Florists Only – Page 13

Paint The Town Green: St. Patrick’s Day Marketing Tips For Florists

February 17, 2011 by Mandy Maxwell 2 Comments

Let’s face it, St. Patrick’s Day is no Valentines… Men everywhere aren’t rushing out to buy St. Patrick’s Day flowers for their ladies. However, as florists, lets make it our job to PAINT THE TOWN GREEN! We must become our town’s first thought when it comes to holidays!

Paint The Town Green!

What are the key points of the St. Patrick’s Day celebration we can use? Green, Gold, Pot of Gold, Rainbow, Luck, Lucky Symbols, Drinking, Guinness, Irish, Ireland.

Associate your business with the most ‘fun’ aspects of this holiday.

Decorate your store window with green, rainbows and pots of gold.

Create a few St. Patrick’s day arrangements and advertise them on your Facebook page as special/limited editions.

Suggest to local businesses to buy your limited edition arrangements for easy decorations for their shops.

Contact local restaurants about using simple green flowers on their table centerpieces. Offer this for free if they will let you attach a small ribbon or card to the flowers with the name of your shop and your website URL.

Partner with local bars to sell or give away (with your ribbon) simple, green corsages for the night.

For pubs and bars, use shot glasses as vases for your small table centerpieces. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Florists Only, Marketing Tips Tagged With: Marketing Tips, St. Patricks Day, St. Patricks Day Flowers

How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count The Ways… To Relaxation

February 15, 2011 by Mandy Maxwell Leave a Comment

Sure it’s all hearts, roses and romance for everyone else, but for a florist, Valentine’s Day is a lot of hard work! That’s why Flower Shop Network is bringing you soothing, de-stress and relaxation tips! These are great tips for everyone, but especially our florist friends who have been run ragged over the last few days.

Relaxation, stress relief and mood enhancers

Here are some ideas to help you relax and reduce stress. Remember you know yourself best, so do whatever suits you and makes you happy.

Take some time for yourself to just be alone. Practice deep breathing. This is particularly helpful when under a lot of stress. Breathe slowly in through your nose, filling your lungs as you do so, then release the air slowly out through your mouth.
Attend a yoga class, or simply look up some basic stretches on YouTube. A good stretch will re-energize and de-stress.
Laugh! Nothing beats the power of laughter. If you’ve been stressed to your limit the last few days, take some time to watch funny videos, a comedy movie, play with grand kids or something else that is sure to make you giggle!
Listen to a relaxation CD while laying down, preferably in a hot bath.
Get a massage. No one deserves it more than you!
Take a bath. Use your favorite scented oils (no one will blame you if you choose a scent other than floral! haha) and for maximum relaxation light some candles.
Read a book. This is such an easy way to escape the world for a while.
Indulge in your favorite hobby. You could always try something new that you know you will enjoy.
Eat a healthy diet. You will feel happy and healthy! There is no greater feeling!
Go to bed early and sleep well. There is no better way to start the day than with a good night sleep.
Wine… florists love wine. When we asked on our Facebook how florists unwind after V-Day, practically everyone’s response was lots and lots of wine!
Praise yourself. You deserve it!! For everything you accomplished and will accomplish, you deserve a little congrats! Buy yourself something nice. :)

This post is brought to you by FlowerShopNetwork.com. Your source for real local florists.

Filed Under: Floral Resources, Florists Only Tagged With: Florists Only

Sell Those Add Ons at Valentine’s Day!

February 8, 2011 by Tim Huckabee 1 Comment

As I have been visiting flower shops over the past weeks I have been reminding them, as part of my training process, to sell more add-ons at Valentine’s Day. Why? For two reasons:

1. Customers want them – Just look at how many more balloons, candy etc are sold over your website vs. in-store. The website simply gives EVERY customer the chance to buy extras. When selling in the store, we forget or become to lazy to mention the extras.

2. It’s a small easy sale. The customer just spent $50 on flowers so a $5 balloon is just 1/10 of the total, and easy for any customer to justify in an instant.

