What Should Florists Do About Soaring Delivery Costs?

Delivery costs are soaring out of control, but it is important to look at the big picture before making rash decisions

For retail florists, delivery is a necessary service we provide to help achieve the delivery of a bouquet and ultimately, the card message. When we put too much focus on the service, we could deter clients who may look for other ways to achieve what they need.

Let's face it, although we create such beautiful designs with a gift from nature, in most cases the flowers are simply the vehicle for the message delivery. Our delivery service is the vehicle for the flowers. That being said, it's more important now to focus on working SMARTER, not harder!

Here are a few examples of simple changes you can implement to make your deliveries more efficient (thus saving money);

• Divide your delivery area into grids and zones. Plan the times of the day you will go there. Stick to this and only vary is a priority service has been selected. What's that? When a customer is asking for you to get somewhere within a 2 hour window or maybe 3, instead of saying, "it's be an extra, as if you are punishing them" Try, " I can offer you a priority service and that would guarantee to deliver within the time you expected since our drivers have already delivered to that area. If you wish, we could deliver tomorrow to where we would not need to priority service". Always show the client you have their best interest in mind. Be sure your staff is informed what the RUSH (or Priority) service cost is.

• Remember that we can only charge so much for delivery. Please be cognizant of that. Make t as affordable as possible, when a priority service is requested, charge a good amount for that.

• Please consider adding vehicle tracking devices like Network Car. I am not sure what they have now. BUT we paid between 20-25.00 a month and were able to see our vans at any given moment, track all the stops and the idle time. That is when the van could be waiting outside to be loaded. We were running 48 minutes a day and we got it down to around 15. The fuel costs are WAY to high now to do this. Be sure you get the devices that are INSTALLED in the vehicle so there is no way for mistakes to occur, battery dies or whatever. I think you all know what I mean...

Just because the cost of fuel and completing a delivery has increased, you don't have to lose money trying to perform your service. Let's get ready and make the next few holidays the best yet!

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Relationship Building: Pioneers in the Process of Buying Flowers Online

The first Beneva Flowers website - built by Rick Swier of Sarasota Online in 1996.

Way back in 1996 I had my first website created by Rich Swier of Sarasota Online. Rich was a true innovator and regular customer at Beneva Flowers. Rich would always tell me about his web development and built a website for Beneva Flowers before most people even knew what a website was – it was a very exciting time!

His company was soon bought out by Comcast, so I moved on to Coastal Web. The owner, Vince, was quickly overwhelmed in a few years as I was learning of all the ways I could retail. Soon it was too overwhelming, and it was time to move on. As I was searching, I also came across a contact in Japan who was looking for a way to sell flowers in the USA. Beneva was soon international as we were brokering orders daily into the USA form Japan!

As my needs were growing, I was getting frustrated by the lack of available options. I heard about a new local company that was just starting up in 1998 called Gravity Free. Owner Scott Heaps and Ray Villares were very innovative and looking to learn more about my needs. Considering I was all retail, Scott seemed eager to learn all he could. I was happy to teach him as Scott was eager to grow.

We quickly found a synergy together as we bounced ideas constantly for many hours and days on end together. I had ideas like reward points we turned into Petal Points and many groundbreaking ideas that Scott assisted. I partnered with Ken Young who helped with the reward points systems and Walter Knoll with operations of the website. It was an exciting time as we integrated with 3rd party sites and Scott and his team at Gravity Free were very helpful in building what we created.

I realized what we had was very special. I had committed to sign up and pay for the development of the floral retailing site called Flower Manager. It was my idea to build a group of the very best of the best florists across the country and so I offered an exclusivity. Scott wasn't thrilled because he was hoping to build his tech company and I was looking to build a user group.

Well, every shop ended up flying myself and my daughter Tina to every location where I personally met with the owners and understood their business in great detail so we could continue growing the application to compliment all sizes of use. We had shops like Griffins that was doing just two orders a day to shops doing 100 orders a day. They all quadrupled their sales and they grew on and on.

I wanted to continue creating new development and moved on to Floralapp. This was a mobile application that was not where Gravity Free excelled. They focused on traditional development as I was needing app development.

