5 Marketing Trends to Help Your Floristry Business Bloom in 2024
Move over Santa! We might just have the best, most helpful gift this Christmas! We’ve pulled together 5 marketing trends for 2024. Tick these off your wish list and get ready for a blooming bright year ahead. With timesaving AI tips that won’t leave you scratching your head to digging deep into your consumer insights, we’ve pulled out the blooming bests bits, top trends and sanity-saving social media must-dos all designed to help you boost your marketing mojo. Go on - stand out from the floristry crowd and let your business blossom in 2024!
1. Try AI – It’s Terrific Tech for Your Toolbox
There’s so much noise about the pros (and cons) of AI that it can be tempting to bury your head in a bunch of sweet-smelling blooms and forget it even exists. The truth is AI is here to stay and the prediction for 2024 is that even more businesses will be embracing it. If you’re not already using AI - it’s time to give it a whirl. Used well, AI can save you time, inspire your creativity and help you streamline your marketing efforts.
Worried about the ‘artificial’ nature of it all? Don’t be! 2024 predicts consumers’ caring less about who (or what) created content, and only that what they see is on brand AND delivers their expected experience. And that’s where you come in. AI is simply another tool in your marketing toolbox – so don’t be afraid to use it. At Queen Bee, we like to think of AI as “Another source of inspiration” – a way of sifting straight to the good stuff by using on-brand prompts that deliver flippin’ good results. AI can easily become the super sidekick (& work bestie) you didn’t know you needed! Delegate tasks, streamline services and tailor social media messaging in a jiffy. The best way to maximise this clever tool is to feed it with the information it requires to understand your business better. Need a helping hand? Why not take a look at our byte-sized training course designed to help you embrace ChatGPT.
Our Top Tips:
Start to experiment with AI to get a feel for what it can do.
Ask AI to repurpose your top performing posts – It’s an easy way to refresh your already on-brand content!
Use AI to give new ideas for *that* blog you’ve been meaning to write and some clever captions to promote it.
2. Enhance Your Eco-Friendly Florist Credentials
In 2024 your green credentials will continue to count. Sustainability is still one of the values customers care about so, if your business is firmly rooted in an eco-friendly ethos, then making the most of this across your marketing materials is a no-brainer. From talking about your minimal compostable packaging to explaining how you aim to reduce floral waste, letting consumers ‘behind the scenes’ on your sustainability practices can help give you a marketing edge. Customers are increasingly looking to make a ‘conscious’ choice so make sure you help them navigate your business with clear eco-friendly content and signposting across ALL your platforms.
Our Top Tips:
Highlight your sustainability practices across your socials, Insta Stories and emails.
From Fair Trade floristry to your pick of seasonal blooms, include your sustainability creds in your product descriptions, instore and at point of sale.
Add a sustainability page to your website or use your ‘About Us’ page to highlight your purpose driven business credentials.
3. Get Social Media Savvy
2024 is all about working smarter not harder. It’s time to really dig into the details and look at what’s working (or not) for your floristry business. Gone are the days where businesses, in fear of being left behind, are expected to be on every single platform. There is no need to do everything and be everywhere all at once. Having a clear social media strategy means you can take your foot of the content conveyor belt. Our advice? Focus on the platforms that resonate with your audience. Spend your time wisely creating content that delivers real results.
Our Top Tips:
Dig into your data – use your insights to find out what platforms are driving traffic to your site and (importantly) which ones don’t.
Understand your ideal consumer. What platforms do they use and what kinds of content are they consuming..so you can best serve them!
Master the art of cross posting – make your content work hard across your key platforms. This is not a copy and paste approach, it’s understanding each platforms’ strengths and tailoring your content (i.e. your language, word count and tech specs) accordingly.
4. Dabble in Direct Messaging
Conversational marketing is the newest kid on the block. Sliding into someone’s DMs (direct messages) might (initially) push you out of your comfort zone but if the likes of Instagram are investing in brand-spanking new DM-centred features such as Notes (text-only status updates that sit somewhere in-between an Insta Story and a DM) and Broadcast Channel (a one-to-many messaging system), you’d be daft to ignore this rising trend on oh-so-personal comms. DMs are now the preferred communication method for most social media users - especially if they’ve got a burning question or need some customer service advice. The benefits? A fab opportunity to create meaningful, tailored comms between you and your target audience. Hurrah!
Our Top Tips:
Encourage interaction with your audience – ask them to DM you with questions about products or to give feedback but always be clear from the start IF you will accept orders via DMs.
If you ONLY plan to take orders via your website, make sure you use your DMs to direct customers to your site to make a purchase. If DMs ARE driving sales, you might want to think about switching off other communication methods, so you don’t get overwhelmed checking everything.
No-one is online 24/7! So, make sure you’ve got an automated response for when someone does get in touch – and be clear on how quickly they can expect a reply. Even better, set up a helpful FAQ which can cover lots of questions whilst you’re offline.
5. Use Social Platforms like a Search Engine
Social platforms are predicted to give Google a run for its money as they evolve (and behave) more like search engines. With the rising demand for visually engaging content, consumers are using platforms like Pinterest and Instagram as places to seek new product inspo. With social media already being a place of discovery, opinions, reviews and recommendations, what better place to now shop? Florists can capitalise on this new style of social searching by making the most of eye-catching visuals and adopting a strong keyword strategy.
Our Top Tips:
Boost your discoverability. Use keywords that your audience would use on Instagram or Pinterest such as “Bouquet Inspo” or “Wedding Flowers”. Use these in your captions (not your hashtags). Need extra help? Search up popular phrases for floristry or flowers using Instagram’s handy search bar.
Post really gorgeous visuals. Florists can go to town with stunning imagery of floral arrangements, bouquets and blooms. High quality visuals boost your chances of engagement (likes, shares and comments), which adds to the ‘value’ of your content and helps the algorithm look favourably on you.
Localise your content. Make sure you add location hashtags and add location tags to your posts, as well as location based keywords in your caption to help boost the ‘searchability’ of your content for local audiences too.
We’re already excited about 2024! If you found these tips helpful why not sign up to our newsletter for florists? It’s full to the brim with tips, advice and strategies guaranteed to help your business bloom. If you’re keen to add some to marketing buzz to your business, then why not get in contact or make a beeline for our socials where you can find even more helpful hands-on marketing advice!