Tips for Florists on Blogging, Ghosting, and Attracting Higher Budgets

For the last few weeks I’ve been broadcasting my Tuesday Q&As over on Instagram (instead of in my private Facebook group) and it’s been fun to connect with floral folks on the gram! Click below to watch a replay of today’s live chat and make sure to follow me on IG here: @realflowerbusiness!

Questions I received this week include:

Why should I blog? I know it’s important for SEO, but why?
How do I avoid getting ghosted?
What’s your advice for attracting clients with higher budgets? My typical weddings are $2,000-2,500, but would love to see $3-4k inquiries more often.

I also touched on how I’m handling COVID cancellations moving forward and addressed a question on customers who ask for discounted pricing during the pandemic!

View this post on Instagram

Today I’m answering your questions on blogging, ghosting, attracting higher budget clients and customers asking for discounts during COVID. Find lots more over on my website at realflowerbusiness.com

A post shared by Alison Ellis (@realflowerbusiness) on Sep 8, 2020 at 8:43am PDT

Questions for a future livestream? Just get in touch: floralartvt@gmail.com

FYI I’ll be diving into MORE pricing questions later this month in an invitation only chat on Zoom!

Click HERE to join the waitlist for an invite to the pricing chat and be the first to know about the Flower Math Fall Sale!

Flower Math Sale Waitlist

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6 Week Coaching For Florists

How can I take my floral business to the next level?

Floralpreneur® Fastrack is a 6-week private coaching course with Alison Ellis designed to help you maximize your branding potential and reach the best clients.

It’s not enough to be a talented floral designer, you have to know how to attract clients, close the sale and turn a profit to truly succeed in business!

I’ve been asked for private coaching packages this year and while the word “package” never felt quite right, I developed a custom coaching course for a few floral designers recently that I’m certain can help you in your floral business, too….so now I’m rolling out this unique opportunity to work 1:1 with me for up to 2 designers per month.

There has arguably never been a better time to buckle down and get to work on your branding and marketing, but you can get there a lot faster with my Floralpreneur® Fastrack Program! (Fill out the Inquiry Form below!)

While it can be tempting to keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing, here are some actions I suggest you take if you want to take your business to the next level:

Create a more compelling story for your About page.
Streamline your contact form and intake process to help lead clients to “yes”.
Get A Social Media Strategy! Blogging, pinning and sharing to IG so you’re posting on all the platforms where your clients are looking for you.
Update your website so it reflects your brand’s story and unique awesomeness.
Add more of your own voice to your sales copy.

This may sound like a lot of work, but together, we can make it a lot easier! I can help you with all of the above!

Scroll through this survey below to get in touch and find out if this program is a good fit for you and your business! It’ll just take a moment!

Create your own user feedback survey

Want more details? You’ll find pricing and interest free payment plan options if ya scroll on down….

Here’s what a custom coaching package looks like:

Three 1:1 Calls with Alison: 1. Initial call to get acquainted & set agenda (45-minutes), 2. Brand Story and Website “stuff” (90-minutes), 3. Sales Coaching & Consultations (up to 90-minutes). ($750)
Website Review: I’ll create a custom screenflow to help you quickly improve your website with some key tweaks, changes and edits that you can make asap. This recorded private video allows you to watch, pause, take notes, make changes, and repeat! ($195)
Write/Edit Sales Copy for: Home page, About, Testimonials, Contact Form, and 2 Additional Pages or Blog Posts (you’ll write them, I’ll edit and help punch them up!). ($1,000)

Plus you’ll get these Bonuses:

6 months worth of weekly Blog Post Prompts/Social Media topics that you can write about to help develop your brand’s voice. (30 Prompts/$50 value for free!)
How To Write Proposals That Sell pdf with a behind-the-scenes look at how I create free mood boards & 3 Ways I Present Pricing In Proposals. ($99 value at no charge!)
Real Life Transcript Of A Phone Consultation. ($50 value at no charge!)
Online Toolkit with additional lessons and tutorials on how to improve your marketing & attract the best clients on your private dashboard at realflowerbusiness.com ($300+)

This sounds great! Sign me up…

You can join my Floralpreneur® Fastrack for $1,800 (you’ll save $600 Off)!

The total price for the custom coaching and website revamp comes to over $2,400 with the bonus prompts, transcript and proposal training.

If this sounds like a good fit for you, we can do an interest free payment plan! Take advantage of an 8-month payment plan or 12-month payment plan.

That’s $225/8 months or $150/12 months and zero interest.

Prefer to pay upfront?

You can save an additional $300 OFF with a one-time payment of $1,500 HERE. (That’s $900 in savings!)