We created Floralapp and sold it to Teleflora who now owns it and will hopefully integrated it with the Teleflora retail florists.

In 2015 my company was bought out and I decided to shift gears and pursue web development by invitation. I was looking to align myself with retail florists with an eye for growth. There is so much opportunity to grow that I thought was a good time to pursue that. Leading technology that is still leading the way 21 years later!

As a pioneer in online marketing for the floral industry, Art Conforti has spent his entire career looking for opportunities that others miss. Now Google will translate entire web pages to dozens of different languages, but back in 2001 that was not the case. Undeterred by the barriers of time, language, and distance, Conforti partnered with florists from Japan to create a Japanese version of his website that produced orders for his flower shop in Florida. These types of partnerships, or affiliate programs, are more common today as florists continue to discover new and innovative ways to market their shops.

Sunday Before Valentine’s Day - Are You Open All Day?

Before I share this article, I ask that we first address the transaction - name and value.

#1 Order - This is what my competitors referred to a transaction as I slowly took theirs a little at a time.

#2 Relationship - The customer calling you trusts you. You earned this. You have the relationship-until you lose it.

When my competition was closed and I saw new customers calling and ordering JUST BECAUSE I WAS OPEN, I knew that was MY OPPORTUNITY! You see, I already had a catch-all system in place. When someone ordered for the first time, I target marketed them for the 2nd order with an aggressive account card mailing. If I got the 2nd order, I had the future relationship! If it’s easy to work with me and I am always available, why would they go anywhere else?

Art Conforti, owner of Beneva Flowers in Sarasota Florida with a bouquet of his signature long-stem rogue roses for Valentine’s Day. Beneva Flowers was open - and provided customers with unmatched service - 7 days a week - 365 days a year.

What is the value of a customer?

People order generally three more times after a first order. So if they are flower buyers and they order during a Valentine’s Day, the chances are pretty good there will be a second holiday order through the year. Add in an unexpected event or a birthday and you have four orders.

Average order with delivery is $85
$85 x 4 = $340.00

Customers looking to order flowers will call around until they find an open shop and that is where you have a 50-50 chance of ever seeing them again. I share this from a fact growing my business in Sarasota, FL. There were 30 florists in town when I started and when I sold after 30 years there were only six. Was it all me? Probably not. BUT, they came from somewhere!

• It’s one day, protect your future by securing the present.

• It’s competitive out there - showing up is half of it!

- Just sharing to help you possibly rethink what is best for your business. Only you know best – but I’m always here to help with tips and advice whenever you need it! Until then, be sure to visit out our YouTube channel for dozens of informative videos and guides -Art

Turn Trash Into Treasure With the Power of Great Marketing

It is hard to believe that great marketing can turn trash into treasure, but sometimes all it takes is adding a good spin to make people reconsider their perspective. Online marketing is exponentially more powerful and proficient than most people realize. When properly utilized, it can even completely reverse how the average person views their own values and beliefs by reintroducing an old idea and making it new.

One example of this are brand new pair of jeans from the mall. A generation ago, people who could not afford new jeans were often embarrassed to wear worn jeans with rips and holes. But things have completely changed from those days, and now it has become trendy to wear jeans that look old - and consumers pay a premium to do so. This is the power of marketing!

The closer you look, the more discover

A new spin on an old idea can change everything for a product or service, including its value in the market and how people view it. With proper execution, marketing is one of the most powerful ways to create revenue-boosting opportunities that not many businesses are taking advantage of today.

Another recent example of the incredible - if not unbelievable - power of marketing was a holiday promotion by the Lily Pulitizer store which offered special gift wrap with qualifying purchases totaling $400 or more. Although it may sound confusing, they would wrap any gifts you purchased in the store for free. But if you spent over $400, they would also ship Lily Pulitizer gift wrap to your house - as a gift of it's own!

While they certainly managed to put a new spin on gift wrap, the promotion itself seemed confusing - as well as disappointing - for several reasons. First off, the gift wrap as a gift was not even available in the store to take home, or to be used to wrap the item purchased in-store. While it was lovely gift wrap, it would have to be used at a later time to wrap a different gift.

