Let's Get Inspired

Running a business is hard work. There aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week to get everything done. While the Garden Center Show staff can't pull on gloves and help you in the store, we can write and search for quality articles to help you grow your business. That's what we're sharing here. We hope these articles help inspire and energize you.

Making New Loyal Customers on Mother’s Day

Mother's Day is the third biggest sales day for fresh flowers, accounting for 26% of all holiday transactions. Flowers account for 80% of sales, with 64% bought for a mother and 40% for a spouse. Other items on the list include outdoor bedding and garden plants, flowering houseplants, and green houseplants. Upselling a plant that lives longer and requires more care can create a new customer.

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Connecting With Customers Through Newsletters

Independent garden centers can stand out from the competition by connecting with customers on a personal level through email marketing and newsletters. Newsletters should be personal and friendly, with a unique voice and perspective that customers will connect with.

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How Independent Retailers Can Prepare for the Possible TikTok Ban

TikTok has given entrepreneurs access to an audience they would not otherwise have, but a ban could threaten their livelihoods.

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Are You Using Reddit to Its Full Potential?

Content marketing is all about providing value to customers through education, community, and beauty, and Reddit is a great way to do this.

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Ask Shoppers to “Be Mine” on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and consumers are ready to spend more than ever in 2023.

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SMS for ICGs

Text marketing, also known as SMS marketing, is exactly what it sounds like: sending marketing messages to customers via text message. Many businesses already use text messages for promotional purposes.

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Using the Pantone Color of the Year in Your IGC

Pantone has announced that their Color of the Year for 2023 is “Viva Magenta.” They describe it as a shade of red “rooted in nature,” connoting strength, bravery, joy and optimism, powerful and empowering while being welcoming and witty.

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The Power of Email Marketing

One of the most powerful marketing tools you have at your disposal is your email list—not ads, not social media, but email. The biggest advantage of an email list is that it is yours.

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The Gardening Trends of 2023 You’ll Want to Prepare For

As we move out of the holiday season and into the new year, it’s time to start thinking about what your spring season is going to look like. Here are some of the top trends to watch out for in 2023.

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Five New Year’s Resolutions for IGCs

What can you do to make 2023 even better than 2022? If you’re looking for inspiration for New Year’s resolutions, here are a few ideas.

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Should Our Garden Center Join TikTok?

If you're passionate about not just selling but educating and entertaining, TikTok might be the platform for you. Don't just do a video on a new plant you have in stock; teach viewers how to best care for it. And above all, keep it real.

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How IGCs Can Thrive This Holiday Season

Millennials and Gen X will spend more this holiday season than last, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Independent garden centers can compete with big-box stores by offering better service and value. Collaboration with other local businesses will help you keep money in the local economy.

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Collaboration: The IGC’s Key to Success

No one business can capture every single customer. We all have a niche to fill, and we can coexist. As many small businesses slash marketing budgets, consider joining with other local IGCs to run ads together on a "support local businesses" theme.

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Reasons to Be Optimistic About the Future of Retail

High inflation is driving up the cost of just about everything, and cheap big-box stores are thriving as customers tighten their belts. But a recent survey by INSTORE Magazine shows that there’s reason for independent retailers to be optimistic.

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Halloween Marketing Ideas for 2022

Halloween's popularity is growing each year among kids and adults. US consumers are expected to spend $10.5 billion this season, up from $3.3 billion in 2005. The holiday owes its popularity to Millennials and older members of Gen Z, who have transformed many of their childhood hobbies into adult passions.

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Leadership, Management and Creating a Culture of Excellence

Did you miss it? Don't worry! Here's the video replay for Leadership, Management and Creating a Culture of Excellence webinar.

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Why Is In-Person Interaction So Important to Building a Business?

The pandemic forced us into awkward Zoom meetings. What makes them awkward is the lack of nonverbal communication. Video calls cannot replace or replicate the type of in-person interaction exhibitors get at a trade show.

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Visual Merchandising with Biophilic Inspiration

Did you miss it? Don't worry! Here's the video replay for the Visual Merchandising with Biophilic Inspiration webinar.

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Earth Day Celebration Ideas for Garden Centers

Earth Day is a great opportunity to bring both new and existing customers into the garden center. This article lists a few things garden centers can do to promote Earth Day.

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What’s Our Brand? Benefitting From Both Business and Personal Branding

Many business owners focus on creating a brand identity for their business, but building a personal professional brand can be professionally beneficial, as well.

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What is the Metaverse? Does My Business Need to Worry About It?

The metaverse can be a confusing concept full of big claims. This article covers basic concepts and past applications and offers some practical ideas for garden centers.

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Should We Be Doing Text Marketing?

Text marketing is the practice of sending promotions or other marketing materials to consumers via text messaging. This article covers how businesses can reach smartphone users with text marketing.

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Hiring & Recruiting Webinar

Did you miss it? Don't worry! Here's the video replay for Andrea Hill's webinar, "Hiring & Recruiting for Independent Garden Centers." The author of "The How-to-Hire Handbook for Small Business Owners," where she shared her insights on how to turn your business into a 24/7 hiring and recruiting machine.

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Social Standouts to Help Your Social Media Presence

Gardening, houseplant, and floral design influencers on Instagram and TikTok provide social media models for garden centers to follow to make their social media presences successful.

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Independent Retailers and the Great Resignation

This article explores how independent retailers are handling the "great resignation,” the pressure to provide more perks, pay, and flexibility to workers, and what lessons garden centers can do to retain employees.

