Posts by josh

A Florist’s Guide to Donating

October 2nd, 2019 Posted by Blog, floral system, Florist Operations, Florist Profits 2 thoughts on “A Florist’s Guide to Donating”

Florists interact with charitable donations in many ways!

Donating allows you to help other people in need and give back to your community. Businesses have more incentive to donate, too—charitable giving is good PR, and if your donations qualify, you can get tax deductions.

As much good as donating can be, you want to be careful about doing so. Here are some dos and don’ts of donating so that you can be sustainable and helpful to the community.

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Donating Based on Finances 

The first rule is a simple one: only donate within the limits of your business. Most businesses donate a small percentage of their gross yearly income, around 6%. You can follow that number, or adjust it accordingly. You can also just have a donation fund among your finances, specifically used for donations to charities.

If your finances are unstable or you are having trouble with making a profit, then don’t donate beyond what you can. If you want to save up, you can do volunteerism on charities rather than simply giving money. The disadvantage of this is that most of the time, you cannot use time donated for tax deductions, however, materials and mileage used towards volunteering can qualify, so keep track of these.

Floral Business Values

Donate to charities that align with your business’s values. Try to focus on local groups, because as florists, our brand and revenue benefit more from the vicinity. Getting more hands-on and involved with in your area helps in getting known and getting your name out.

Although you can also opt to donate to national charities, it might be hard to get your brand recognized, and staying near has more benefits on your community in the first place.

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Donating Smartly

Donating smartly means making sure that the charity you’re donating to is a legitimate 501(c)(3) registered with the Internal Revenue Service so that your donations will qualify for a tax deduction. There are some online services that you can use to validate a charity for this purpose.

Meanwhile, other services will help evaluate the impact of your donation—even some well-known charities may allocate funds less effectively than other charities, meaning a local donation for instance will have less weight in your community.

If you are volunteering, try to make some promotional events about them to get the word out, inspire some outside volunteers and earn some good PR.

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Tracking Donations

Keep track of your donations! This is by far the most important part of donating for a business. You need to know how your donations are considered according to the tax rules. You might need to file a tax return where you itemize all your deductions.

You’ll also need a proof of your donation so that you can file for a tax deduction. Material donations usually take on fair market value. Being diligent in keeping track of your forms will get you a long way with them.

Donating has always been a direct form of a humanitarian action, a way of helping out people and causes in need of aid. Not only is it good for PR and tax deductions, it also boosts employee morale, because it makes them feel that they are doing something good for the community as part of your shop. However, one of the biggest pluses of donating is that it shows that you care about the community, and you are trying to make it a better place to stay on, for everyone.

 

Florists, do you have any advice on donations? Please share your comments below! 

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Priming Your Floral Business for Sale

September 25th, 2019 Posted by Floral Design, Floral Supplies, floral system, floral systems, Florist Ecommerce, Florist Operations, Opening a Flower Shop 0 thoughts on “Priming Your Floral Business for Sale”

As a business owner, there may come a time to embark on a new adventure!

You might have also found that your business is ripe for sale!

The general technical term of selling and buying a business is “mergers and acquisitions,” commonly shortened to M&A, and this process can take a fairly long time to process, anywhere from 6 months to several years. However, in order to actually sell your business, you should prime your business so that potential buyers will surely buy it and you can sell it to its maximum value.

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Keeping Records

One of the most important ways to prepare your business for sale is to keep your books and accounting records clean, transparent, and organized.

When buyers seek to buy your business, financial records are one of the first things they will ask to see. Businesses that follow generally accepted accounting practices are also valued higher than those that don’t. It also gives the image of a well-managed business, so you should try to ask help from your dedicated accountants, or hire an accounting firm to do the job for you. Buyers will look for the past five years of your records, so preparing these is crucial.

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Prepare Your Floral Business

To fully prepare your business for a new owner, it should also have management that’s not heavily dependent on the owner. Your employees should not be reliant on you to function efficiently. You need to put up an effective organizational chart that clearly shows the chain of command.

