Effective brand positioning can be described as the extent to which your garden centre brand is perceived as favourable, different, and credible in your consumers’ minds. With 2500 garden centres in the UK there’s plenty of competition vying for consumers time and attention. In the midst of all this noise, your brand should break through the clutter by speaking directly to the people you intend to attract rather than shouting to an empty room or to a crowd who don’t care about you.
Brand positioning is a valuable opportunity to add personality and the human aspect to your garden centre, whilst still focusing on your objectives as a business.
Your garden centre’s brand positioning must achieve three things:
Show why it is relevant to your target consumers
Communicate what it offers that your competitors don't
Give reasons why consumers should trust you
You’ll need to set out clearly your offer specific to the customer profile you are attracting. It would be a mistake to create a brand that offers sophistication, luxury and opulence if you’re vying for the budget conscious customer looking for value and price. It is imperative to be honest about what you offer your customer in the way you “talk” to them – visually and in script because one thing is for sure, as soon as they enter your garden centre if your brand positioning has been in keeping with your offering they will see relevance and credibility which in turn creates trust and loyalty.
Brand Positioning in Practice
Establish an emotional connection with customersConnecting with your customers on a human level by taking time to learn about their needs, and what problems they are looking to solve by using your products, before going in for the hard sell builds trust. It also helps your customers have a more positive experience with your garden centre brand.
Reinforce your brand’s differentiating qualitiesBy having a strong brand position the differentiating of your garden centre’s offering should be easy for your customers to understand and refer to of what makes your brand unique to you and them.
Embody your company’s brandWhen working in a customer-facing role, your team are your garden centre’s most valuable ambassador so ensure customers receive from the team an experience that embodies the core values of your garden centre culture and aligns with your brand.
Creating a Framework
We have worked with many garden centres over the last decade to create their brand “position”. Over such time that for some we have actually revisited the process a couple of times since first issue!
Here is a framework embodying the most frequently used elements to a brand plan by garden centres by us:
Your local, independent and family run garden centre
Target Audience
Local community used to have high disposable income now very conscious of price and will need reassurance on value for money. Tourism area, especially during holiday periods.
Values
Attention to detail, expert, understanding & listening to our customers’ needs, adding value, quality, careful & measured
Tone of Voice
Knowledgeable and approachable, helpful, warm, positive
Imagery
Contemporary with vibrant, affordable quality
Mustn’t be
Cheap
Key messages
Hand-picked beautiful products from gifts to plants.
In house expertise that go the extra mile (our products have more benefits to transform your garden than the standard range)
We think of everything so you can just enjoy your garden e.g. plant buyer chooses the pot selection to ensure the plants fit into the range of pots stocked, food buyer chooses the products for the hampers