Second, the gift wrap was only free for a purchase of $400 or more. This is not an easy number to reach for many people, and left out a lot of potential customers who may have loved the product but were unable to stretch the budget to reach that level. Meanwhile, a good portion of the people who did receive the promotion did not even know about it until after the transaction was already made.

As confusing as the promotion appeared to the average consumer, the marketing team at Lily Pulitizer knew exactly what they were doing when they offered their lovely wrapping paper as a gift. Using it on anything other than another gift from Lily Pulitizer would lead to certain disappointment for the recipient. Well played, Lily!

Reexamine your marketing efforts and make one change

The time is now to rejuvenate your business by trying something new. Some of history's most popular marketing started by taking a second look at unpopular item and reinventing it as on object of desire. Often times, one big change is all it takes to get yourself noticed by the right audience, and from there the sky is truly the limit.

Don't limit yourself to word-of-mouth advertising while your digital advantage remains untapped. Contact Bloomerang Solutions today to supercharge your local marketing efforts with proven results through social media as well as Google and Bing. From custom-built websites to location management to Google advertising and everything in between, we’re ready to make your business bloom! Call us today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here to get started today!

How to Get Good Backlinks (6 Simple Strategies)

One of the key ingredients to good SEO is having high-quality backlinks to your website. Backlinks are also known as “inbound links” because they are links on someone else’s website that directs traffic to your site. Generally, the more sites that backlink to yours, the more traffic you will receive and that means a higher site ranking from Google.

However, it is very important to remember that Google rewards quality much higher than it does quality. This means where the links are coming from are much more important than the number of backlinks connecting to your site. Backlinks from websites with a higher score than yours will help improve your score. Conversely, backlinks from sites with a lower rank than yours can hurt your score.

Backlinks play an extremely important role in boosting your search engine rankings because they are among the highest-ranking factors according to Google. This means that acquiring high quality backlinks to your site will strengthen your chances for a higher ranking. Here are a few simple strategies you can use to get high-quality websites to backlink to your site.

1. Find Backlink Opportunities on Your Own Website

The first step to improving your backlinks is take a look at your own website. Do you feature products from any vendors that may be willing to link back to your site? As long as you’re a good customer (and they have a strong website) then it never hurts to ask. Reciprocal linking is important to anyone paying attention to their SEO, so it isn’t an unusual or inappropriate request.

2. Check Your Analytics to Analyze Your Referral Sources

Next you can take a more in-depth look by checking your numbers on Bloometrix. The “top referral sources” will show you who is linking to your content and offering a backlink. Discovering the type of websites linking back to your site and the kind of content they desire may help you identify new opportunities to create similar content for more backlinks.

3. See What Your Competitors Are Up To

The best way to stay up to date on what is happening in the industry is to know what the others are doing. What type of content are they publishing and what are they doing to draw visitors to their site? Consider it “ethically spying” on your competitors in order to find their sources for backlinks and top-performing content, along with organic keywords and even what they’re doing on social media.

4. Pay Attention and Discover Opportunities

Your competitors’ backlink sources may provide you with some clever opportunities to earn a backlink for your site as well. For example, if they have a backlink from a forum or message board, you can create your own profile to earn a backlink. Signing up for their email newsletters and setting up Google Alerts will immediately notify you whenever they publish content or appear on another site.

5. Create High-Quality Content

One of the best ways to get backlinks is by creating unique, high-quality content that other bloggers, social media influencers, and industry experts find interesting or relevant enough to use and link back to your website. There are many different types of content you can produce including blogs, images for social media posts, and YouTube videos. In most cases you can do all that with your phone.

6. Get Involved and Participate Online

Writing testimonials on other websites and participating in online forums are also excellent ways to earn backlink to your site. Find websites relevant to your industry what have a high domain authority (DA) and submit a testimonial in exchange for a backlink. Actively participating in different forums will help you become an industry expert and will help drive traffic to your website.

These are just a few different things that everyone can do to improve search engine rankings by earning high-quality backlinks and increase the number of inbound links. If you would like to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or how to view your analytics through the Bloometrix dashboard, Bloomerang Solutions is here to help. Drop us a line here or call us anytime at (913) 806-1911. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and like us on Facebook for marketing ideas, customer service tips, employee training videos and more!