You also need to establish a clear set of goals and objectives (often in the form of a vision) which guide the processes and operations in the business. By making your manpower self-sufficient, you can assure the buyer that the business will not go down by the time it is sold to them.

Establishing a good image for your business’s brand also helps increase the valuation of your business. A good way to create that image is to boost your online presence, such as in social media and search engines, optimizing it to be more easily found. You should try to make your website and social media ratings to be positive.

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Lastly, think over about when you want to sell your business. Selling a business is often regarded as a smart business move for entrepreneurs, but you also need to be smart about when. You are a veteran in the industry, you know the trends and therefore you know when your business can be most valuable. Take advantage of this time and prep your business for selling.

 

Florists, have you sold or purchased your flower shop recently? What are some good key advice for those who are wanting to sell or purchase a flower shop? Please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

The Importance of Keeping Your Software Up-to-Date

September 18th, 2019 Posted by Blog, floral system, floral systems, Florist Ecommerce, Florist Operations, Florist Point of Sale, Florist POS, florist technology, Florist Websites, florist-software 2 thoughts on “The Importance of Keeping Your Software Up-to-Date”

Why should florists keep their software up to date?

You might think it odd for florists to spend time finding the right software tools. After all, most of your job revolves around having a good eye for design and a floral touch. However, when you get into the business, you’ll quickly realize that having convenient software tools is essential.

There are software applications available that let you create customer accounts where you can store related information like saved addresses and preferences as well as their order history. You may also have a website to allow customers to order online. Perhaps the most important reason for this focus on software is because of credit cards, in order to have the right software to handle payments from different cards.

Florist Point of Sale Software

Some of the software applications that you might need are POS software. A POS, or point-of-sale system, for a flower shop, needs to have a database that lets you store customer accounts and do the things mentioned above.

A good florist POS system should also allow you to process cards from different merchants or your own. 

There are also the management systems which can include a POS system, among other things. Some advanced management systems let you store and even create event proposals with ease, some even providing you with a professional template to start with.

This also lets you generate reports in either a weekly or monthly basis. One other great feature of these management systems is that they can track your sales, with integration with your POS system, which is perfect for your accounting books. There are many other kinds of software applications that can be helpful to a flower shop, like Floranext Advanced Point of Sale

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Keeping Software Updated

Many companies don’t bother updating their programs, and some even refuse to update, thinking it’s just a waste of time and disk space. Little do many people know that working with outdated software brings greater risks to your workflow, and can bring more inconvenience rather than help. Many are skeptical of updates, but here are a few reasons that you should not be!

Updates, especially those that improve the program into a new version, usually bring a new array of features for the software. These new features can be useful to add to your workflow, especially the quality-of-life feature improvements, and some are just fancy features that you can freely turn off or opt-out if you don’t feel like using it.

New features can also let you stay on top of the latest trends in the industry. When there are new standards rising like the digital wallet, updating can let you cater to new trends with no problem.

Minor updates, on the other hand, tend to fix bugs that have been reported. This is one of the biggest reasons for you to update your software to the latest version. If you are one of the users who are experiencing these bugs, then it is imperative for you to indeed update, no excuses.

With software programs that are cloud-based, like Floranext, your software is automatically updated when bugs are fixed or new features are developed. 

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Along with fixing bugs, the latest version of the software overall improves the reliability of the program. In time- and performance-critical fields like businesses, reliability is champ, and developers understand this.

That’s why they encourage you to update to the latest version because they have tested it to be more reliable than the one before. You would not want your POS system to break down while you’re handling payments, right? 

Again having cloud-based software like Floranext Point Of Sale System, your system is automatically upgraded to the latest update. 