Later on:

If you feel like you need more 1:1 time with me you can add on an additional call at another time for $200 if you’d like. 6 months from now, or whenever you’d like a check-in if needed.

If you’re not sure if this coaching program is right for you, you can reach out anytime! Just shoot me an e-mail at floralartvt@gmail.com

And hey, if you’re not comfortable answering the survey questions above or shooting me an e-mail, then you’re definitely not ready to join me in this coaching program!

Before you buy a course or hire a coach ask if they have the qualities of a great mentor:

Is this person getting amazing results in their business?
Do they get those outcomes by doing what they teach?
Are their clients getting amazing results, too?
Are they willing to share real numbers?
Is there real support and real accountability that comes along with this purchase?
Will this information shorten my learning curve?

The answers should be “yes” to all of the above.

Ready to sign up? Click here to make 1 payment of $1,500 and save $900 today!

Want to learn more about Alison? Click here!

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Alison Ellis on Botanical Brouhaha Podcast

I’m a guest this week on Episode 3 of the BB+ Podcast.

BB+ are bite-sized episodes of the Botanical Brouhaha Podcast and I am so happy to share this short and sweet Q&A with you today!

In this Pricing Q&A for Florists we talk about:

How much should you charge for rentals?
How do you set a starting price/minimum on flowers?
Should you list your prices on your website?

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or click here to check it out: botanicalbrouhaha.com/bb-episode-3-alison-ellis-on-rental-pricing-floral-markups

It’s only 27 minutes long and I hope you’ll enjoy it!

BotanicalBrouhaha.com is a tremendous resource and inspiration for florists around the world; the floral industry is so lucky to have Amy McGee in our corner. Make sure you subscribe to the Botanical Brouhaha Podcast with Amy & Maria.

This was my first time on the BB Podcast, but I’ve been featured on BotanicalBrouhaha.com before!…

Click to watch a video from the BB Blog below and find my Master Your Pricing series featured on Amy’s blog HERE.

On a personal note

It was an honor to be Amy McGee’s guest on Episode 3 of the BB+ Podcast. I’ve known Amy for several years now and I can honestly say she is simply one of the best people. Period.

Not just one of the best floral design advocates.

Not just one of the best industry resources.

One of the best people on this planet.

And I’m proud to call her a friend.

And I’m ridiculously proud to be invited to serve as a resource for the Botanical Brouhaha podcast listeners in this episode.

Thanks for all you do for the industry, Amy, and thank you for your constant support of the work I do. In both small and big ways Amy always lets me know that what I do in the floral world actually matters…and there’s no way to express my heartfelt gratitude for that continued support!

Make sure to subscribe to the BB Podcast wherever you get your podcasts to show your support of this incredible resource and catch up with any episodes you may have missed.

xo. -Alison

Additional Resources For Florists:

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Featured On Flirty Fleurs

I wrote my first floral education article as a guest blog post for FlirtyFleurs.com back in March 2011 with 15 Tips To Book More Weddings.

I continued to submit flower business articles and videos and the rest, as they say, is herstory.

I was inspired to share what I knew so I went out on a limb to ask a knowledgable floral expert, Alicia Schwede–who didn’t know me at all–if she’d be willing to let me talk to her audience and lucky for me, she said yes!

In fact, she continued to say yes to my submissions and floral designers can find dozens of guest blog posts, videos, checklists, and I even had features in a few of the Flirty Fleurs print magazines over the years. (Scroll down to see those original 15 Tips I shared!)

I’ve covered a lot of ground over at Flirty Fleurs!

From topics like mock-ups and minimums to tipping and “extra flowers” to pricing garlands and when to get paid; scroll down for a Flirty Fleurs Playlist!

As you know if you own a business: everybody has to start somewhere. And this is where I started my floral education journey.

