For most of my 25 years of study, training - in Wellington and Auckland - and subsequent career working in the Floral Industry I never imagined the ‘rise and rise’ of social networking.

I certainly never imagined that it would play a major role in successfully launching my own Flower Shop from scratch and building my loyal base of customers.

However, I always knew that my flower business would be a ‘people business’. I always thought that my success would be by ‘word of mouth’ from one happy customer to another to another to another. So, I set out to ‘impress’ right from the beginning; I studied floral design and always aimed to deliver the highest quality flowers with a unique or fresh design approach. I naively thought that that would be enough.

It might even be enough, IF… either you are ‘monumentally lucky’ enough to be at the ‘right place at the right time’ to grab the ‘perfect location’… or you happen to garner huge free publicity from landing the commission to do the flowers for Julia Roberts next wedding, or some-such. But, it would be unwise to ‘just’ bank the total success of your business on one of the above happening.

Traditionally, one of the accepted secrets to success in the flower business is to locate in ‘high foot traffic areas’ such as shopping malls or central city locations; or in the Main Street of a smaller town or city. The ‘catch’ to that - for a new Flower Shop’ just starting out - is the extremely high lease costs for such ‘prime locations’: or that they are already taken: or have several existing florists there already.

To be honest, I’ve seen to many florists with a ‘great location’ but crammed into a tiny shop and making up their flowers in any even tinier back room. To me that is not conducive to doing your ‘best work. And my aim was – always – to be the best.

So, when the time finally came to ‘make my dream come true’ and set up my own Flower Shop ‘Allure Florist’ I decided – partly for lifestyle/family reasons and partly for the practical reasons just mentioned - I wanted to find premises close to where we live in Lower Hutt, Wellington. I also wanted a ‘good size’ space to work in and also to display my floral creations. As such, when I found the ‘perfect location’ - which met all my criteria – it wasn’t in a mall or a ‘high foot-traffic’ area.

It became apparent to me and my husband - Steven - that the Internet might be an economic way to stimulate that ‘word of mouth’ growth that I we were looking for.

We knew we needed a good website but were really naïve about how to make it work for us; we thought – probably like many other business owners out there – that if we just put up a website ( like building a better mouse-trap ) that ‘they would come. I am actually a bit embarrassed to admit how little we knew. We were probably ripe to become another one of those ‘Internet horror stories’ you read about; where some business owner naively stumps up a few thousand dollars for a website and then gets little or zero result – in terms of business – and has no ‘come-back’ with their web designers and have no idea what to do next.

Luckily, we found a great bunch of guys called ‘The Sales Creator’ Network. They work exclusively with business owners to ‘create sales’. They do it by building ‘traffic’ to your website – mainly through Google and ‘social media’ like Facebook.

We didn’t really understand any of this at the time. We just naively wanted a website because we ‘knew’ we need one. Ha ha. We got referred to Daniel Moore and his team at ‘The Sales Creator’ through a friend.

Initially, we just thought all we needed was a website and that is all we bought at first. As I said, we didn’t know much about marketing online we just thought. ‘put up the website and they will come in their zillions and we will be ‘made’.

In our first meeting Daniel and his head web copywriter, Barry, explained the kind of ‘content’ we needed on our site to be search engine ( especially Google ) ‘friendly’. They also ‘listened’ to what we – actually, mainly “I” – wanted in terms of ‘look’ and the set-up of my online Flower Shop. And so it came to pass, and – apart from initial teething issues with the shop payment gateway ( another area I had no idea about ) – I was extremely happy with the site. I thought, ‘That’s done and ticked off the list’ ( ha ha, again ) and got on with finishing my shop refurbishment and sorting out sign-writing, staffing, phones, computers, etcetera, etcetera.