 

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

 

BloomsBy – Wedding Floral Management Software

September 17th, 2019 Posted by Become A Floral Designer, Blog, events, Floral Design, Floral Supplies, floral system, floral systems, Florist Operations, Florist Resources, florist technology, wedding/events, weddings 1 thought on “BloomsBy – Wedding Floral Management Software”

 

Create Beautiful and Profesional Proposals with BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software

 

BloomsBy supports floral designers every step of their floral event planning. You can create professional wedding/event proposals, increase profits, create floral contracts, stem counts, and collect payments all with BloomsBy’s floral wedding management software available on PC/Mac and iPad app. 

 

Features of BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software

 

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Make Your Job Easier

With BloomsBy Proposals, floral designers can create beautiful and professional proposals in a matter of seconds. No more lost and cluttered information, keep track of your clients requests in one location.

Easy to Use

With the new BloomsBy Proposal user interface, BloomsBy proposals are easy to create, organize and manage. Floral designers are able to build a floral arrangement from the bottom up with flowers and supplies.

Customize Each Proposal Email

Add your business’ personal touch by adding a personalized message to each proposal with a customizable email template. Each client is different and adding that personal touch matters.

Inspiration Page 

Add your customer’s inspirational photos to the proposal as a guide for creating the flowers for their special event. 

 

bloomsby-payment and invoices

 

Take Payments

Track, schedule, and take customer credit cards for deposits and payments.

Increase Your Profits

Add markup, labor and then easily check to make sure you are pricing your flowers correctly. Making sure your weddings and events are fairly priced yet profitable.

Flower Catalog

With the BloomsBy Proposals flower catalog, it gives you the opportunity to record your pricing for your flowers and use these to help build your beautiful and professional proposals.

 

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Building Components

Build components like bridal bouquets, boutonnieres and more by adding the specified number of flowers for every arrangement.

Shopping Lists

Flowers and supplies composed to build your proposals can help generate a shopping list to order flowers and supplies.

Cloud-Based Software

Use BloomsBy proposals on your own computers, choose the best platform for you. Available on PC/MAC and iPad App.

 

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Why try BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software?

BloomsBy understands that florist wedding and events are a core part of a floral business and creating beautiful proposals can be challenging.

We’ve all been there before: notes, images, spreadsheets, word documents and countless emails sent back and forth between your clients can be a nightmare. So why not use one program to make professional proposals and keep everything organized?

Get rid of the multiple programs and keep everything organized with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software. 

Start giving your wedding and event proposals more impact with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software today and focus on what’s really important, your floral business!

 

 

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Floranext Logo

Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Florist Metrics

September 11th, 2019 Posted by Floral Design, Floral Supplies, floral system, floral systems, Florist Ecommerce, Florist Marketing, Florist Operations, Florist Profits, Florist Resources 2 thoughts on “Florist Metrics”

A flower shop is a business—you need to make sure that it is profitable and sustainable.

Luckily, there are many metrics to objectively measure your business’s performance. Aside from helping make sure that your business is doing well, these metrics are also going to be measured when you’re trying to get a bank loan, for example.

Having an idea about how your business is doing, supported by hard numbers on the table, can help you plan ahead and make adjustments to your current shop’s workflow. You can also readily adjust your pricing formula, and even see what needs to be improved in your shop, from your equipment to your workforce, just by taking a look at these metrics. That’s how powerful these metrics can be!

Let’s dive deep into these metrics and how you can use them to be fully aware of your business’s current standing.

Floral Shop Operating Expenses

Kicking off with operating expenses or overhead, these are those costs that are not products, like electricity and marketing. Expenses that you incur that are related to your working and shop space, be it rent or utilities, count as this metric.

As a good rule of thumb, operating expenses shouldn’t go past 10% of your total sales revenue.

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Flower Shop Payroll

Payroll and salary expenses are also one important thing to be kept track by florists. Many shops require other floral designers and employees. Because of that, we can spend a great deal on payroll because we rely on manpower to create our main products.

Labor costs can also easily go up high because of custom orders, thus these custom orders should be priced higher than most of your services to compensate for that. Having it take at most 30% of your total sales revenue should be a good margin to maintain.

