Salisbury Greenhouse: Digging into the new market

When traditional advertising like newspaper ads and TV segments were no longer working well for Salisbury Greenhouse, third-generation owner Rob Sproule decided to allocate those advertising dollars to a more direct marketing effort.

From that came “Dig In,” a bi-annual magazine distributed to 30,000 residents in the Alberta, Canada area. The 25-page magazine provides workshop information, comprehensive variety listings (i.e. hardy vegetables, new annuals), pest control suggestions and color container combinations — or “recipes” — as Sproule calls them.

The magazine, which is also available in an e-version on Salisbury Greenhouse’s website, is designed like a consumer magazine and breaks down gardening jargon into easily comprehendible articles. It has been a huge hit with customers, most notably for its container recipes. Sproule says he sees customers come with the magazine folded open to those pages, looking for the exact plants he suggests for attractive height and color combos.

The magazine is produced by two part-time designers who take and edit photographs, and Sproule himself, who contributes most of the written content.

As a longtime writer and published author, Sproule takes pride in providing this content marketing geared toward the younger, less-experienced garden center customer. The trick is talk to the customer when relaying the information on this platform, instead of talking at them with lots of information they may not be able to understand, Sproule says.

“You have to be able to say [the content] out loud to yourself, and it has to sound like something you’d say to a friend over coffee, and if it doesn’t, then we have to return to it and edit it,” he says.

For other garden centers that may want to pursue this marketing venture, he also suggests finding a balance between teaching the customer and showing them what they can practically accomplish.

“If you just educate people, they’re going to get bored,” he says. “If you just inspire people, they’re going to get overwhelmed. So you have to do both of those at once so you educate people and you make them creative and confident about gardening at the same time.”

The best part about the magazine is its ability to reach customers who then make Salisbury their go-to IGC. At the same time, it doesn’t make that “hard sell” that can deter customers, like so many other types of advertising. A handful of ads are included in the publication, but they don’t stick out, and are instead subtle recommendations. Mostly, the goal is to be informative, Sproule says.

“So when someone is at home, there are aphids on their Virginia creeper, [and] they don’t know how to deal with them, I want them to think about my company and go to my company’s website,” he says. “That’s the goal.”