Using Online Tools to Cultivate In-Store Customers

How Scotts Miracle-Gro Uses Online Tools to Cultivate In-Store Customers

Customers who buy Scotts Miracle-Grow products cannot click and order online. They have to go to stores to pick up the company's fertilizers, weed inhibitors, plant foods, and other products. So why has Scotts invested so heavily in a state-of-the-art website, an e-newsletter, and even smart phone applications that deliver advice about lawn and garden care?

The answer is that Scotts is using digital outreach to bring customers into stores as part of its business development strategy. Let's see how these strategies can work for you:

• Scotts ties its marketing to seasons. Through its digital communication points, Scotts delivers advice and information about garden and lawn care. Yard care is seasonal -- each time of year affords an opportunity to advise customers to use different products.
  What you can do: Decode usage cycles for your products and services. Whether you're an accountant, or own a construction company, spa, or painting company, your customers' needs vary according to the time of year -- and you can deliver information timed to those cycles.
• Scotts uses its e-newsletter to bring customers to a full-featured informational website. This is the second part of the Scotts digital strategy -- a terrific landing page that is jam-packed with blogs, articles, videos, and a rich array of tools like a bird identifier, a grass type identifier, and problem-solvers for pests and weeds. So even though customers can't order products, this full-featured website really pulls them in, showcases products, and builds loyalty.
  What you can do: Whether you own a car detailing company, tree service, gourmet food store, or karate dojo, you can provide your expert advice online as a way to capture customer interest and build loyalty for your brand.
• Scotts is rolling out new services that flow logically from what it already does. On the Scotts website, you'll notice that the company now offers a lawn service through which certified technicians apply Scotts products to customers' lawns and provide other yard-care services. That's a logical extension built on the trust that the company has established through its products and marketing outreach.
  What you can do: If you analyze how you're meeting your customers' current needs, chances are you can develop new products and services that build on that platform and that will offer a new entry point to speak with customers about something new.

(Source: Ken Beaulieu, Getting New Customers, 04/01/11)