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The Pantone Color of the Year: What It Means for Independent Garden Centers

Pantone has announced the 2022 Color of the Year: Very Peri. This article discusses the meaning of the choice and how independent garden centers can incorporate it into their merchandising and marketing strategies.

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What Inflation Means for Independent Garden Centers

Inflation is at a 30-year high right now, offsetting gains in employment rates and wages. Let’s take a look at how businesses large and small have navigated past inflationary periods.

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Making Curbside Pickup a Smooth and Satisfying Customer Experience

Curbside pickup is here to stay, even as the pandemic winds down. What can your business do to make it operationally efficient while giving customers a great experience? Read on to find suggestions from our retail experts, and turn curbside services into a brand differentiator for your store.

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2022 Trends to Watch Out For: Sustainable Gardening

The pandemic has brought millions of new gardeners to the hobby—over 18 million, in fact—and independent garden centers are keen on keeping interest in gardening alive. Whether seeking to beautify their home offices or turn their homes into a refuge of tranquility, these Americans have found in caring for plants a source of beauty, peace, and health. Health is becoming increasingly important for a number of Americans, not only their personal wellbeing but the health of the planet, as well. This new interest in health has been exacerbated by the intensifying climate crisis a well as growing awareness of harmful industrial farming practices.

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Sharing the Joy of Gardening this Holiday Season

The holidays are a great time to introduce someone to a hobby that will bring them joy for years to come. While some of the items listed above might not be ideal for the more experienced gardener, they certainly make the idea of gardening fun, simple, and exciting for the newcomer.

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Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Accounts

There are over four billion social media users in the world. To put that number into perspective, there are only 7.38 billion human beings in existence at this moment. That means that over half of everybody on the planet uses social media. We all know a social media presence is necessary for any business, but there’s more to it than just having a profile on Facebook or Instagram that you update when you remember it’s there. Getting started on social media, gaining a following, and reaping the rewards seems like a daunting, time-consuming task, but with a little forethought and dedication, it can be a rewarding experience.

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2022 Trends to Watch Out For: Outdoor Spaces

Though the front and back yard trends of 2022 take a variety of forms, they all have one thing in common: using available outdoor space as more than an expanse of grass to tend to. Whether turning a porch or patio into another “room” or placing bird feeders and planting wild gardens to bring nature closer to home, garden centers can provide examples of these new outdoor trends and inspiration for consumers.

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7 Tips for Supporting Employees’ Mental Health

The pandemic has led many working-class Americans to reconsider what they value in life, and now more than ever they are turning their backs on jobs that drain their mental health and give little in return. A myopic focus on short-term results and productivity could lead managers to ignore employees’ mental health, which will end up reducing productivity in the long run. To avoid becoming another casualty of the Great Resignation, and to attract applicants to long-vacant positions, its imperative that small business owners and managers make it clear that they are interested in protecting their employees’ mental health.

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30 Days of Content by Amanda Thomsen

Suffering from social media block? This graphic will give you 30 great content ideas you can use over the next month. Don't worry about next month - this calendar is so good you can just rinse & repeat!

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Amanda Thomsen "Into the Unknown" Replay

Did you miss it? Don't worry! Here's the video replay for Amanda Thomsen's presentation, "Into the Unknown." She spoke at Milaeger's Garden Center in Racine, Wisconsin on November 17, 2021 to an audience of independent garden center owners and professionals.

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2021 Holiday Season Overview

Experts are predicting the strongest holiday in memory, and consumers are expected to head into stores to avoid late-shipment woes. Make sure you're stocking deep to offset the risks of supply chain problems.

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7 Alternatives to Traditional Christmas Trees

This year’s Christmas tree shortage could leave many revelers in search of something to put their gifts under. It’s a great opportunity to direct customers to a different kind of Christmas tree, one that expresses their individuality, one that they can enjoy all year long. What are some other alternatives to Christmas trees you’ll be marketing this holiday season?

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5 Gardening Essentials for 2022

2022 is shaping up to be a year in which Americans focus on personal growth, undertaking projects that are meaningful to them. During the pandemic, many have already found satisfaction and meaning in gardening, and garden centers must do their best to help make gardening fun, easy, and satisfying for these customers. This list is just a small sample of the types of products that will help these gardeners achieve their personal goals. What other products do you expect to be big sellers in the coming year?

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When Marketing, Stay On Your Path

Using marketing tools wrong – or the wrong marketing tools – can cause you to waste a lot of advertising dollars, permanently reduce your average order value, and find yourself serving the wrong customers. This article explores how this can happen, and what you can do to avoid it.

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How the Light Gets In: Stop Pursuing Website Perfection

Stop thinking of your website as a creative product, and start thinking about it as a creative process. It isn't done, and it will never be done. But the act of working on your website a little bit every week or every month will mean it constantly evolves, and keeps your customers interested in the process.

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Lost in the Weeds? Make a Plan

Retailers spend more time and money marketing than ever before. One way to make sure those marketing dollars perform to their full potential is to do the work of creating a marketing plan. This article talks you through the process in clear, simple detail.

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Differentiation Strategies: How to Be the Same But Different

What does it mean to differentiate your Independent Garden Center, and how can you differentiate enough to matter, without going so far out of the box that you confuse your customers? Read on to learn some differentiation strategies that will help set you apart and simultaneously build trust.

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Courting Millennial and Generation Z Consumers

Gen Z and younger Millennials are enthusiastic buyers of houseplants and garden supplies. But they're also frugal, they have strong opinions about lifestyle, and expect a lot from their retail relationships. This article shares information about how to appeal to and win Millennial and GenZ business.

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