Our ‘Grand Opening’ was fairly low-key or a ‘soft’ opening – as our budget didn’t allow for a lot of ‘razz-ma-tazz’. Some signs, flyers and a little local advertising was all we did. After an initial little burst of interest - because we were new – our sales were fairly slow. ‘The Sales Creator’ guys suggested we join their network as a ‘Gold member’ level which means using a blog to raise your profile build a following online and utilizing Facebook and Twitter to communicate with your customers, friends and fans every week about what you are doing. This builds a steadily increasing list of people who like what you do or are interested in finding out more about it.

To cut a long story short – we have been going less than a year and – our sales have been steadily increasing ( although we have fluctuations – like any business ) driven mainly by the website/online Flower Shop. Our physical shop gets a lot more phone orders too from people who have been drawn to the website first but prefer to deal with a ‘person’. Of course, that’s great, too. We don’t mind how the sales come – as long as they come – whether it is through ‘word-of-mouth’, ‘word-of-Twitter’, ‘word-of-Facebook’ or ‘word-of-Google’. For example, my wedding bookings for 2011 are filling up fast and some weeks are already booked out.

All, I can say is a big thanks to Daniel and his team at ‘The Sales Creator’ because what they do works; and has become a major driving force in my current success with ‘Allure Florist’… right here in ‘little old Lower Hutt’, in Wellington, New Zealand. AND we are doing it without being in a ‘high foot-traffic’ location; against conventional wisdom. The Internet has changed the game – as long as you know to make it work for you or know someone who does.

I am happy to be able to give Daniel and ‘The Sales Creator’ Network this little plug - especially as we celebrate growing past the 2500 followers mark on my ‘Lets Talk About Flowers’ Facebook page - because I am so happy with the results they are producing ‘week-in and week-out’. In fact, without them, and the way they things make their services affordable with a low weekly charge, ‘Allure Florist’ might not even still be here.

To generate regular sales and build a loyal customer base through traditional advertising is extremely expensive and the money is swallowed up in big chunks. With ‘The Sales Creator’ method: the cost is spread which is much easier to budget for and it ‘builds up’ a steady and loyal clientele with whom you are constantly in touch. If your product and/or service delivers what you promise then the ‘word-of-mouth’ factor kicks-in and your sales rise. Of course, it doesn’t happen over night. The process takes time and builds slowly – sometimes quickly – so it doesn’t happen overnight ( to quote a famous blonde ) but it does happen. I’m proof.

In fact, Daniel has many other clients in his ‘The Sales Creator’ Network who are happy to tell similar stories. Actually, that is one of the ‘secrets’ because you tap into the ‘networks’ of all the other “The Sales Creator’ members who will come across to your network if they like what you do. This is an exciting way to quickly generate more traffic to your website and sales for your business.

One last point – and this is really amazing – all this takes only ’10 minutes of my time’ per week! Of, course it can vary up or down ( like this week ) but – on average – it is 10 mins or less each week. That – as any experienced business owner will tell you – is pretty incredible ( in the ‘hard to believe’ sense ) because organizing your advertising and marketing along with up loading new website content can just suck you in – like quicksand. The time involved can expand to fill in all your available time and drive you nuts.

With ‘The Sales Creator’, Daniel phones or Skypes me at a pre-arranged time every week and I just chat about what I want to say in my blog and one of his professional copywriters takes what I have said and knocks it into shape and up-loads it to my blog, Twitter, and Facebook and up-dates my website. They do it ALL for you. All the pressure goes away and it all happens like clockwork each week. It is fabulous.

As an extra added bonus – as part of our weekly chats – Daniel is happy to throw in some business/ marketing mentoring in the form of promotional ideas, marketing ideas, or ways to streamline my business. It is nice to be able to bounce my ideas off him and take advantage of his 25 years of online and offline business and marketing experience. All at no extra cost.

If you want to find out more about Daniel Moore and ‘The Sales Creator’ visit: www.thesalescreator.net or email info@thesalescreator.co.nz

Cheers,

Sally.

PS. To see this week’s brand NEW $30 ‘Grab a Bunch’ Flower Special,called 'Spring Bouquet', go here >> or phone 0800 255-873 or 04 891-0356 and us ask about it.