Ask the Experts - What’s the best marketing idea you’ve ever had?

Each month in this space a member of the Garden Center Retail Advisory Panel answers questions pertinent to effective business operation. For March, Ken Lain, owner of Watters Garden Center in Prescott, Ariz., addresses successful marketing.

The idea: Competition is fierce in Arizona, where we have our garden center, Watters Gardens. Few have been left standing, street-front stores are boarded, malls are empty except for the anchors—you folks in Nevada and Florida know the scenario. Desperation has forced competition upon us that did not exist before the economic drop. Everyone is selling seed, bulbs, fountains, pottery—and, now, vegetables, herbs, even trees and shrubs. 

We saw this freight train coming down the track two years ago and decided to go back to our roots and what made the garden center famous: the plants. What came out of this brainstorming session was the Watters “Plant of the Week.”  The calendar is broken down into grower weeks, and a different plant is featured each week. Each plant department is featured during their peak, so no manager is left out. 
 

Some of the rules: Plant of the Week cannot be found in any other competitor’s store (make up a different name if you have to), and it must be unusual, but something everyone in the community could want. Price must be under $50, but over $8. It must look perfect when featured and have vendor support during the peak seasons of April through July. The product will not be discounted, only featured as another hand-picked plant for local landscapes. 

Oh, and one other thing: Hardgoods are never, ever featured, only plants.

The plant is posted in the newspaper, on the front of our website (http://wattersonline.com/), in our newsletter, radio ad spots, TV commercials, merchandise signage at the garden center, Facebook posts, tweets, newspaper column mentions, radio show shout outs and others. 

We are the undisputed plant place for our region. Most ads hit Friday as a weekend reminder, “If you are going to garden, Watters is the place for really cool plants you can’t find anywhere else.” Implied is that we also have all the horticulturalists (plant nerds) that know local plants, all the information to make them grow right, and the stuff to make plants grow, thrive or heal. 

Watters has experienced sales increases around this rally point in an state that has been very hard hit by the economy. The program moves so many plants we will continue it through 2012, and vendors are asking if they can be included in the program.  

Watters Garden Center’s “Plant of the Week” marketing program features this type of ad, which not only touts a new variety every week but helps the store create a regularly branded promotion.