Enhance your brand with new professional floral images from Bloomerang

How can I gain new products on my website?

See Bloomerang’s image gallery on Flickr (if you need logins, call (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here and we will be happy to assist you).

Would you be surprised to know that most people judge a website by its images? Of course not, because we all do that. It's the first thing we notice when we visit a new website; it's instinctive, like judging a car by its color. It's only after that first impression that we take a closer look to see how things are arranged.

Except many potential customers never make it that far.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so your first impression must make an impact - that's why professional photos are everything. You may have the best shop in town or a website that cost you $20K, but if your website looks tired and neglected, it reflects poorly on the image and overall company culture you're trying to portray.

Here at Bloomerang Solutions, we understand how important it is for retail florists to have high-quality images that reflect the beauty of the finished products, that’s why we provide website-ready floral images for you to use in your shop. If you are already a member of AMS, log into your Flickr account and see the beautiful new designs we have added and will continue to add for you to use. If you are not currently a member of AMS, forgot your password, or would just like some more information, simply fill out this form and we’ll take care of the rest. Even with strong features, a website needs great images to perform it’s best.

Do you need help with images for your website? Bloomerang Solutions is here to help! Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or send us an email to set up a free consolation. From social media to websites and online marketing, Bloomerang Solutions can help your business bloom!

Deception Marketing Hurts Florists Locally and Nationally

Deception marketing has often been abused by national companies and local retailers that want to look like large, nationwide companies. Do a Google search for “florist” and pick any city and the same names keep popping up. No matter which city you choose, you’ll almost always find names like Avas Flowers, Rita’s and Ranch. These companies try to appear local and in local markets, but they’re not.

What are some of the signs that a shop may not really be a local florist? One of the biggest red flags is if they answer the phone with something generic like “Flower Shop” without any other name association.

The video below is from a call to a shop located in Punta Gorda, Florida. This particular shop is trying to emulate a 40-year-old shop named Port Charlotte Florist, located in a neighboring city.

While the shop answers the phone “Flower Shop,” it also has a recording that states “Number One Florist.” Most people would probably be fooled because they make it vague on purpose. Their website offers even more mystery; there isn’t even a name on it at all!

The unfortunate fact is that this is what we are up against in this industry. Deceptive marketers thrive in the floral industry because many people who order flowers aren’t familiar with legitimate, well-established flower shops that serve the recipient’s local area, so they do a Google search and check out a few of the top listings without ever knowing the difference.

Unfortunately, they usually end up disappointed with the results – or worse yet – just flat out ripped off because they gave their credit card information to someone who misrepresented themselves as honest florists. And I don't have to tell you who the swindled customers think is ripping them off because you've surely fielded phone calls from angry customers who fell for the scam and now they're mad at you!

We need to work together to educate consumers and put a stop to these dishonest marketing tactics. It’s bad for the consumer and it’s bad for florists!

Listen for yourself and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Have a great week, everyone!

Art

Build Trust by Building Your Brand

Whatever product or service you offer, the value is innate - but trust in your brand is not. To become the go-to-guy for your service requires you to follow through with everything. Complete the work and take the time to walk the client through what has been done and how you succeeded in each goal that was outlined.

Creating a viable method of measuring success with your service and reporting that success to your client is invaluable to creating the foundations of trust and the best prize of all - brand loyalty.

Here’s the thing - your clients will talk about you. What do you want them to say? If you don’t show your value, your customers will still share with each other, which takes control away from you. Did you know that 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, and they are now essential for e-commerce sites?

Be accessible

On the top of reviews, do you have a way to survey your audience? Being accessible is absolutely necessary to your brand, as responding to public inquiry in the voice of your brand is paramount.

If you aren’t part of the conversation, that doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t happening. Reputation management still skirts the line between digital and traditional marketing and affects purchasing interest of your client. Reputation Intelligence is a great way to keep on top of all conversations about your brand online, as well as helps to keep your information consistent across all search engines.

Be sure to have a dedicated person or team trained to answer questions, complaints, or compliments in an approved way. Make sure the information for your point of contact is highly visible. Keeping your social media accounts as up-to-date and managed is one of the primary tools of keeping an open line of communication with your audience.

Keep it consistent

Recognizable branding helps your audience identify you as a trusted source of information. Disjointed and inconsistent marketing materials scream impulsive and unreliable leadership, and by extension, service.

Color, logo, website, social media - all are invaluable to your brand and their connection to each other is imperative. It goes much further than simple aesthetics though, it extends to your voice and how you can be expected to react.

Confused about how to keep it all in line? Think about how you want your customer to react to your brand, and how they perceive you. Question yourself like:

• What do you want them to see: do you want your client to see a color and think of your brand? What is that color? Is that color consistently shown through your marketing materials, digital or otherwise?

• What do you want them to read: your content is an extension of your authority and thought-leadership. Is it tailored to your primary audience, and are you opening the ground to continue the conversation? Additionally, consistently are you reaching out to your audience, through blogs, social posts, or otherwise?

• What do you want them to feel: this becomes the culmination of what they see and read about your brand. Are you showing yourself as the best option for your audience?

Building the quality of trust comes not just from your services, but how you present yourself as well. The days of focusing purely on the client are gone by the wayside, and your presentation of yourself is as important as your work.

