The Wedding Florist
PODCAST

Episode 11 | Write your marketing strategy
for 2024

Welcome to another episode of the Wedding Florist Podcast. We've written our goals and set intentions to move forward into the new year. Whatever it is that you’re intending to do this year, the great thing is you can start with a clean slate building from where you finished off last year.

I’m here to help you today with your marketing strategy so that you can sell what you have on offer. I’ll help you put a plan together for the year. You may even want to break it down into 3 month stretches so it’s easier for you to focus on. So grab a pen and paper and sit down with me and let’s do this.  
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Today I want to take a look and give you clear actionable steps to help you build your strategy for you and your business.

Look back at last year - so you may already have reflected on the last year. What went well, and what didn’t go so well. What you would do differently. I want you to write it down. Could be that you worked with a freelancer and it didn’t go well, you didn’t finish setup on an event on time, you haven’t charged correctly so your pricing needs to be worked on. Or was it that you managed to get 25 installation setups and now you want to increase that number. You've grown your instagram account to 1000 followers and this year you want to grow this more.  Because you’ve got the numbers and you can use those numbers to do this every year. What you need are the figures and the data from the last year so you can build on it.    

Look at your revenue - You need to know how much money or revenue you bought into your business. Let’s not confuse revenue with profit. Revenue is the total amount your business got paid whereas the profit is the money left in your business after you’ve paid everything including your wages.  You can go 1 step further and look to break it down month by month. You need to write it down because that's the only way you will have the figures in front of you and be clear.  

Ideal Client - everything you start in business needs to start with your ideal client. And this client can change from year to year. When I first started doing floristry, I knew the basics about making bouquets and personal flowers so I did that so my ideal client was someone who wanted a small florist to provide these items maybe for their Civil wedding or engagement. Then as i learned to do installations my ideal client changed to someone who wanted installations. So look at your offers and solution and check to see if it still matches your ideal client.  

Messaging - Your messaging is what you are going to tell your customers in your marketing to draw them into your world. Firstly your core message should focus on what services and offers you provide. Do you provide flower installations for events or is it the personal flowers.  Do you provide everyday flowers or do you specialise in funerals.  You need to be really clear on this.  Then your secondary message should be about something that your clients can relate with you over the other 10 florists in your area. So think it could be you have young children, or you love the details in your work or that you may be well travelled and bring that experience into your floristry. For me my secondary messaging this year is about how I built my floristry business whilst working a full time job and how I lacked confidence but slowly over time I built it up.So really think about your messaging.  

Offers - the next step is to plan out your offers over the course of the year. Go back to your messaging and look at your services. Create your offers for the year. As a wedding florist you may have the same offer the whole year round and that’s fine. As an everyday florist you might want to offer seasonal flowers for the different seasons or even think of occasions throughout the year for example Valentines, Mothers Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.    

Planning your offers - The next thing is to plan your calendar and plan out when you want to start telling your people about your offers.  So for weddings and events December to February and August to October are usually engagement seasons and this is the time people start looking for wedding suppliers because they are excited. You want to tell people about you and your offers at this time. If you are a n everyday florist you want to be talking about valentines in January and February, Halloween in September and October and so on.  Also there might be times when you can’t work like childrens holidays or personal events in your calendar. This exercise will really help you block out the parts of the year you need to without feeling guilty whilst giving you a plan.  

Marketing - So now you have the who, the what and the why we need to work out the how. How are you going to get visible and get people in your world?   So I go through all the individual strategies in the WFA. But you need a multi-layered marketing strategy. So what are you going to do to get yourself out there - talking to other businesses, other venues and planners, getting featured, bridal shows, networking, social media or referrals. You need to put targets in place for each one so you make it a plan and have a measure to see what you are doing is working and bringing you the money.    

So for example social media - you want to pick one or two platforms. Look at your core messaging - so if you are doing just weddings then think about different types of weddings, colours, flower types, styles, problems the bride has. Then the secondary messaging could be looking at providing a whole experience: cake flowers, site visits, things to watch out for, new ways of doing things, trends and so on. Write it down because it makes it easier and this forms the content and the things you want to be known for. If you are using this strategy how are you going to get people into your DMs or over to your enquiry form.  

Another example is wedding shows - you’ve got to break it down. How many bridal shows will you be doing? How many clients are you going to pull in at each show? Be sure to exhibit at the right venue where your ideal client will attend.    You need to write it all down - this is normally 1-2 days work so it needs to be done diligently. And I would certainly take the day out and go into a hotel lobby or nicer environment to get this done as it will make you feel nicer, more focused and more motivated to get it done.  

Identifying knowledge gaps - You’ve planned all of this.  Do you have the knowledge and skill to execute it so that you have a successful outcome? If you have the knowledge gaps 2 things will happen - you will either procrastinate or you will take the action and not gain any results from it. So let me tell you what I did, I spent a fortune for my first bridal show and got nothing out of it - literally nothing. Because I didn't have a system to take down peoples details and then didn’t follow through with any of them to convert them to paying clients. In the WFA I go over different strategies to help you fill in the knowledge gaps.  

There is a lot of information here and actionable steps for you to take.  So it doesn't get so overwhelming you might want to break it down into 3 monthly sections so you look at the plan quarterly.    

Reverse Engineer - Lastly, you’ve got your offers and revenue targets for the year or the quarter. Did you know you can reverse engineer how many clients you will need and how many people you will need to reach out to. So let me give you an example. Say one of your minimum offers is £1000 and your revenue target is £20,000 for the quarter. If you divide £20,000 by £1000 then you know you will need to sell 20 of these packages to meet your financial target.  You also know that you will only end up converting 10% of your customers so you need to speak with or approach 200 customers to book the 20 you have targeted for.  

And so that’s it’s it for today.  

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Take a photo of this podcast and post it on your instagram stories tagging me in and I'll be sure to share some love back. If you think this podcast will help your biz bestie then be sure to share it with them too.    

So, here are various ways you can work with me.

I have free resources to help you in your business -  
Get your Complete Guide to Write Winning Proposals and
The Ultimate Social Media Kit with a social media calendar, florist specific hashtags and strategies to grow your audience.  

I know how hard and time consuming it can be to have the right resources in your business and that's why I have created various digital templates and resources that you can use in your business and these are available for instant download in the Etsy Store  

Watch the free training on how I went from hand ties to installations and grew my wedding flower business to a 6 figure profitable business.    

That’s it for now -  if there's a topic you want covering in the future let me know and I'll get it sorted for you.    

So until next week, stay blooming and take care  

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Hey there Wedding Florist

I'm Sarita B 

I'm the founder of Wedding Florist Academy. After qualifying in City and Guilds level 2 in 2014, I started my wedding flower business and learned how to sale my designs from hand ties to installations and grew a 6 figure business. I now enjoy helping other florists do exactly the same thing.  

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