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Cost Of Goods

Then, there are COGS. The cost of goods sold includes all expenses for the production of your services that are used in the product, e.g. the flowers, vases, etc. Basically the opposite of overhead, many people can underestimate this metric because they forget to include the small or seemingly insignificant costs like the tax on the flowers and the cost of shipping.

To make sure that you are profitable, keep it below 30% of the total sale price.

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Flower Shop Revenues

Of course, you need to know how much you have earned as profit after all your expenditures. This might be the simplest one so far, as long as you got all the numbers down. The formula is simple, just take all your earnings and subtract your expenditures.

There’s also no specific threshold for this metric; you get to pick how high your net profit, as it is called, is. Your goals for the shop will most likely decide that number for you.

That was a lot of math under a lot of explanations, but it is necessary for your shop to flourish and reach its goals. You probably didn’t sign up for all this when you started up your flower shop, but keeping track of these metrics will matter a lot.

 

Florists, do you use these metrics at your business? Have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please share below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

What to Look for When Buying a Flower Shop

September 4th, 2019 Posted by Become A Floral Designer, floral system, Florist Deliveries, Florist Marketing, Florist Operations, Florist Profits, florist technology, Opening a Flower Shop 1 thought on “What to Look for When Buying a Flower Shop”

Are you looking to purchase a flower shop?

Whether you are looking forward to getting started in the floral industry or you’re looking to expand, buying a flower shop carries with it a lot of advantages over starting from scratch.

Buying a flower shop saves you the struggle of a new business: building costs, hiring capable staff, acquiring equipment, and building your reputation. All it takes is ensuring that the shop you’re buying is worth your investment. Here are a few things you need to look into when buying a flower shop!

General Floral Business

In the end, a flower shop is a business, so you need to look into the profitability of the shop before delving into the specifics.

There’s a lot of business jargon that might get thrown at you, but basically, you need to look into the assets and liabilities that you get with the quoted price, from the equipment to the accounts receivable.

Sometimes, some shops might be valued higher because of goodwill or intangible assets of the business (eg. reputation and branding). You should absolutely ask to see their work, so you can see if it’s worth the asking price.

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Floral Shop Documents

If you are serious about buying that shop, you will also need to go through the managerial, financial and legal documents of the business. Examining these documents can give you a rough idea of how well the business has been doing for the past year or so, and it can help you understand its valuation. Cash flow statements, customer lists, and existing contracts are some of these documents. Asking for help from an attorney or M&A professional can be invaluable.

Flower Shop Equipment

Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the shop and see if it is indeed the flower shop that you’ve been looking to work on.

A flower shop and its flowers thrive on great and reliable equipment, thus you should check up on its facilities. Check if they are still in good working condition and if they will be for the foreseeable future. Coolers, most especially, play a big part in the flower shop business, so you shouldn’t cut corners and make sure the one provided in the shop is a definite asset and not a liability to be replaced.

Some equipment and supplies might not have aged well, so you should take a look at those which might need to be replaced. It might be a frustrating buy if you can’t have the shop up and running right when you purchase it because of these hindrances. You can negotiate with the owner to even get them fixed it up for the purchase.

Image via Shutterstock


Floral Business Relationships

Knowing the shop’s current flower providers, and how economic the relationship has been between them is very important. You can also see if you can find better options and deals around. You also need to check if the shop is in a wire service and if they are still paying for the hardware of the service. You can opt-out of the service if you wish, too, once you acquire it.

Flower Shop Employees

Finally, you need to see the workforce of the shop. Management might change, but the employees don’t have to. Some might leave together with the original owner, while the owner themselves might stick around to help you learn the ropes around running a flower shop.

Of course, with new management, you might also change up a few policies around human resources, so taking a look at the current state can help you decide that. Hiring and firing people can also be a part of that process, so long as you can present a reasonable explanation. The important part is to have a team that can survive the shift in ownership and stay efficient and profitable nevertheless.