15 Tips To Book Weddings More Quickly (via FlirtyFleurs circa 2011!)

Be easy to reach via e-mail. E-mail is essential to coordinating with your clients.
Schedule consultations with the lead wedding designer—someone who is skilled and versed in weddings, works well with customers and translates ideas into designs.
Update your portfolios and website to reflect the best of your work and professional photos are always best. This means that wedding bouquet from 1995 has to go. Heck, maybe that bouquet from 2009 has to go, too! Keep it fresh.
Keep up! Follow trends on blogs, websites, magazines, social media, etc. You have to know what’s happening in your industry. (Your clients do!)
Decide which services you offer and which you don’t. Are you: a floral designer; an event designer; a florist who does weddings; a wedding designer who owns a flower shop; a lighting specialist? You don’t have to be all things to all weddings!
Do what you do. Don’t worry about what the other guys are up to.
Be upfront about your pricing. Find out what the clients’ budget is and either do your best to stick to it or suggest what you think is a reasonable budget for what they want. Years ago I was advised to never inquire about budget and to always “up-sell” to clients planning a wedding. After all it’s their wedding day—a day to “go for it”—it’s a chance to steer them towards more expensive options. Wrong. People can’t spent money they don’t have—period.
If the pricing or style doesn’t work, then move on. It’s OK to decide that a client is not a good fit. It will make life easier in the long run.
Don’t overbook. Taking on more than you can handle is never a good idea.
Require a signed contract and a reasonable deposit of at least 20-30% of the total budget to book an event.
Be concise in proposals about what is required to book a date, when final payment is due, etc.
If you send out a proposal and don’t hear back within a reasonable timeframe you should follow up—once—with the client to see if there are any questions you can answer.
Charge fairly, but you have to be compensated for your flower markup, design fee, delivery and set-up, travel, etc. If you are not charging enough, then why are you working so darn hard?
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. (Definitely don’t do that!)
Listen to what your clients want. Then, make it happen.

9 years later, I still stand by these tips by the way!!

After sharing my “stuff” with floral designers for years on Alicia’s blog, I finally branched out and created my website, realflowerbusiness.com, where I could create my own corner of the world to create and share. I’ve been doing so since 2015 and I’m so thankful for the thousands of florists who’ve taken the time to watch my videos, join a course, or participate in one of my Live Q&A Tuesdays on Facebook!

But I still make guest appearances on Flirty Fleurs–look for me on the first Monday of the month–including this video: Should Florists Make Mock Ups? If you’ve ever been asked to make a mock up, click to watch!

Funny story: I first knew florists were watching my educational videos when I attended a Chapel Designer’s Workshop and someone said, “I’m your biggest fan!”

I walked into the ladies’ room one of the attendees looked over at me and said, “Oh my gosh, I’m your biggest fan!”

Um, surely she had me confused with someone else, right?…

Turns out, no. She was actually talking to me!

She was reading and watching my posts on Flirty Fleurs and she liked me! She really, really like me. (Who’d have thunk it?)

It hadn’t occurred to me how many florists were actually watching my videos or reading my articles so when someone recognized me and called herself a “fan”, I must admit I was surprised. And flattered. But first and foremost I was inspired to keep creating!

I thanked Alicia in a blog post a few years ago for sharing her stage with me (read that here) and most recently on her website (see my video below) and if you’ve missed any of my Flirty Fleurs Features you can catch them all in my YouTube Playlist here.

To see some of my videos throughout the years, check out the Flirty Fleurs Playlist below!

Thanks for taking the time to tune in, Floralpreneur®! Keep doing beautiful work!

With love from me to you,

Alison

Find a Playlist on YouTube with hours of videos here:

Remember: If you like my videos, please “like” them, comment and share ’em with your best flower friends. xo.

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Alison Ellis on Mornings with Mayesh

As a floral educator, it’s always an honor to be invited to speak with floral industry professionals.

My appearances with Yvonne on Mornings With Mayesh are a few of my favorite live Q&A’s and you’ll find all 3 of my guest appearances in this post!

I’ve had some great opportunities to appear as a guest on other people’s podcasts, blogs and web shows that are worth highlighting over the next few weeks PLUS I’ll be on 2 stages in March and April where you can connect with me live (see below).

Appearance highlights:

Last week I was the featured guest on The Flower Podcast and then, Scott was a guest in my Facebook group (click here to check out our live chat).

Next up, I’ll be teaching live and in person in March in Minneapolis at Koehler & Dramm. Click here for details and to sign up today!

Then, I’ll be in Portland, Maine, April 4-5th teaching at The Floral Collaborative. Click here for details and contact Katey to sign up!

Now, onto the Mornings With Mayesh Mashup….

A few notes and questions covered in our most recent chat include:

If a customer “must have it”, then they must be willing to pay for it.
Industry standards have variation built into them. Once you know the standards you can customize your pricing model to work for your business.
How much should you charge for your markup and design fee?
Selling a wedding Pre-Pinterest vs. Post-Pinterest.
Should you itemize a wedding quote?

Click to watch here:

Grab my free eBook: Everything I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business HERE.

Click below to watch my April 2019 chat where we address:

Should you set a minimum on weddings?
Do you price anything different with a hand tied vs a vase arrangement?
How to make sure you’re not undercharging your clients
How to charge clients appropriately
Do you mark up high-end flowers like peonies the same as you do a carnation to keep your margins? If you do, how do you use peonies and ranunculus in everyday arrangements? Sparingly?
Should you charge a different markup on rentals, vases, and labor?