How do you make selling extras a priority?

The easiest approach is to streamline your language…
“As a finishing touch, we can attach an I LOVE YOU balloon to your roses for just $5!”

The worst the customer can say is NO, the best, YES!

Finally, be consistent – offer a finishing touch to every customer!

Try it, it works!

Tim Huckabee AIFSE of FloralStrategies.com. Tim has been in the floral business since 1997 and runs an on-site customer service and sales training program exclusive to our industry.

Are you looking for more helpful sales strategies? Tim has a SuperSalesSkills Webinars chalked full of helpful sales tips and strategies. Flower Shop Network members can attend these webinars at a special discounted rate. For more information check out SuperSalesSkills Webinars (promotion code included).

Filed Under: Florists Only Tagged With: Valentines Day Marketing

Fresh Spring Marketing Ideas For Florists

January 25, 2011 by Mandy Maxwell 2 Comments

Ideas For Spring Flower Specials

Create special edition spring flower arrangements available to your customers for a limited time, like one or two weeks. Promote these on your website, Facebook, direct mail and any other social media outlet you may use. Create one special per week. Make sure your customers understand there is a deadline for ordering one of your specials to create a sense of urgency and excitement for these unique flower designs. It also shows your diversity and artistry to your customers.

Garden-Themed Special

– Use spring garden flowers such as hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips. Include items like seed packets, shovels, or even plant markers with encouraging messages written on them. For the container, use a cute watering can. (Check thrift stores!)

Spring-Themed Special

– Again use a good assortment of spring flowers. Use a blue-painted coffee can (recycled) as your container. Paint a white horizontal stripe a couple of inches from the top and bottom. Use white cardboard cut into pointed strips to create picket fencing to go around your coffee can. Then simply hot glue them to your can leaving a unique, picket fence container, 100% recycled!

Birds & Bees Special

– Spring means romance is in the air! Don’t leave your love birds out, create a spring-themed romantic arrangement. Create an arrangement using spring flowers. Cut a heart out of cardboard and cover it, front and back, with small spring flowers. Use bird and bee floral picks if available to complete your Birds & Bee special. Promote this as something a guy could send to his lady at work!

Kite-Themed Special

– Create a kite by making an ‘X’ with left over stems. Glue diamond-shaped thin paper or fabric, to the tips to create the main part of the kite. For the tail, use thin wire with tiny bows glued to it. Have this kite flying high [Read more…]

Filed Under: Florists Only, Marketing Tips Tagged With: Marketing Tips, Spring Flowers, Spring Marketing

Scam Alert: Free Website Ends Up Costing You $$$$$$

January 19, 2011 by Jamie Jamison Adams Leave a Comment

Most of the time, when Flower Shop Network announces a scam it involves a single phone call and a single order. Once you’ve written that bad order off as a learning experience, it is over and you can move on to bigger and better things. However, the scammers are taking a different approach this time and hitting florists at the very essence of their business on a multiple order level – their websites.

These scammers are actually order-gatherers (OGs) who are capitalizing on the hard work that companies like Flower Shop Network provide florists. These OGs are conning florists into switching their strongly performing e-commerce url in exchange for a “free” website. Free isn’t really free in this case, because the OG expects in return [Read more…]

Filed Under: Florists Only Tagged With: florist website, Flower Shop Network, Scams

5 SEO Tasks For Success

January 8, 2011 by Jamie Jamison Adams Leave a Comment

For any search engines, like Google and Yahoo, to consider your business relevant, they need information about your company. The following tasks will help you get your information to the search engines.

____ Claimed Your Local Information in the following Places:

Google Places Page (Google Local) – Google Places Checklist
Yahoo Local – Yahoo Local Checklist
Bing Local – Bing Local Checklist
Yelp – Yelp Checklist
Insiderpages – Insiderpages Checklist
Angie’s List – Angie’s List Checklist
Citysearch – CitySearch Checklist

Be sure to include your Flower Shop Network eCommerce URL as part of your information. All FSN websites orders are 100% yours. Make sure your information is consisted every where.