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Flower shops are usually the fruits of someone’s labor and passion for the most beautiful members of nature. It might have been the hardest decision for them to put up a price tag on it for whatever reason they might have. As a flower shop’s future owner, the best that you can do is make sure that their life’s work continues on, now with the renewed vigor of a fresh proprietor.

 

Florists, what were some items you think are important when purchasing a new or current business that you can share with our readers, please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

The Modern Power Tools of Marketing: Social Media Automation

August 28th, 2019 Posted by Blog, Floral Instagram, Florist Ecommerce, Florist Marketing, florist technology, florist-software 2 thoughts on “The Modern Power Tools of Marketing: Social Media Automation”

There are important tools to help automate your florist social media accounts!

Simply put, social media automation software is used to automate or semi-automate the management of (usually) multiple social media accounts, from posting content to replying to comments and messages. They alleviate the painstaking process of going through each platform by providing a single place to manage them all.

Most of these tools will allow you to post to multiple accounts simultaneously or schedule them on specified dates, some even going the extra mile of giving you statistics about how your content has been performing.

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Sendible

If you’re savvy with social media automation already, you might have expected Hootsuite to lead the pack in this article, but we opted for an undiscovered alternative gem, thus we introduce you to Sendible.

Users have raved and reviewed it to be better than Hootsuite, offering a similar set of features despite it being a newer one. They offer support for the major social media platforms (Facebook and Facebook Ads, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) as well as some well-known blogging platforms (WordPress, Medium, and Tumblr).

Sendible’s dashboard is considered cleaner than Hootsuite’s streams, as it puts everything in only one timeline, but you have control over what pops up in it.

Publishing and scheduling posts to multiple accounts are made easier to keep track of because of their content calendar, giving you visual reminders of the posts. Moreover, they have an integrated approval workflow, so everyone working on your accounts gets a say about each post or content before it goes live to your account.

Their social listening statistics are great for keeping up with your brand’s reputation in the platform, as well know how your accounts have been faring. You can export these reports and statistics to help you analyze how your social media accounts are doing, and make a move according to these reports.

Sendible offers affordable plans for using their services, but their mid-tier plan is the sweet spot for getting access to all these great features while paying an affordable fee for it, making it a perfect social media automation tool for small and medium businesses.

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Sprout Social

Sprout Social supports the same major social media platforms as Sendible, but without the blogging platforms. Their dashboard is called Smart Inbox, which manages private messages, mentions, likes, and other interactions on your social media timelines. There, you can also filter messages and monitor keywords and hashtags.

They also have automation tools like the Bot Builder, which you can use on Facebook Messages and Twitter DMs, to help you with the bulk of messages that can be easily answered. Sprout Queue is their fancy name for the queue of the posts that you schedule ahead of time, while ViralPost lets Sprout Social decide what’s the optimal time for your posts to go online, by analyzing your audience engagements.

Team collaboration tools are also available, from letting you see which items are finished and even letting multiple members work on a single item.

Tagging items helps with organization, which is incredibly useful for large teams. Most of all, Sprout Social is well-known for its top-notch reports and analytics, which are very easy to understand.

For all its glory, Sprout Social can fall off in its prices, being priced rather luxuriously. However, if you are indeed serious in your social media marketing, the plans will be definitely worth it.

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There are still a lot of other social media automation tools like Buffer, SocialPilot, Hootsuite, and eClincher. Each of them offers varying degrees of support to the major social platforms and sometimes blogging platforms, and their core features are similar, if not the same. The main differences usually boil down to customer preference and user experience.

The goal of these tools is simple: to make social media marketing as easy as possible. Streamlining a process of posting similar content across multiple platforms, social media automation tools are too integral to an online marketer’s toolkit, their benefits usually worth the price tag they don. And if you are well on your way to take social media marketing seriously, then you will definitely need to pick up one.

