Facebook Marketing for Florists and Gift Shops

Using Facebook as a hub for your promotional needs is both inexpensive and effective. Facebook’s multimedia approach, with an emphasis on photos, is perfect for extending your business’ reach and creating many new leads. But the big question is: how do you successfully harness this power? Well, we’re here to walk you through it.

First, let’s cover the Return on Investment (or ROIs) Facebook marketing can bring to both florists and gift shop owners:

1. Engage with your customers personally.

2. Boost traffic to your website.

3. Find new customers through the friends of your fans.

4. Create a showcase to display and receive feedback on your new products

5. Create a lasting bond with customers.

An excellent way of achieving these ROIs is through the use of promotions. Four very useful types of promotions you can launch on Facebook are:

-Sweepstakes
-Photo Contests
-Vote Contests
-Product Showcase

Sweepstakes:

Sweepstakes are the simplest to execute of the four and are highly recommended for florists and gift shop owners who are just starting out. The barrier for entry is minimal; all an entrant needs to do is submit their email. Sweepstakes create buzz, engage customers, and can lure the friends of your fans into liking your page.

This example, courtesy of Mama’s Flower Shop, is both simple and effective. The store is looking to forge relationships with new customers and improve relationships with current ones, and thus has decided to give away a $50 gift card.
Pro Tip: Although this may seem like common sense, make sure you give away your business’ own products. Sweepstakes are meant to be promotion for your products, to build buzz and get customers excited. You’d be amazed how many companies that aren’t Apple give away iPads.

Photo Contests:

With the advent and subsequent widespread use of smartphone technology, taking digital photos and sharing them on Facebook has become easy as pie. Such simplicity has resulted in hundreds of millions of photos being added to Facebook every day. Coupling this information with the fact that photos on Facebook receive 53% more likes than other content, and hosting a photo contest begins to look like a pretty good idea.

User-submitted photo contests are an excellent way to have your customers immersed with your brand. For florists and gift shop owners, you can make the theme anything from “Show us your prettiest flower” to “Feature our product in the photo”, which is perfect for both getting the entrant engaged with what you’re selling, but it also doubles as free publicity.

This examples features Mama’s Flower Shop again. In it, they are running a photo contest to entice their customers to submit a photo of their best floral-themed photo. This will bring them a ton of new reach from the people sharing the photos.

Pro Tip: Unless you have a large Facebook fanbase who engage with your page frequently, you’re going to want to keep your photo contest simple. However, don’t forget that photo contests are perfect for immersing your customers in your products, and as free promotion. Maintain a balance between both.

Vote Contests:

Like photo contests, vote contests get customers interacting with your brand in a personal way. Unlike photo contests, however, the barrier of entry is much less. Entrants don’t have to upload any of their own content, thus many more people are likely to enter.

Vote contests also serve as a way to find out, direct from your customers, what your most popular products are. And, depending on the prize you’re giving away, entrants may get their friends to enter, increasing feedback and adding new potential customers.

Here’s a great example of how you can run a Vote Contest for your flower or gift shop:

Gord’s Gifts launched a vote contest to determine which one of their three best selling Valentine’s Day-centric items was most popular. In return, Gord’s offered a $50 gift card.

Pro Tip: A straight and to the point title for your vote contest is essential to its success. Keep it direct so customers know exactly what’s going on.

Product Showcase:

Showcasing your products on your Facebook page is an easy way to get users browsing and sharing the items you carry. No doubt your fans will share the products they are passionate about, effectively engaging them.

WIth the myriad of flowers and bric-a-brac out there, it can be hard for customers to choose which product best suits them, so by presenting as much of your catalog on Facebook as possible, you’re making yourself an easy choice.