____ Create keyword based Meta Information for every page of your website.
Select keywords that are relevant to the page. On Christmas page concentrate on one or two relevant keywords like Christmas flowers. For more information about meta information check out CComponents Google Uses To Determine Organic/Local Ranking

____ Encouraged online reviews.
Search engines value reviews. Encouraging reviews in all of the places where you have claimed your local information.

____ Exchanged links with other local business.
Links from other reputable websites act like a vote of authority to the search engines.

____ Participated in social media.
Being active in an online social community like Facebook is an indicator to Google that you are more relevant.

Do you have a website through FSN? As a free service with your website, FSN will help you claim your Google Places and Set-up a Facebook business page for your shop. Call your FSN representative for [Read more…]

Filed Under: Florists Only Tagged With: FSN Custom E-commerce Websites, Search Engine Marketing

Making Negative Reviews Work For You

January 5, 2011 by Jamie Jamison Adams 1 Comment

How To Handle Negative Reviews Every business, no matter how professional and competent, will be on the bad end of a negative comment sooner or later. Whether the comment is spoken or online, businesses can not keep this from occurring. Although you may feel as if the world is coming to end when this happens, it can actually be turned into a good thing. It all depends on how you handle it.

Studies show that when a negative review or complaint is handled professionally and positively, consumers actually gain trust in the company.

Below are a few ways to handle negative reviews on the Internet:

Go to the website hosting the bad review. Many, like Google, have review response policies.
Wait at least 2 hours before responding. Unlike phone or in-store complaints, reviews on the Internet don’t and shouldn’t be answered quickly. Give your self time to cool off and compose a professional and rational response.
Post your response. Be courteous and professional. Remember the response is as much for the author of the review as it is for the reader. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Florists Only Tagged With: Customer Service, Marketing Tips

New Spin On An Old Scam:Florist Beware

December 20, 2010 by Mandy Maxwell 3 Comments

Just a warning, this scam is going around again and has a bit of a new twist. Florists should beware of any email or phone call wanting the florist to provide large orders that will be picked up by a private shipper. Below is the scam email florists are receiving.

[SCAM MESSAGE] Thank you,I need 7 bottles and I need to know the total cost for the 7
bottles without shipping cost.Kindly let me know if I can possible
have my private shipper do a pick up for the items at your store.Do
you accept major credit cards?
Thank you once again.

Beat the scammers this Christmas, check out Avoiding Fraudulent Orders This Holiday Season.

This post is brought to you by local Denver florists.
Not in Denver? Use Flower Shop Network’s handy directory of local florists to find a florist near you!

Filed Under: Florists Only Tagged With: Scams

Increasing Humidity In A Bush Floral Cooler

November 15, 2010 by Jamie Jamison Adams Leave a Comment

Ask the Expert: How can I increase the humidity in my cooler
Hello, I just purchased a 4-month old Bush Refrig. cooler and plugged it in yesterday – I don’t have the manual and my thermometer shows that the humidity is very low – how can I increase this and what is the ideal temp for cut flowers in a floral cooler? Any help is appreciated ! Sheila

Flower Shop Network Plant Expert Reply:I’m not sure how to increase the humidity. However, I have contacted Bush Refrigeration. Hopefully I will have an answer for you shortly.

As for the ideal temperature range, different flowers do better at different temperatures. Most flower shops don’t have the multiple floral cooler in which different temperatures can be set. So, if you only have one cooler the best temperature range is around 37 to 38 degrees.

This post is brought to you by local Salem florists. Not in Salem OR? No worries, use Flower Shop Network’s handy directory of real local florists to find a florist near you!

Filed Under: Floral Resources, Florists Only Tagged With: Floral Refrigeration

How do you make selling extras a priority?

Ideas For Spring Flower Specials

Follow Us