At Glee 2025, one theme kept resurfacing in our conversations: most garden centres are already sitting on the ingredients for better marketing performance. What is often missing is not another channel, but a clearer strategy for using the channels they already have.
In our latest episode of The Underground Podcast, we explored two that are sometimes seen as “nice-to-have” rather than central: loyalty programmes and paid media. Phil and Kate were joined by Vanessa Cranford from Spring Marketing, and Aaron Rudman-Hawkins from The Evergreen Agency, to unpack what happens when you treat these as core commercial tools rather than side projects.
This blog pulls out a few of the business-focused lessons for home and garden brands.
Loyalty isn’t a cost centre
One of Vanessa’s strongest observations was that many garden centres still file loyalty under “expense”, not “profit”. As she put it: “I think a number of garden centres look at loyalty as a cost centre, rather than it being a revenue generator.”
When you only see the voucher line on a P&L, it’s understandable. The value becomes clearer once loyalty is properly connected to EPOS and reporting. That is when you can see:
- Who your best customers are
- How often they visit
- What they actually buy
- How their behaviour differs from non-members
Vanessa describes the difference neatly:
“10,000 members is vanity, 7,000 members are active is your sanity, and 3,000 of them are actually contributing 40% of profit to your business. And that’s king.”
In other words, the headline number on the database is not the point. The commercial opportunity lies in identifying the core group who drive a disproportionate share of margin, then designing your communications, offers and experience around them.
Crucially, this is not just about discounts. For the most loyal customers, Vanessa stresses that: “It’s about making people feel special.”
Priority invites, early access, tailored content, thoughtful thank-you moments in-store: these are all creative decisions as much as technical ones. Which is where loyalty stops being a “scheme” and becomes part of the brand.
“A loyalty programme is not an island off the coast of the brand.”
That line should probably be on a lot of marketing office walls.
Paid media: Powerful, but not a silver bullet
If loyalty can be misunderstood as a cost, paid media can be misunderstood as a shortcut. Aaron captured that tension with a memorable line on the podcast: “Google Ads… is a good example. It’s a drug. It’s like a drug.”
Used well, search and social advertising can be one of the fastest ways to drive incremental revenue. Used badly, they create dependency without building any real brand equity.
Aaron’s starting point is very simple: most garden centres do not need national fame.
“Most businesses don’t need to be famous to everyone. You need to be famous to a few.”
For a bricks-and-mortar site, the priority is to dominate your local area:
“If you are a bricks and mortar business as garden centres are, you need to be known within a ten-mile radius. Win the postcode, you win the weekend… localised clicks fill car parks.”
That means understanding the different jobs each channel does. Search captures people already looking for what you offer. Social helps you stay present, retarget visitors, and promote reasons to visit again: events, café offers, new ranges.
The economics matter as much as the creative. Average order value, margin and repeat purchase rates all influence what you can sensibly afford to spend on a click. You do not fix a weak proposition or poor experience with more budget. Instead, Aaron argues for keeping the framework straightforward:
“What I love about marketing these days, is it can be complicated, and I think there’s a real art to keeping things simple.”
Simple questions, such as:
- Who exactly are we trying to reach in our catchment area?
- What do we want them to do in the next four weeks?
- How will we know if these ads are driving profitable behaviour, not just traffic?
Where WrightObara fits in the mix
As an agency, we do not run loyalty platforms or buy media on behalf of clients. Partners like Spring Marketing and The Evergreen Agency specialise in those disciplines.
However, conversations like this matter deeply to us because every channel is only as strong as the brand and customer experience behind it.
A loyalty database becomes far more valuable when:
- Your in-store experience gives people a reason to scan every visit
- The brand feels consistent from card to café to compost bag
- The content and campaigns that surround the programme feel distinctive and worthy of attention
Paid search and social become far more efficient when:
- The landing experience is clear, helpful and visually on-brand
- The proposition is well defined, so you are not paying to promote “just another garden centre”
- Your creative feels like an extension of the stories customers see in-store, not a disconnected advert
At WrightObara, our role is to help home and garden brands shape that story, then express it consistently through design, content and campaigns. Loyalty and ads perform better when they plug into a coherent narrative about who you are, what you stand for, and why a shopper should choose you.
Designing a smarter mix for the next season
Looking ahead, the most successful garden retailers and suppliers will not be the ones who simply “add another channel”. They will be the ones who:
- Treat loyalty as a strategic asset, not a tick-box exercise
- Use paid media carefully, to amplify what already works commercially
- Invest in the brand, creative and customer experience that make every channel work harder
The conversations with Vanessa and Aaron underlined something we see again and again in our own work: the real gains come when data, digital and design are working together, not competing for budget.
If you are reviewing your marketing mix for the next season, the questions might be less about “Should we do loyalty?” or “Should we do more ads?” and more about:
- “What are we asking these channels to do for the business?”
- “Are we telling a clear, consistent story wherever our customers meet us?”
That is the space where we love to work with clients: helping brands in the home and garden sector clarify their story, sharpen their proposition and create campaigns that connect, whether they are delivered via a loyalty email, an in-store poster or a sponsored post in someone’s Sunday scroll.
Check out the full episode of The Underground Podcast, featuring Vanessa Cranford of Spring Marketing and Aaron Rudman-Hawkins of the Evergreen Agency, below: