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Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com R E A D O N L I N E 25 MARKETING Social media marketing, email marketing, website updates and holiday promotion are essential in the weeks and days leading up to Mother's Day. Advertise your collection of holiday offerings and their range of price points, and offer bundles (an arrangement and a box of chocolates, a plush toy or a candle, for example), to excite and entice customers about all the creative options you have to offer. Create a Mother's Day section both in your store and on your website. Having a special section on your website featuring all of your Mother's Day offerings—with prices—will make it easier for shoppers to find what they're looking and navigate your online store. Make sure that all options you present are realistic and attainable. "Utilizing your web shop properly can help you streamline your holiday sales," assures Beth O'Reilly, AIFD, CFD, TMF, a freelance floral designer in Houston, Texas. "Create and photograph designs in several price points that feature easy-to-source blooms for the season. Train staff to promote those arrangements to walk-in and phone customers, as well, and encourage customers to view your offerings online, especially during peak ordering times." PROMOTE ADD-ON GIFTS For customers who want to give their moms more than flowers or plants, create pairings of great gifts that complement your flowers and plants ("bundles"). Help customers envision what is possible by creating in-store displays of your creative pairings and posting them on your website. Some popular gifts are cards, chocolates, candles, spa items, plant care and gardening items, art containers, and locally made or sourced gifts. Display a curated selection of unique, creative and fun Mother's Day cards in your store, perhaps near the checkout counter, and add a greeting card option on your website as an upgrade. Greeting cards are easy sales for Mother's Day! SOCIAL MEDIA Schedule engaging stories and regular updates on your social media channels, including entertaining Instagram Reels and fun TikTok videos. Share a different Mother's Day gift option (or two) on your social media channels daily to incentivize consumers to place orders early. Create most of your social media posts in advance, before you get too busy, and then schedule all of your posts at one time using a social media management platform such as Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialPilot, Sprout Social, Zoho Social, MeetEdgar, Loomly, Sendibile, PLANOLY or something similar. TIP: Integrate your website with Instagram Shopping (business. instagram.com/shopping) or Facebook Shops (facebook.com/ business/shops), to help customers complete in-app purchases of your products. Hosting giveaways is another great way to increase sales on Mother's Day while also boosting your brand awareness. A giveaway is a limited-time promotion in which you offer a prize to one or more lucky participants according to a predefined set of rules. You should get a lot of traction on social media. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX Offer unusual and unexpected gift options such as "flower subscriptions" and tickets to upcoming floral design classes. "Experience gifts" are extremely popular, and what could be more fun than going to a flower design class or workshop with one's mom. If a customer cannot attend, encourage him or her to send mom out for a day of fun. is will require creating and scheduling classes or workshops in advance of the holiday, so get started planning for this sales strategy now. You could also offer floral design "kits," with all of the materials and instructions needed to make a special arrangement. You could market these as gifts for mom—perhaps that she could pick up after the holiday, at her convenience—or advertise them as DIY kits with which kids can make arrangements for their moms for the holiday. Floral Design Institute Portland, Ore.

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