 

Florists, are you currently using an automatic social media tool? What are your recommendations to other florists? please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Writing a Flower Shop Business Plan

August 14th, 2019 Posted by Become A Floral Designer, Floral Supplies, floral systems, Florist Marketing, Florist Operations, Florist Profits, Florist Resources, florist technology 4 thoughts on “Writing a Flower Shop Business Plan”

Florists’ goal is to make money doing the thing they love most!

Writing technical papers like business plans sounds like a lot of work, and you may think it’s irrelevant for someone who’s starting out. However, business plans are even more important for a business early on.

What Makes a Floral Business Plan Important

A business plan guides your helps you track your long-term objectives and the strategies you use to achieve them. Planning is crucial in business because we are not simply dealing with money; time and effort are on the line—your time, and everyone helping you. Also, formalizing your vision helps you assess your current position and your capabilities of reaching it.

Aside from that, business plans let you plan ahead for possible problems you might get into. This requires you to analyze the market trend of flowers around your area, and look into your possible competitors. By getting this knowledge, you can appropriately predict possible highs and lows of the industry.

Business plans are also a requirement to get a loan from most banks. Banks need to determine if you can, at minimum, pay the loan back. This is very important especially for newcomers and people who plan upgrades to their shop.

Parts of a Business Plan

Title Page

The title page contains all the basic information about your flower shop, which includes your shop’s name, address, your name as the owner (and of others who co-own the shop), and other relevant information like the registration number of your business (if you have any, this may vary by area). It should also contain your business logo.

Executive Summary

The summary of your business plan, It has its own parts in it: (a) the business summary, (b) the future summary, (c) the market summary, and (d) the finance summary.

The business summary basically contains all the basic information related to your shop (think title page but more comprehensive).

The future summary outlines your vision for your shop, as well as your goals and objectives.

The market summary contains the information you’ve gathered about your customers and the marketing strategies you’ll use.

Lastly, the finance summary contains your expected sales, the money you need to start up, where you’ll get these funds and other monetary information. It should tell the reader your current financial position.

Image via Shutterstock

Management Plan

The management plan or the operations section contains all the nitty-gritty details of your business, from your flower suppliers, equipment, and production processes to your inventory, payment modes, operating hours, and communication channels. You can list out the products and services you plan to deliver. This can easily become the longest and important part of the business plan, so take your time writing this part.

Marketing Plan

As the name suggests, the marketing plan contains your analysis about your potential customers and competitors. It also includes your key marketing strategies that you plan to implement for your shop, such as running special discounts on holidays and other special occasions.

Future Plan

Again, the name suggests that the future plan contains your prospective plans for your shop. Here you can state your vision for your shop (something like the “premier flower business in the locale”) and your business goals. It is important to not just think of quick goals to attain but rather long-term goals that you hope to achieve.

Image via Shutterstock

Financial Plan

The financial plan contains everything about your shop’s finances. Here, you go into detail about the cash flow of your business. You are expected to list out your current creditors and debtors, your source of funding, and your projected cash flow; these are often tabulated with the figures and dates. If you have been working on your business plan with your shop already up and running, you can also add a profit and loss statement.

Supporting Documentation

At this part of the business plan, you can include some documents that are relevant to your business: permits, maps, financial tables, and other attachments that readers of your plan might use to refer.

 

Florists, do you have a business plan in place, What are some things you put in place that could help other florists, please share your comments down below!

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Floranext Logo

Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

 

Flower Workshops: More Engagement, and More Marketing

August 7th, 2019 Posted by Blog, Floral Instagram, Florist Ecommerce, Florist Marketing, Florist Operations, Florist Profits, Florist Resources 1 thought on “Flower Workshops: More Engagement, and More Marketing”

As a present-day florist, you need to diversify the services you offer to stay above your competition.

