Millennials are discovering gardening in a big way, all across the globe – and your garden brand should prepare to reap the benefits.
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| Social media are great ways to connect with millenials.
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This generation already values eco-friendly products and hobbies, which allows your business to capitalize on these ideals by making gardening appealing, easy and rewarding enough for them to want to dive into the dirt and get growing.
As a group, millennials have more than $70 billion in potential purchasing power.
Even more importantly, their buying power will continue to grow as they climb the business ladder and settle into their adult lives.
The millennial generation, those born after 1980 and ranging in age from 14 to 33, is certainly worth investing in. Plus, there are over nine million millennials in Canada, a total of 27 per cent of the population and as large a group as the baby boomers.
Reaching millennials, however, requires a unique approach. Garden brands need to communicate with this generation in a number of new, often digital ways.
Millennials are connected to media 18 hours a day, with significant time devoted to social networking and digital multi-tasking. Because they are so connected, millennials are much more inclined to interact with brands digitally.
In turn, they also crave social feedback, so engage them in conversation or share their post to get their attention. Then, earn their trust by giving them a way to express their opinion since millennials see themselves as brand co-creators.
How can your garden brand make the most of millennials entering the world of gardening? Join Instagram? Host DIY workshops? Learn what works to connect with this powerful demographic.
Attract Millenials with Five Simple Tips and Tricks
1. Individualize merchandise. Carry as many colours, patterns and design variations of a product as possible to help them maintain their unique style.
2. Streamline purchasing. Optimize your site to provide the best mobile experience possible. Millennials lead the way in mobile and smartphone use with 41 per cent having already made purchases with their smartphones – and that number will continue to grow.
3. Share your knowledge. This highly educated generation is used to having information at their fingertips, making them big DIYers and Internet learners.
Make simple tips and knowledge easily available.
4. Rope in mom and dad. Host digital or in-person workshops geared toward parents and their 20-something millennials.
Make it fun, practical and straight to the point. Also, market to parents to make sure that when they recommend a garden brand, it’s yours.
5. Focus on the future. Tweak your millennials’ messaging to focus on long-term goals and short-term incentives.
Answer these questions about your brand with them in mind: “why is this important to me right now,” and “how is this brand making the world a better place in the long term?”
Garden-tainment: Millennials are finding new, social ways to enjoy the garden with friends and family by transforming outdoor spaces into entertaining spaces.
Entertaining in the garden has become so popular that the U.S. demand for outdoor products is expected to increase four per cent in 2015 to almost $7 billion.
Catch millennials’ attention in the garden centre by:
- Holding short and sweet, socially-driven container or terrarium how-tos.
- Selling them on succulents, which they love!
- Showing them how to cook fresh food from the garden.
- Offering easy tricks to redecorate the patio.
- The key is to create easy, quick solutions using your garden products.
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Superfoods + Super Drinks: For millennials, plants need to do double-duty: look good and taste good.
Superfoods take growing edibles to the next level, so this generation is growing specialty veggies and herbs at home if they’re too expensive or hard to find at the grocery store.
Millennials also are “drinking the garden” with garden-to-glass cocktails, fresh-squeezed juices and green smoothies.
Portable Gardening: Millennials want to be able to garden anywhere, no matter how small the space or how long they’ll be there.
They crave lightweight containers and love berries in containers (like Brazelberries®) since they’re delicious, nutritious and easy to care for.
Here are a few specific portable gardening trends that will surely entice millennials:
- Pop-up raised beds because of their adaptability.
- Edibles in containers – keep it simple.
- Low-maintenance succulent gardens.
- Hydroponics: blending the natural and the technological.
Invest, connect and foster this new generation of gardeners now. Doing so will cause your brand awareness and bottom line to surge in the coming years.
For more information, download Garden Media’s free ebook, How to Market Gardening to Millennials. And stay in the loop with the upcoming social, marketing, consumer and garden trends by subscribing to Garden Media’s public relations and marketing blog, GROW!
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