Do you need help building your brand? Bloomerang Solutions can help! From reputation management to websites and social media, we're here to make you look you best. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here to find out what we can do to make your business bloom!

What’s the Difference Between Surveys and Reviews?

The difference between surveys and reviews is that surveys speak to you - the business owner - from the customer. We attach a coupon to our surveys and it's usually the most redeemed coupon because it targets our own customers and the responses inform us what we can do to improve their experience.

Reviews, on the other hand, allow your customers to speak to the world about their individual experience with your company.

The Bloomerang difference?

None of your clients have to select or login to any website or search engine, like Yelp or Google to leave a review.

Once they leave the review, we monitor and push it to the web within a few days. Our Google-certified software allows companies getting reviews to be rewarded online with gold stars in their organic local listings. The more reviews they get, the better they rank for SEO.

If shops get a bad review, we cannot remove it, but we will notify you to reach out to your customer to discuss what happened OR we will do it for you!

This program is guaranteed. Anyone that runs a homemade program and does not allow negative reviews to be published is not using an approved system and cannot get the gold stars.

Organic listings are FREE, and cannot be manipulated. Only a Google-certified program can achieve the gold star rankings.

Now you know the difference between surveys and reviews.

Reviews make it easy for businesses to stand out with five key features:

• Review Monitoring: Monitor all of the location reviews from customers — including those on third-party sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp — in one place. Automated notifications alert businesses to new reviews as they appear.

• Review Generation: Encourage real customers to submit reviews based on actual visits and experiences. Leverage email, SMS, receipts, and five other channels to leverage in search.

• Review Balancing: Bloomerang’s review balancing algorithm dynamically chooses the most impactful site to direct customers to ensure an even distribution.

• Review Publication: Publish the reviews you generate to your business website or app with pre-optimized Schema.org widgets so stars appear in your organic search results.

• Review Response: Respond to reviews where needed. With workflows and approval settings, local managers can respond to reviews for locations they manage.

• Review Insights: Analyze review trends and changes over time so you can remedy issues as they arise–and reward loyal customers as you so choose.

How often do you talk to your customers to find out what they think? It’s simple with surveys from Bloomerang Solutions. We can help you customize surveys for you shop that will tell you everything you’ve always wanted to know (but never asked). Best of all, we can get this up and running on your site by the end of the week. Take the guess work out of customer service with surveys from Bloomerang Solutions. Give us a call at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here for more information.

No reason to be alarmed, FTD is here to stay

Some of you have seen this recent news article from the Chicago Tribune about some troubling news from FTD. According to the article, “FTD could go out of business or shrink its operations this summer if it doesn’t find a buyer or raise money by June 1.” 

At first glance, that sounds like terrible news for the floral industry, but we spoke to our sources at FTD who clarified what was being reported and assured us they’re not going anywhere. 

This is a time to think about where you feel most comfortable. Who is running your technology and what is most important to your business? Is it just about orders? Is it about running your business?

The truth is while this sounds more scary that I believe it is, FTD borrowed $400 Million and now owes $215 Million and is still making money. This is not a sign they would go anywhere. They can and should make more, but they are NOT losing money and that would be a concern.

Teleflora, on the other hand, is privately-owned and as far as I have seen, a very stable company. But if the family uses funds for whatever reason, to do anything, they do not owe any explanation.

I would like to see shops work together as teams. FTD and Teleflora both have their own strengths and shortcomings - so what you need for your business is most important.

If anyone is bashing FTD over this I doubt it would be Teleflora. Consider sources

According to FTD, the company filed its year-end 10-K (as required for any publicly traded company) but the article failed to characterize it properly. Any time a public company has loan or credit agreements, they are required to list any risks associated with the amendments of that agreement. 

FTD is a billion-dollar company and will reach $40-50 million in EBITDA in 2019 so there’s no reason to panic or overthink this report - FTD is not going anywhere. In fact, they are currently working on a new cutting-edge website platform that they plan do roll-out early this summer. 

With this new platform, FTD is focusing on the needs of the retail florist by upgrading and enhancing the back-end capabilities of their websites. We’re excited to see how well the new changes perform when they begin upgrading their current websites in waves starting on June 1.

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The Industry Responds

As this news reaches more people, the industry is starting to react and take action. Floral Systems, who offer point of sale products has issued the following release urging FTD customers to consider other options.

The truth is, FTD borrowed $400 million and in 5 years has paid down the debt and still maintaining a profit. They have plans to create new back end systems and acquired a company most recently to help them improve the websites as clearly, we all know, we need more than a fancy landing page these days. They are making an effort. Having POS companies play up on this? Well, I just think everyone knows what is available and the relationship is the difference. Who hears you and treats you best?

This should not be a reason to jump ship in my opinion as I have heard comments that FTD will be gone in six months several times.

 I would just say, if you do not care for one or the other wire service, let them know. They need you to survive, FTD is far more aggressive and with good reason. This is and has been the ride with them for years and years. Your business should rely on YOUR needs and communicate with whoever could do a better job for you. Wire services like Teleflora are the ONLY ones who do not ship flowers in a box and other than that, it's personal preference. I applaud them for that but understand FTD is up against 1-800 Flowers and if one does it, the other does too. That's my 2 cents. What's yours?

 -Art

Bloomerang Solutions can help your business bloom with custom websites, reputation and social media management, online marketing with Google and much more! Visit our website or give us a call at 941-806-1911 for more information.