Katie Elzer-Peters Q&A

Leslie Halleck

Katie Elzer-Peters

Founder and CEO
Garden of Words
Session: Couch To 5k New Customers: Collaborate & Create With Fellow Retailers

Incorporate art into displays and merchandising. Whether you commission a local muralist, or you have interesting painted signs, or you create artistic displays, giving customers something fun, inspiring, and a little different to look at and interact with will create a memorable experience. Groovy Plants Ranch near Columbus, Ohio, does a great job at this. All in Bloom Garden Center in Southport, North Carolina, does too, largely with large painted signs that have inspirational quotes and fun sayings on them scattered throughout the garden center.

You can define "biggest fan" in a variety of ways. It could be the people who visit and purchase most frequently or who spend the most money, and many POS systems will tell you those numbers. When you're talking about "biggest fans" in relation to marketing, just look for the people who engage (like, share, repost) your content frequently OR the people who visit frequently and bring friends. You want to identify your customers who tell others about you and bring others to you. Talk to your staff working the registers or working the floor. They'll know who comes in frequently.

 

I hope that attendees leave with a handful of relatively easy-to-implement, concrete ideas for creating memorable and meaningful experiences for their customers.