How To Create A Professional Brand For Your Garden Center

Brand, initially coined "brandr" by the ancient North Germanic language, originally meant "a burning piece of wood or a torch." The meaning later changed to represent cattle ownership and other goods like wine boxes. Today, branding is a standard business term often mistaken for marketing. But business branding is not advertising or marketing. It is not the logo that so conspicuously shouts the image of a business or the colors that appeal to a carefully curated demographic. No, business branding is a phenomenon that today gives a company its true value as perceived by a customer's mind. And like its origins, it sheds light on the nature of the products and services a company produces. Branding is vital because it is the pull that gets you repeat customers, high product margins, and an advantage over your competitors. Knowing that, how do you create a professional brand for your garden center?

A Professional Brand Is Only As Successful As Its Differentiation Abilities

This means that your business brand must stand out among the internet noise. And then, once you stand out, you must hold that position and grow up and onwards among your competitors. The challenge here is that you already have many established garden centers grabbing this attention.

That is why you must work backward to differentiate yourself. Take a company like Ford Motors, for example. Its brand is born from its heritage since it has been in business for many generations. Heritage works because it conveys that what the company is doing must be suitable for it to have survived for a period.

A much more appealing example for a small business that wants to grow fast would be McDonald's. Besides its franchise model
, the company uses just-in-time processes to keep up with the demand for fast food. Prides Corner Farms is a gardening company that applies the same branding principle as McDonald's.

The nursery has built a reputation for delivering stock to different garden centers every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which ensures their clients always have stock. Other companies like Apple, Tesla, and Amazon are identified mainly because they provide unique, innovative ideas.

Evidently, there are many examples to study and learn from, but one thing stands out, each successful and well-known brand has a differentiation principle. Working backward can help you figure out what you want your garden center to be recognized for. That is, develop a unique selling proposition
and use it to settle on your professional brand identity.

Finding Your Unique Selling Point (USP)

Like branding, your USP is not your vision or mission statement. As the name suggests, this should be the unique thing about your garden center that makes you stand out from your competition. A place to start is to ask yourself why your customers prefer to purchase from your garden center instead of your competitors.

Think of a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce, and your mind automatically thinks of fast cars and luxury cars, respectively. Why? Ferrari's unique selling point is fast cars, while Rolls Royce is known for offering luxury cars. What about a Jeep and a Volvo?

Did you think adventure and safety for both? So, in the same fashion, what is it that you offer that makes your business stand out? What do you offer that is better than every other garden center in your market?

Remember, the best brand identity will also have a lasting impression. Therefore, answers like low prices, quality products, and better location do not apply. You are in the gardening industry, meaning your competitors are probably offering the very same high-quality products you are. Besides, established businesses might be offering a more comprehensive product line and have a more attractive and better location.

Therefore, your differential factor must give your customers the perception of individuality. A straightforward example is positioning yourself as the only garden retailer in your region selling exotic garden plants. Even though you cater to other gardening needs, exotic garden plants should be your warehouse's most extensive stock proportion.

Tell A Story

When determining your unique selling proposition, focus on the story you want to tell your target audience
. A well-developed narrative will attract customers to your brand and inspire loyalty and a close connection.

Ensure your story has an element of conflict or adversary and make it transparent. Did it take years to find the perfect blend of exotic plants that thrive in your region? Tell your audience the pains you went through searching for the ideal seedling.

Where did you start? What challenges put your efforts at stake? How did you overcome all your challenges? Telling the real story behind your company will give you the unique selling proposition you need to create a brand.

Therefore, use your most emotional and exciting story to create a connection with your audience. Determine the message in your story and use it to sell an experience. Airbnb does this exceptionally by offering travel diaries of customers that rent rooms.

Create Inviting Content

Catchy, conversational, and valuable content is prudent when selling your garden center brand. When deciding what content you want to share, ensure it is informational yet relational. This is for your brand identity, therefore, do not focus on making sales and announcing your promotional offers.

Instead, use your story to tell your clientele what your business focuses on each season. Keep the message consistent throughout the year. As a rule of thumb, make 60% of your content inspirational, 30% of your content educational, and the remaining 10% about sales.

Include videos and pictures in your content to help appeal to your audience. Long text messages might be complex for busy gardeners to get through. Besides, visual content is retained and understood faster than text.

If you are too busy to create new and authentic content, repurpose old content and post it as blurbs on your social media pages. Update the information in the content and post it as a fresh piece with new images and videos.

Get assistance from any of your gardening employees who love to write and garden. They will have a plethora of ideas, insights, and content to share with fellow gardeners. Make it personal by offering incentives to your employees that encourage them to share their experiences.

For instance, offer a gift card they can use to purchase gardening products in your store and encourage them to write about the products or plants. Then offer an additional incentive for the content provided.

Encourage them to take photos and videos of your garden center or their fellow employees working in the store. It is much easier for one employee to take a video of their colleague practicing what you preach, or more so, offering excellent customer service to your customers. And this is the type of content you want to be associated with your brand.

Where We Come In

The Erply POS solution is designed to help small businesses grow
through scaling or franchising. For instance, our document design has tools and features you can use to showcase your professional brand through invoices, labels, reports, and shelf tags. You can additionally offer value to your customers by adding gardening information to your plant descriptions and presenting them as gardening guides to your customers. Our efficiency and thoughtfulness are bound to help your business stand out from your competition. Try our demo today,
or get a free consultation to find out more about what we can do to help your garden center brand itself and grow.