Everyone Needs a Little Geek

I have a new pick up line for the future. “Do you have any geek in you?”

“Would you like some?”

You NEED some!

I have ranted in the past about Social Media, but this time I mean it! My geek (a.k.a. my business partner and husband) just got back from one of his favorite conferences. This is the conference where geeks go to learn. He’s an Internet and social media geek. Notice I didn’t say “expert”. Geeks laugh at the term expert because as soon as you think you know it all – it all changes.

No one can be an expert, so beware of someone who claims to be. None of the self proclaimed “experts” in our industry were at this conference.

Surprised?

The online geeks are forging the way. There are no standards for this because it’s all too new.

I keep complaining that I have no mentors anymore. That’s kind of sad at 42, but I feel I’ve surpassed them with my business savvy and intellectual inquisitiveness. So who do I go to? It certainly isn’t anyone inside my family of failing nursery professionals. I’m smart enough to look outside and see what other industries are doing. How are they so successful in these hard economic times?

Can you guess the number one industry embracing social media?

It’s pizza. That’s right… freakin’ take out pizza. Dominoes and Pizza Hut have the two hippest, most happening, truly beloved social media campaigns right now.

Are you going to tell me people NEED pizza? They need pizza about as much as they NEED plants. So, why then are they so successful when folks have less money to spend?

Not to mention that fact that I think they both have pretty bad pizza.

So all you folks out there running garden centers and wholesale nurseries saying there’s no money for people to buy plants – you just keep right on thinking that.

It’s not true.

They’re buying more pizza than ever and having fun doing it. Social media has built Dominoes and Pizza Hut quite a tribe and/or community.

Do you have a community?

I don’t mean the community you are located in, I mean a dedicated community of followers who think you are the expert in everything there is to know about plants?

To quote Hans and Frans from Saturday Night Live, “Hear me now and believe me later!” I guarantee you don’t.

I’ve looked at all the big websites and Facebook pages for all of the nurseries and garden centers. I subscribe to every e-letter I can find.
I delete most of them now because they bore me. This is on sale, that’s on sale. Come to our Fall Festival. Come see our German Christmas baubbles. Blah, blah, blah.

Has everyone in the nursery industry lost their will to be creative and innovative?

If you want to be in business five years from now, you MUST embrace the online/social world or you will be on the ever-growing lists of bankruptcies and closings.

No matter what your highly paid consultant says, I’m telling you for FREE – Social media is not a fad! It is the biggest cultural shift since the industrial revolution. If you listen to them, your business will die. Have they shared these facts with you?

• Over 50% of the World’s population is under 30 years old.

• 96% of all Millennials have joined a social network

• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US

• Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web

• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment and 95% of those are using Linkedin

Here’s the kicker. This is what they don’t know….

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old women.

Hmmm…isn’t that the “golden” group of customers the consultants talk about? Isn’t this the group who has money to spend? Aren’t these the ones who already shop in garden centers? Isn’t this the group they tell you to keep and concentrate on? Isn’t this the group that isn’t hip enough to be a part of social media?

Facts are facts people.

They may be on Facebook because they want to see what their kids or grandkids are doing. They may be connecting with old colleagues and classmates and childhood friends, but the bottom line is – they are there in force, and they are looking for interaction. They are looking to engage and share their life experience and knowledge.

They are currently your best customers, right? So why aren’t you engaging them there?

Still think it’s not worth it?

What about the next generation?

The next generation of buyer is all about real time. If its not real time they don’t want it. They don’t use voice mail, email, websites, etc. It’s all twitter and Facebook.

Will they find you? Will they find what you’ve posted interesting? Read your last ten Tweets and Facebook posts. Do you find them interesting? Are they just sales announcements?

If you don’t find them insightful and interesting, who will?

Did you know 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertising? What are peers saying about your store? You brand?

It’s happening right now and it will grow exponentially, but potential customers will no longer need to search for products and services. Products and services will find the customers and tell them what they NEED.

Why is the garden center and nursery industry still waiting to hear what the customers want? Why not follow the food and fashion industry? Let’s grab this sick bull by the horns and make them think they need our products. Make it so they can’t live without them. Make it a fun, easy, exciting and hip shopping experience.

Not many garden centers are fun, exciting, hip and easy to shop. Take a look at the employees. Are they fun, exciting and hip?

Or are they 55 year-old women wearing stretchy, mom jeans and kitty cat sweatshirts under their uniforms? I’m not saying 55 year-old women can’t be hip. I certainly plan to be hip at that age, but if the sales staff is hip exciting, it exudes throughout the store.

Having fallen in love with and shopped extensively at Terrain @ Styers, let me tell you, that’s one hip store with an über-hip sales staff – and some of them are way over 55 years-old. When I go in the store, I feel hip and younger. Look at their merchandising for forcing bulbs. It’s certainly much hipper than a plastic pot with a foil cover on it or a glass basin with colored rocks, eh?

Isn’t that what all shoppers want? Even 55+ year-old females want to be hip.

Terrain hasn’t yet embraced social media, but if they do…lookout! They already have the hip products, the hip merchandising and hip, fun loving employees. Add social media to their mix and they’ll be a tough act to beat.

If you plan to sell to the hip 55+ crowd and future generations, you better take a look at what you are presenting. Take a look at your website. Take a look at your store and the products you sell. Take a look at the way you reach out to customers and how you communicate.

Something’s got to change because what you are doing right now isn’t working. Garden centers and nurseries around the US are failing. The “chin up, things will get better if you have a positive attitude” plan isn’t going to work in the future.

The World has changed. It’s your turn to change.

And by all means…avoid social media like the plague. That’ll leave more room for me to come in with the hippest online mail order and the hippest coolest garden center, and kick you all in the proverbial ass.

Trust me…although it would be nice to have some competition, I’m counting on it.

Happy weeding!

Angela Treadwell-Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau

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PS. Let’s talk a little about an anti English ivy revolution while we’re on the subject.

I’m so tired of passing trees along the highway and in older neighborhoods that are covered with ivy. What did they do to deserve this?

If you are a landscape designer or a nursery/garden center selling ground covers, please consider telling your customers with drought ridden, hard to landscape shady spots to try Tiarella cordifolia ‘Octoraro’ as a substitute.

This new selection has proven to be a super drought tolerant, wonderful spreading native ground cover in my very dry garden in Baltimore. Better yet, it flowers in the spring; magnificently huge leaves all summer, and wonderful fall color. What more could you ask for? As far as natives go, it spreads very quickly, yet it won’t ever climb a tree or take over any shrubs in its path.

This new selection is part of The River Series of trailing foam flowers from Sinclair Adam. Sinclair has been awarded the moniker Pharroah of foam flowers by his nursery industry peers for good reason. He knows his foamies and loves to work with them and tell people all about them. He is a valuable resource and I’m happy to be representing his breeding.

Try this plant and let me know how it does. I know you’ll love how it performs and it will become the ivy (and vinca) replacement for the future if I can help it.