ice-cream cone!
- We’re all familiar with this kind of spot promotion because it works.
- People love to receive things that are free.
- Besides using freebies as business promotions, you can also use them regularly
as customer “rewards”.
- What small, inexpensive things could you give out with your product or service that will get customer thinking good thoughts about you?
- Combining business promotion with customer rewards is definitely a win-win situation.
# 8. Use your vehicle to promote your business.
- Mobile business promotion isn’t just for white delivery vans.
- Think of all the people who see your vehicle when you’re driving around - especially if you live in a place where people often get stuck in traffic!
- You should be able to get a pair of magnetic signs from your local source for less than a hundred euros. Or, for an elegant promotional look, you could go the whole hog.
# 7. Promote your business by giving a seminar or presentation.
# 6. Help Property Promoters - Promote the Economic Value of a Great Garden!
- Flyer/brochure which can be used by estate agents, architects, valuers and developers to promote the fact that on average a well developed garden can add thousands to the value of a home.
- This will be delivered with an image of a house for sale with a great garden and the headline:
Time to Give your Garden Kerbside Appeal...
- Give a space for the landscape gardener/garden centre to promote themselves. Distributed by the gardener/garden centre to local estate agents, developers and valuers etc. as a re-enforcing selling tool for them.
- Again, this key message can be something that can be part of a joint promotion between an estate agent and a garden centre/designer.
# 5. Gardening Advice Roadshow – at the Local Shopping Centre.
- This can be a joint venture between a designer/contractor and a garden centre.
A stand is produced and an ad is promoted on local press and radio.
- The promotion can be the opportunity to win a Free Consultation by the designer or a garden hamper/barbeque which is put up by the garden centre. People are encouraged to come down to the centre, enter the competition and get free gardening advice.
This is a tried and trusted technique that works very well for the gardening industry.
# 4. Become the local voice of ‘gardening advice’.
- Most local papers and radio stations are looking for useful articles and advice. When it comes to gardening these are often from a national or international source. Local Businesses can give more relevant advice. Especially in terms of available supply of goods and services from local garden centres and nurseries.
- A panel of local experts would make an interesting half hour weekly programme. There are opportunities to promote a weekly column in a local paper. Whether paid for or not.
# 3. Develop Feedback and Interaction with your customer base
Why not carry out a Questionnaire/Survey
This is a fantastic tool for any business and achieves many objectives.
For a service business, it gives you a legitimate opportunity to contact a past/current client and see what they thought of your service and what they think you do. You can explore what needs they have now and deliver the message that you are a process driven professional service which values their opinions and feedback.
For end-consumers, again this is fantastic for receiving feedback and exploring their needs. This can be done via phone, post, email or mail all with various benefits with regards to cost and speed etc.
The main and simplest ways though are to have incentivised customer feedback cards in store or given to clients at purchase, while work is being carried out or via an online facility.
# 2. Capture the local imagination
Create a buzz about town, in workplaces and homes locally with a series of fun, interactive competitions using local media.
Best Garden Transformation: Before & After
Local competition is held. Entrants are encouraged to take a photo of their garden or aspect of it which they want to do-up.
The photo is sent in and 2 months later a second photo is sent in.
The winner is the entrant who by judges decision has carried out the best Garden Transformation.
The prize can be for a 1,000 euro gardening equipment voucher and tickets to Bloom with second and third prize levels also.
This type of competition has bigness about it.
It can be organized by a consortium of garden centres and designers and can be linked to other promotions such as the ‘Garden Advice Roadshow’. Local Media are important and a local media partner in-terms of radio and press can be organized. Here, winning gardens can be promoted as a double page spread with interviews.
Or what about: Tallest Sunflower – Schools Competition
G-A-R-D-E-N
Participants are asked a series of questions on a head to head knock-out basis
Over 5 days.
Questions are selected from the letters G-A-R-D-E-N
The answers of which begin with the selected letter.
Who’s in the Garden?
Participants are given a series of clues to discover which local or international celebrity is in the garden.
Each clue is based on a gardening theme
eg: ‘I enjoy a good barbecue – especially as I am Austrailian”
Child’s Description of a gardening item/activity
Here, we use a child to describe in its own words a gardening item or activity.
The first person to answer correctly wins for the day.
The competition is a head to head knockout competition for a week.
Mystery ‘Business Name’ Gardener
Here, we utilise a mystery gardener and emphasis the brand name
eg. Find the Murphy’s Garden Centre Gardener.
People are given clues to his whereabouts and have to approach the Murphy’s Garden Centre Gardener to reveal his location.
The winner is the person who finds the Murphy’s Garden Centre Gardener on any particular day.
Golden Shovel
Similar to the above a ‘Golden Shovel’ is hidden somewhere in the town and the radio listenership is given clues to its location. The winner is the one who finds the ‘Golden Shovel’
Match the gardening items game
Each day a selection of 6 items is made and the person who gets the most correct answers of the 6 wins.
Recall shopping list from Garden Centre
A shopping list of 15 items from a garden centre is given out
These need to be recalled.
There is one selected player each day.
The winner is the one who recalls the most at the end of the week.
# 1. Satisfy the client’s ‘need’ for advise, direction and ‘call to action’ in the garden
We recommend a Postcard Campaign starting with an initial Free Consultation / Win a Garden Hamper promotion.
Then following that, every couple of weeks a ‘Garden Activity Reminder Postcard’ reminding the recipient to prepare, plant or call for assistance.
This can be carried on during the gardening year and build up to a series of useful reminder cards (similar to the dentists’ reminder card concept).
Similarly, a viral Email Campaign can be developed to saves costs and to hit a wider market with the campaign.
This concept can also be developed into a Gardening calendar or a Monthly newsletter by post or email.