We were talking about Gen Y again the other day. A member of the TGC team was just back from an industry event where a hot topic was something we’ve all been discussing for quite a while: Generation Y isn’t gardening. How will we survive if they don’t start?

The point was made – and it’s a good one – that it’s too early to worry about why 20- and early-30-year-olds aren’t all flocking to garden centers and spending their weekends on their hands and knees in the backyard planting annuals. Gardening has never been much of a priority for people that age. There’s no real reason to expect they won’t want to have nice homes and yards as they get a little older. Gen Y will come, I’m guessing in somewhere close to the same numbers we’ve seen before.

That said, there are an almost infinite number of ways for consumers to spend their spare time and disposable dollars outside of your garden center these days. For many members of Generation Y – or Gen X or Baby Boomers for that matter – the flowers, tools, gifts and classes you have to offer aren’t even on their radar. They’re not gardening or using plants to enhance their lives because they’ve never even considered it as a possibility.

These are the toughest kinds of consumers to convert into customers. But, to grow business over the long term, these are the customers you’ll need to lure into the garden center.

Cut Through The Clutter
From soccer practice to iPads to taking the family to a ballgame, there are a lot of activities and products and businesses competing with you for people’s time and attention. How do you get them to spend some of that time and money in your garden center?

Sitting back waiting for them to show up obviously isn’t a viable option. Sure, you’re advertising. Chances are, however, that your message is falling on deaf ears with the non-gardening crowd. Traditional marketing methods like newspaper ads, email newsletters, or even classes in your garden center can be effective with your loyal and even your “sometimes” customers. But for the non-gardener, these are passive messages. They are likely not enough to capture the imagination in a way that causes them to take some action and come to your garden center.

We’re big proponents of using social media and all of the other new tools available to help you interact with your customers. But even those methods are likely to speak more to people who are already familiar with gardening and your business.

House Call Marketing
For people who aren’t already aware of what you have to offer, the best solution may be to literally go out, take them by the hand and lead them to your store.

Our publisher, Bob West has an idea along these lines he’s trying to make work with an independent garden center in his area. He approached the retailer and suggested they send somebody out to his housing development to host a container gardening demonstration. Raffle off the containers when they’re done. Have a special offer at the garden center for everyone who attended. Create some excitement. Show people right there in their own backyards how fun it can be.

Not a lot of people in his neighborhood are big gardeners, but Bob is pretty confident he could get 40 or so people to attend – and that after seeing how easy it is add a little color to their lives they’ll be hooked. And you can guess which garden center they’ll be visiting.

Yes, projects like this mean sending someone out to do demonstrations three or four evenings a month. Extra efforts like this might just be the cost of doing business these days, however. The garden centers that are the most aggressive in getting out into their communities, literally getting plants into people’s hands, are the businesses that will succeed with the next generation – or any generation, for that matter.

Show them how simple it can be to put together a great-looking bed or a container, and you will quite possibly create a spark that brings them in and makes plants a regular part of their lives.

Don’t wait for new customers to come find you. Get out there and bring them in.