Garden Centers Shouldn’t Blog
You run a small retail greenhouse or nursery and you want to know if you should blog.
Blogging has to be seen in the context of marketing and sales. So there are two aspects you have to consider.
1)Your costs.
Take the time you spend writing and uploading a post (conservatively 20 minutes if it’s a decent post but if you aren’t a speed typist and a fast writer – you can easily hit 45 minutes). Understand you have to post regularly to make a blog worthwhile. And the main blogging time is spring when your target market is looking for information. Let’s say an hour/week.
Multiply your wage rate times 52 hours (one hour week). Let’s say that you make $20/hour for the purposes of this. That means your upfront cost is $1040 to produce this blog. But that’s not the way I used to budget my time in the nursery. You want me in November – I come for $20/hour. You want me in May – my time was over $200/hour and I’d still say no. I just didn’t have the time in May to do anything but eat, sleep, and run the nursery. So do figure out your real cost.
2) The Response.
Then take a look at subscription rates. If you get 200 subscribers to a commercial retail garden blog you’re doing well (and that’s assuming you’re a good writer so that folks will read you). Assume that at least half of those are non-local. Now you’re down to 100. Then evaluate response rates by posting a coupon. Typically, response rates approaching 5% are considered downright miraculous on the Net but let’s say you get 10%.
Bottom Line
Congratulations! You’ve just spent at least $1040 to get 10 customers into your garden business and your sales are discounted.
Your cost of acquisition is about $100 per customer and this isn’t likely a good deal when compared to something as simple as direct mail or other advertising options.
Blogging Garden Centers
But I know garden centers that blog! Sure you do – but they aren’t making money at it. They’re doing it for the heck of it – because somebody told them it was “cool” to blog. Or because that individual wants to create a national role within the trade for some other reason.
They surely haven’t thought out the consequences of spending an entire week of the year (one hour a week for 52 weeks=52 hours) on an advertising activity that’s going to create a customer acquisition cost of over $100.
In short, nobody at that garden center has run the numbers.
Does the same thing apply to websites?
No!
You need a website and you need it optimized for local searches. You need to have something up there that that speaks to local folks so when they search for a garden center in “anytown” – you’re going to pop up. Clear directions to your place (include coordinates for gps units) telephone contact points (not email – you don’t have time to answer email in your busy season) – the stuff you need to get these people into your store where you can make money.
You can write a few articles about gardening in your region – dealing with the specific problems of your climate and soils – to establish yourself as an expert resource. Write a new one every month or two to keep the site fresh. But don’t go overboard on it – you’re in the nursery business – not the information-business.
Does this apply to nationally known nurseries?
Short answer – it depends. The same kinds of numbers hold true – same kinds of costs, same kinds of response rates BUT the target audience is different. You’re not writing for consumers, you’re writing for the media. The garden media writes and reads blogs and those are the folks you want to have for your pull marketing efforts.
But you have to do it in a way that answers the classic copywriting question from the reader’s point of view “What’s in it for me?” If your commercial blog is about you – the media won’t read it and there’s quite a few out there that treat their commercial blog as a personal one. If your commercial nursery blog is about your reader – helping them in a some way, then you’re going to have readers in the trade. Tim Wood does a great job of this. He provides useful plant information, new plant info, and ties it all up in a story that just, ever so casually, happens to mention his company every now and then. 
But to return to my main point – there are other, far more cost-effective ways to publicize and make use of resources than blogging. It’s a long way down the list of marketing and sales efforts for local garden centers with no national objectives.
I’m going to pass by the main topic of this post, because there are a couple bigger points I’d like to address…
I completely disagree with your stance that “you’re in the nursery business – not the information-business.” That is how to spell disaster for any nursery…heck, most any business, actually!! We’re always looking for the latest and greatest new plant and products, but how well will it sell if the consumer doesn’t know anything about it? We have to teach them!
A large portion of my days are spent answering customer’s questions. Would those customers return if I didn’t answer their questions? No. If they can’t get accurate information from me, they will go somewhere where they can get good info.
Another point I strongly disagree with is not providing an email contact – “you don’t have time to answer email in your busy season.” I’d rather respond to emails in a timely matter at *my* convenience rather than be interrupted by phone when I’m busy. I personally get frustrated when a website does not list an email. Often I send email inquiries after hours – when *I* have time – rather than during business hours when I have other things to do.
@Josh -
Well, actually you’re *not* in the information business – you are in the nursery/gift business if I read your website properly. And anybody in business will tell you that providing information to customers is part of being in business. It’s part of the sales/marketing process. But my .02 is that you’ll distract yourself from understanding your real business if you think you’re in the information business when you’re not.
Go ahead and provide an email contact if that works for you. If I was running a local nursery business, I want to talk to those people rather than emailing them because the answers and information is different and the quality of that information is better in a conversation. I don’t want to answer emails from folks who will never be nor have a chance of being my customer but who found me on the Net. Frankly, after 18 hour days slugging in the nursery, the last thing I wanted to do was open an email – but you may be different. And I never answered phone calls when I was running retail. I’d return them at my convenience because a customer who’s there – wanting information so they could buy plants is far better than somebody who “might” come over depending on the answer. Somebody answered the phone every time it rang but I was never available but would call them back. Those who needed directions got it but customers – real live customers – got helped and given the right information so they could succeed first. I was in the nursery business but I provided information to my customers and I knew the difference between the two.
One thing you haven’t considered in your calculation is that if a nursery’s blog attracts another gardening blogger then that nursery will have an “associate” who links to it, tells other bloggers/gardeners about it and spreads the word for you. So your words go out into the world and get spread around the internet for you. Free advertising from happy customers…customers that you’ve developed a relationship with.
I’ve done it myself. And quite a few other Austin garden bloggers hype our local nurseries. It’s frustrating if a nursery has no net presence for us to point to and fantastic if they have a website, or even better, a blog or are on Twitter (like Botanical Interests seeds). Blogs build personal relationships and personal relationships build business…as I found out recently when the CEO of Burpee commented on something I wrote on his company.
mss @ Zanthan Gardenss last blog post..Week 05: 1/29 – 2/4
@mss @ Zanthan Gardens -
Actually I have considered it pretty carefully. As I’ve indicated, a good website is critical. But a blog and readership isn’t for the most part “local”. The small nurseryman doesn’t get as much of a payback from blogging as they do from making a great flyer or improving the look and feel from the store. It’s all about priorities and blogging (and the return on investment for it) just doesn’t cut in the real world of retail for the small nurseryman.
Put up a good website (yes), make it current (yes) but spend the time and energy to blog – no. The economics aren’t there and the garden-blogging world (contrary to the opinion of most committed garden bloggers)
is such a very small bit of the retail pie as to not make it worthwhile.
A website – seo’ed to be found in local search is a good investment. But what you have to understand is that of all the marketing things a small nursery may have time for – blogging will be at the bottom of the list for ROI.
And the bottom line – if I were a great nursery in your region with a decent website – you’d blog about me because I was a great nursery – not because I had a blog. So I still get the benefit without the work of blogging.
And the better nursery I am, the more you folks are going to write about me to your readership.
So as a nurseryman, I’m far better doing what I do best (running a nursery) than I am at doing what you do best (blogging)