Why gratitude is a powerful greenhouse marketing strategy

Photos © Adobestock

Think back to the holidays at the end of last year. Did you notice anything about the communications you were receiving? On an almost daily basis, my email, text messages, social media feeds, even my snail mailbox were like the Dursleys’ fireplace tossing out personalized letters and year-end appeals. Typically, they offered heartfelt thanks, along with asks for this or that.

Several communications featured holiday messaging wrapped in requests to support charitable causes or nonprofit organizations: from my journalism school alma mater, a sponsorship organization, a pet rescue, and on and on it went.

All of them got me thinking about our horticulture industry and how we market our products and services.

Gratitude is a marketing strategy.

A strategy. In addition to an emotion, a messaging tool and a general business practice whose cousin is kindness, gratitude is a marketing strategy. There’s a difference here — a nuance to this multifaceted gem that is precious in both business and in life. But what does it have to do with growing and selling plants?

Everything.

Gratitude informs experience

Gratitude has everything to do with a company’s vision, mission and creativity. It is inherent in a company’s values and reason for being in the marketplace. It informs perspectives and programs that lead to outcomes and results, like achieving goals and generating sales.

It is the spark of human ingenuity that births success. Gratitude drives human beings to do better, be better and accomplish big and little scary things when the anxiety of doing anything at all might otherwise send us dashing back to bed.

With gratitude as a marketing strategy, benefits are reciprocal. It sends ripples of goodwill into the marketplace that benefits everyone. It grows respect and reputations, and it reinforces the desire to do business with a company that lives its values of authentically honoring people.

Sincere gratitude is best friends with loyalty. The relationship becomes beneficial, rather than transactional. Through its products, every link of the plant business chain provides health, wellness and environmental and community-enrichment benefits that are unlike any benefits in any other industry. Our horticulture industry — and especially those who grow its plants — are inherently centered in gratitude as a business marketing strategy.

People don’t want to do business with logos. While brands are vital and beloved, I believe they also don’t want to do business with brands per se.

People want to do business with people.

This applies whether communications are business-to-consumer or business-to-business. Thinking five steps ahead with regards to planning gratitude as a strategy means thinking through “what if?” scenarios. It incorporates empathy and consideration for others, identifies objectives, sets goals, develops messaging and executes outreach.

Customers will feel a certain way about the experience they have with the company, including its products and services, because of its people. That’s when logos and brands matter — when “people come first” is the planned strategy through gratitude marketing that is inherent in the company’s DNA. And their experience will determine their next steps with you as their customer.

It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s also one of those things that is so nuanced that if you blink quick, you might miss it.

Gratitude as a strategy informs experiential marketing.

Gratitude as a business marketing strategy

“Gratitude toward our customers is built into our core values and culture,” a colleague told me. They call their way of working “customer-centric.”

“We train frontline team members, and all the way up to top-level management, to do what we do with the customer in mind. In reality, our customers sign our paychecks,” this colleague said. “They have a choice whether to shop with us or not. Everything we do, every interaction with our (business), is a chance to show our appreciation to our customers for literally putting food on everyone’s table.”

I hope by now you know that I’m not talking about DIY gratitude platitudes on social media. Rather, gratitude as a business marketing strategy centers on three concepts.

Gratitude is a superpower. It informs successes and gives strength to struggles.

Gratitude is grounding. It focuses on the present as it informs values, planning and goal setting.

Gratitude is a connector. It networks with clients and customers through good times and challenging ones.

But what happens if “gratitude as a strategy” isn’t genuine or is overdone? In my humble opinion — and the consensus of the marketing pros I spoke with — customers can see right through that trick. Gratitude in that case, sadly, is nothing more than a gimmick or a gratitude platitude. It stands a very real chance of doing more harm to the brand than good. Strategy is lost, perhaps never even identified.

“Gratitude,” a colleague said, “should run a lot deeper than discounted pricing. To be sincere, it needs to be enriched in a company’s culture.”

Indeed. And it’s a simple concept, really: Gratitude is a marketing strategy.

But sometimes in business, we tend to want to make things hard, don’t we? When the answers to our brand successes are right there — right there in front of us.

On that chilly office day, gratitude wanted me to notice that it had much more to offer than discounted pricing and free gifts with a purchase. It got my attention. It snagged my intention. It got me to see that it is indeed a strategy — and the key to every successful business brand.

Sue Markgraf is a veteran journalist and industry marketing professional with decades of experience in strategic communications for the horticulture and agriculture industries. Contact her at smarkgraf@greenmarkpr.com.