As a retailer, you know that encouraging your customers to buy plants in multiples instead of individually can increase plant sales, but did you know that the specific way you display and promote multiple purchases makes a difference to how successful your promotions are?
Here, the marketing experts at PfE give you their best advice on how to get it right in the multiples market:
Everyone loves a something free, so let them have it. According to a study published in the Journal of Business Research, buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) deals attract more attention than percentage discounts. The study found that people prefer BOGOF promotions to price reductions and will choose them even when the value of the two versions is identical.
In practice, this means a promotion offering ‘buy one geranium, get one free’ is seen as better value than ‘buy two geraniums, get 50% off’, even though the saving is the same. Make the most of this preference by offering free plants as part of multi-buy promotions, rather than percentage discounts.
Or you could do your own research and set up two different areas for the same multi-buy promotion, one offering a discount, one offering a free plant and see which works best with your customers. You can then adopt this approach across other areas of your business.
Plan and build in-store displays that physically show your customers the visual impact of multiples of the same plant. Many people find it hard to visualise what many of the same plant will look like in their garden, so show them. How about a large ‘pool’ of a single colour of pelargonium at ground level to create an arresting display? Place signage next to it advertising your multi-buy promotion and watch those plants disappear into people’s baskets.
If you don’t have a lot of space for a big display, even a window box or large planter filled with cool white geraniums, or a mass of fiery orange ones will have added impact and show your customer exactly how a finished planting would look. It might encourage sales of those containers, too.
Try to display your plants in odd numbers. Florists and garden designers have long known the value of this technique, often using threes, fives, sevens etc in their work, as in this colourful display of five geraniums pictured left. This is because odd numbers create interest and make your eye travel around a scene, capturing your attention for longer.
In contrast, even numbers create symmetry, which is restful and stops the eye moving. Whatever number of plants you want to encourage customers to buy (e.g. buy two, get one free), make sure your displays feature that quantity so they can see exactly why it works well.
Using different varieties of same plant with contrasting heights, shapes, textures, foliages etc. is another helpful trick as it creates a visual hierarchy that keeps the eye interested. Geraniums come in a multitude of beautiful colours, shapes and sizes so it’s simple to create a showstopping display with these perennial favourites alone.
Everyone is familiar with a window box full of a mass of one colour of geranium. While that classic look is still very popular, you can also attract younger customers with a more modern version of it – the ombré display.
This is where you plant up a window box with a row of geraniums in the tonal range of a single colour. For example, deep red, moving to bright red, then bright pink, pale pink and white.
Or orange through apricot and salmon to white. The huge variety of colours that geraniums offer makes this a really versatile way to sell multiples. Make sure you pick a container that matches one of the geranium shades to keep the whole display harmonious.
This look works in beds and other containers too, so expand your display to include examples of these options as well.
Fashions come and go in horticulture as much as on the catwalk, so anticipate them with your multi-buy offerings.
Keep abreast of colour and plant trends across not just your own industry but others too. What’s happening in prestigious garden design competitions?
What colours and plants are dominating? What are the trends you’re seeing on social media and in magazines? Customers will expect to see them in shops, so be prepared to react quickly to make your in-store displays reflect them.
When a certain colour is on-trend, do a multiples offer across the spectrum of that colour.
Look out for news reports about the ‘Color of the Year’, these are often hotly-anticipated and influential moments in the creative, design and retail calendar, which helps experts with trend forecasting. But be warned, sometimes these trends can quickly saturate the retail market and go out of fashion as swiftly as they came in. Set a time limit on promotions based on them, to avoid looking like you’re following the crowd.
Trend-based promotions are effective because consumers like to think they’re keeping up with the latest looks, so basing a multi-buy offering on what’s current, is sure to keep them buying. And if they think your business is on top of the hottest trends this will, in turn, create brand loyalty with both existing customers and style-savvy new ones and keep them coming back for fresh planting ideas.
Whichever sales option you opt for with multiples, always keep your customers’ goals in mind; they’ll want a mass of easy-care, long-flowering, robust plants that will give them pleasure throughout the summer and into the autumn. You can’t go wrong with an armful of geraniums on all counts.