5 days to go until HTA Marketing Forum
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With Christmas fast approaching, now is a great time to be looking at your marketing, and how you are letting your customers know about the different events and promotions that you may be having at your garden centre.
The HTA Marketing Forum is designed to help you hear about different ways to make your marketing budgets stretch further. With competing interests on consumer time and cash at an all-time high, it is ever more important to ensure your business is promoting itself to its full potential.
This one-day event on the 10 November at Chesford Grange, Warwickshire, is aimed at all those involved in marketing and public relations in the garden industry, no matter what size your business. Based around the topic of ‘Tools for Success’, the forum will provide inspiration and top tips on how to maximise your marketing spend.
Drawing on his experiences as former Deputy CEO and Chief Marketing Officer for Tesco, Tim Mason will reveal some of new projects he is working on as well as talking about the topics that he really cares about: growth, customer centricity and staff engagement.
The modern customer is more demanding than ever – they know what they want, how they want it and when they want it. What does this mean for garden centres? Can we still do good by trying to serve all of the people? Or do we have to make better choices in who we want as our customer? To better serve specifically them and their lifestyle? Addressing this point Laurens Doesborgh, Commercial Director of De Haan Group will showcase how they use the 500 sqm Concept Store at the Spoga Gafa Fair in Cologne to demonstrate ways of interacting with customers and reaching out to new ones.
Generating coverage and awareness for your business is no guarantee to driving a return on investment. With every penny on marketing spend counting, this session from Jonathon Bates of Thomond will establish how businesses can make a tangible difference by reaching the right audience with the right message.
Boyd Douglas-Davies from the Hillview Group will cover the high and low points through the first year of operating a Soft Play centre. Since opening the Soft Play Barn at Hilltop Garden Store on 1 October 2014 they have learnt a lot one year on!
John Ashley will talk about the hugely successful way in which Scotsdales Garden Centre target key postcodes communicating the wide range of products and services on offer and entice the customer to visit and spend money through voucher offers.
Donna Wilcox and Mark Davies from Whistl will talk about doordrop campaigns and working with Royal Mail.
During the afternoon session, Edwin Meijer from Garden Connect will help you to create a more personal, mobile and interactive loyalty scheme. Don’t throw your plastic cards straight away but be sure to move forward: how can you change your loyalty card into a customer-generator? How does this relate to changing customer behaviour? How to make it more personal for your customers? And how can you integrate Facebook into your loyalty scheme? Those and many other questions will be answered during this session.
Landscaper and former Blue Peter Gardener Chris Collins, shares some of the experiences from taking the Love the Plot You’ve Got roadshows around the country. Reaching out to new audiences this garden industry wide campaign is on a mission to get all those people who have yet to discover the true value of their outdoor space.
Garden Radio provides the ideal audio wallpaper to add atmosphere in your garden centre retail areas – but did you know that it can also be your most reliable extra sales person and customer advisor? Trevor Pfeiffer, the creator of Garden Radio will highlight the unique bespoke in-store marketing opportunities that Garden Radio can deliver.
For the cost of one small newspaper advert, find out how you can make your marketing spend go further...
To find out more information about this event and how to book, visit hta.org.uk/marketingforum or email events@the-hta.org.uk
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