The Client
Watson’s Garden & Home has been an institution in the Puget Sound region for more than forty years, selling plants, gifts, and decor in their two brick and mortar stores and online. Their clientele is upscale and their business is strong.
The Challenge
Watson’s busiest season is spring, followed by the holiday shopping season. It follows a seasonal marketing strategy, capitalizing on the times of year when people tend to think of home and garden.
Many B2C businesses follow the same pattern, spending three-quarters of their marketing budget in the season that brings in three-quarters (roughly) of their revenue. It’s a time-honored strategy, but it’s also self-perpetuating, and often leaves businesses limping along between busy seasons.
The Solution
Over the last few years, we’ve helped Watson’s get more out of their seasonal advertising budget. Instead of simply promoting spring plant sales and publishing their yearly magazine, we used existing campaigns and media buys to provide useful editorial content.
SERVICES PERFORMED
Brand Awareness
- Advertising
- Email marketing
- Direct marketing campaigns
- Social media marketing
- Video production
- Website development
- Content marketing
SERVICES PERFORMED
Brand Awareness
- Advertising
- Email marketing
- Direct marketing campaigns
- Social media marketing
- Video production
- Website development
- Content marketing
Local television ads are synchronized with outdoor and print ads to boost the credibility of Watson’s upmarket brand, sending the signal that this is an established company with friendly, knowledgeable staff.
Year-round gardening calendars are not a new tactic, but supporting these calendars with engaging content designed to inform and inspire new gardeners and homeowners helps fuel year-round interest, and lifts average customer spending.
The company’s blog is no longer just an outlet for unstructured musing. It highlights seasonal offerings and featured products. It delivers free, bite-sized morsels of gardening and home decor tips and plant advice. It opens a world of possibilities to the shopper.
Watson’s magazine isn’t just a magazine, it’s now a Garden Guide, designed to educate new gardeners on practical matters of living. That’s the power of content marketing: creating honest editorial material that doesn’t feel like marketing.
Spring and the holiday season are still linchpins, but now shoppers are coming in throughout the year to shop the ideas they read about online, to spruce up their home and work on their indoor garden.