We all know that simply selling flowers doesn’t cut it in the floral industry and economy of today. That’s why florists offer delivery, holiday decorating, weddings and event florals, and many other products and services to help business thrive. Organizing workshops is one technique we’d like to spotlight today that helps draw in potential customers and serves as a way to give back to the community.

A floral workshop is a space you can personally engage with your customers. You can do many kinds of workshops, from general flower arranging, caring for various houseplants, to arranging for different occasions and flowers.

Preparing the space and materials for the workshops can be hard work, but another part of the preparation that many florists forget is getting the word out about your workshops. What use are your workshops if only a few people attend it? The good news is thanks to the proliferation of social media, spreading the word about something has never been easier.

Florist Marketing Materials

First off, you should have marketing materials ready at your disposal. To be able to reach as much audience as you can, you should reach out to as many media outlets as possible and have appropriate materials for each medium. One important marketing material is the poster, one that you can physically print out to be posted in your immediate vicinity like your shop, community boards, and other places in your area that allows you to post such materials. 

You also need to have a virtual copy of that poster for a variety of purposes online, mainly for your newsletters (if you have one) and your social media networks. For newsletters, you can just reuse that same poster and maybe add more information, as well as an invite link to online registration if available.

Image via Shutterstock

Social Media Marketing

In social media, you’ll have to put in a bit more effort. To effectively let your marketing material catch attention, your poster must be designed so that it contains all the pertinent information in one go. You will need to take advantage of the thumbnail sizes of each social media platform so that when people scroll through your post on their timeline, they don’t need to click on the image to see the information they need and you can avoid cropping out important details. Here are some thumbnail sizes of some social media sites:

Facebook: Facebook automatically generates a thumbnail for images with a maximum aspect ratio of 2:3 (vertical). A good poster to post in Facebook would then have the same aspect ratio , or a shorter aspect ratio (up to 1:1 or a square) to avoid having any part of your poster cropped out. If you opt for a landscape poster, take note that Facebook will simply scale down your image to 500 px wide, retaining the aspect ratio. Make sure the details are still clear once viewed.

Twitter: Like Facebook, Twitter also generates thumbnails for images. Tweets with single images display their photos to an aspect ratio of 2:1 (landscape), so horizontal posters work best there. Posters that are 1024 px wide and 512 px tall are good enough for Twitter.

Instagram: Once renowned for square photos, Instagram has since then supported non-square photos, but this aspect ratio is still the popular choice among users, thus it’s the safest go-to aspect ratio for the site. For horizontal posters, you can go up to an aspect ratio of 16:9, while portrait photos go up to 4:5 before anything gets cropped out. Letting any dimension reach 1080 px is good enough for Instagram (for example, 1080 x 1080 square photo).

Facebook, Instagram Stories and Snapchat (and all similar platforms): Stories are all portrait pictures, and generally have an aspect ratio of 16:9. However, you don’t have to focus on this; posting the same image that you did to the main platform will work.

Image via Shutterstock

Be Excited About Your Event!

After the visual materials, you need to show enthusiasm about your own event, and let that positive energy spread. Facebook, especially, helps you do so with Events, which works like a normal Page, but for specific events with a date and time. Putting up posts works like normal, so you can pretty much easily pick it up the first time.

Keep the customers excited by slowly giving a sneak peek at the materials, venue, and things to learn. Dropping tidbits of your preparations let them be part of the event way before it even started, and it might even spark interest for those who weren’t interested beforehand. Engage with the people who comment on those posts by replying, always reminding them to attend the event and let them you are excited they’re coming. To encourage people to interact with your posts, incentivize engagements by giving discount coupons or something similar.

You also have to manage the frequency of the posts. Posting too much can intimidate customers or give them a blind spot for the event, while posting too little can allow them to forget about the event entirely. Posting once per day until the day of the event should be your goal.

Workshops can be tiring to execute, but at the end of the day, if done well they will contribute positively to your business and help your business grow.

 

Florists, what are some ways you promote or market your workshops? Please share your comments below!

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