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When my daughter was very young, a neighbor asked her what her daddy did for a living. Her response? "I'm not sure, but I think he gets paid to go yell at people."

Sounds like one of the best descriptions of a consultant I've heard in a while, although "overtly direct discourse" sounds a bit more professional. Consultants do that a lot, make up ambiguous terms and phrases for things, thinking clients probably feel better paying for suggestions when they sound "real smart."

I prefer to keep things simple. That approach must work for the kind of clients I seem to attract, too. Quite a few have allowed me to yell at them for several years.

I'm a firm believer that everyone needs a "pusher" in their life. Someone you can trust and who's not afraid to yell at you when the time is right.

Think about it. Who does the person running the company, the person with the ultimate responsibility of making everything succeed, have to bounce off ideas, commiserate about poor cash flow or count on to discuss the difficult decisions? The obvious answer must be no one or there wouldn't be this explosion of people in the business world calling themselves coaches. We all need someone we can lean on.

When the Group formed, I had people working with me who were better than I was in a lot of areas. Once we started divvying up the duties, my responsibilities fell into the marketing arena of services.

Now I had a focus I would really enjoy yelling about. Partly because I've spent the last few decades living and breathing this stuff for clients with some degree of success. But also because lately I've been paying to hang out with people like Roy Williams and Michele Miller from the Wizard of Ads firm and Doug Hall of Eureka! Ranch and American Inventor fame who yell at me about what they know that I don't.

So here's the silent version of what I've been yelling about -- I mean discussing with -- Group clients in the area of garden center marketing.

Some of my rants

* "You don't have enough money to do all the things you think you need to do!" One of the requirements of the Group application process is to send a sample of all the kinds of advertising methods a center uses. Most times we receive a pack filled with every type of advertising possible. What comes later is explaining that unless there's a marketing budget of close to $200,000 a year, a garden center can't create enough impact trying to have a presence in so many different media. Sure you can spend a little bit here and there, but spending too little in too many places results in wasting all that is spent. Better to be the big fish in one pond, any pond, than missed completely in an ocean of options.

* "You don't have enough money to be on more than one radio or television station. Get over it!" Nothing's more confusing than trying to determine which radio or TV station to use based on the reports the reps are so anxious to share. In either case, all you're interested in is a frequency rate over a week's time. Be prepared to run more than 20 commercials a week or walk away. Anything less is usually a waste.

* "Hey! People have more important things to do with their lives than pay attention to your ads!" It's amazing how many centers expect great ads to create great sales. Great advertising will create great results … over time. If all you want is a full parking lot, put everything at half-off. Almost any form of advertising will work in that instance. But if you want to build a relationship with an audience you value, be patient. Your need for money isn't enough of a motivator for people to come shop your store the minute your ad appears.

* "Why do you think that second newspaper ad is half price? Because it's not even worth that much!" I've made a habit of never running two ads in the same paper the same week. One larger ad is always better than two or more smaller ones. I'm not after all their readers. I just want to be sure none of them on one particular day misses my ad. A good newspaper ad makes people want to shop ASAP. Readers shouldn't need a second nudge. And if you're the type who doesn't want to put prices in your ads, don't do newspaper advertising.

* "You're open 12 months a year with 12 months of bills to pay. Why are you blowing all your marketing money in just a few weeks?!" If you're open, invite people to come shop. You're marketing budget should cover as many weeks as it can afford in at least one medium. We vary newspaper ads throughout the year with two sizes and might skip a month or two with direct mail but our goal is to have some type of message in front of our core customer base on a weekly basis. Now you know the value of an e-news program. A quality e-newsletter can fill the gaps between your other media choices, at least with some of your most valuable customers.

* "So would you drive all the way across town to turn in a coupon worth $1.99? Well apparently neither would your customers!" But that doesn't stop garden centers from continuing to offer silly enticements like a free herb plant or a bag of soil with every $100 purchase. When centers tell me "coupons don't work," I say, "Of course they do. Next time put a coupon worth 50 percent off the entire store on your postcard. You'll find out real quick that it's not coupons, it's the value offer." Here's a tip: Postcards, e-news, newsletters and newspaper ads of value are read. Period. And with a focus on providing valuable information, they will be responded to by your customers. And you can stop with all the "testing." Either your advertising works or it doesn't. You don't need a coupon to prove that.

* "Of course other garden centers are doing it! They read about it in a magazine. Any fool can put everything on sale at 25 percent off in the spring and fill a parking lot. But what's the point?" An event like this isn't marketing, it's bribery. People read about a promotion or sale at another garden center and think how successful it was at driving traffic. They don't stop to consider the cheapening effect it has on the company or lost margin dollars as a result. (If you need quick cash this badly there's a bigger issue to be discussed.) I've worked with centers that have increased sales by millions of dollars over several years and have never resorted to such easy parking lot stuffers. There's just no challenge or long-term financial gain going for such low hanging fruit. One big day/weekend/promotion isn't of itself a success. I tell clients we'll copy this lame idea, too -- for our going-out-of-business promotion.

* "You say you don't think billboards work, well then why do you make all your newspaper ads and postcards look like billboards?" In spite of what you might think, people do read. Smart people just don't waste their time reading worthless junk. That doesn't stop a lot of garden centers from designing their newspaper, postcards and e-newsletters like billboards. You know: a few words in really big letters with lots of bold type and starbursts, all under the perception that readers have to be shouted at to get their attention. But the other extreme I find are ads with tiny words offering nothing of value other than telling people the center carries a lot of stuff. Both extremes will eventually be ignored by any reader worth having as a customer.

* "So then why did you start his loyalty program if you're going to treat everyone on your list the same way and send them all the same postcard?" Boy, talk about a lemming stampede. Now that every garden center has some type of plastic card program, maybe it's time to ask yourself why you jumped in so quickly. Most centers just changed from a mailing list of unknown purchase patterns to a list of people they know purchased something but continue to receive the same marketing message as the rest of the key-chain brigade. You don't have the time or money to turn this into a one-to-one campaign but at least segment your customers by some type of distinction. When everybody's special, nobody's special.

* "You spent $30,000 on newspaper ads but can't afford a decent sign-making system!" Good marketing should generate sales; good sales should generate profit. Profit should then pay for, in a priority sequence: signs, benches, paving and covered shopping.

* "We're not going to spend anything on marketing until you get this dump cleaned up!" OK, I've never really said this -- not in those exact words -- but the point has been made. Until a center is retail perfect from a shopping-experience position, no amount of marketing is going to help. In these cases, the better the marketing works the worse off the garden center becomes. Now lots of people think it's a dump.

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© 2006 Branch-Smith Publishing