Norfolk Business Awards: Bold campaigning wins Plantgrow the Marketing Innovation Award

Ground-breaking gardening firm Plantgrow won the Marketing Innovation award, sponsored by Shorthose Russell, at the 2021 Norfolk Business Awards.

“Just making the final shortlist felt like a real achievement for us, given that the company’s only being going for about five years," says production manager Daniel Suggit. “To emerge as the winner felt terrific – especially when we were up against some really good, established companies.”

The awards evening, shortly before Christmas, turned out to be full of surprises. “We were also in the running for Business of the Year – which really blew our minds,” Mr Suggit reveals.

“We knew it wasn’t a category you could enter – the judges drew up the candidates from the entries to all the categories – so we were absolutely thrilled even to be on the shortlist. It shows the ethos and the work we do here is noted and appreciated.”

The reaction to the Great Ellingham firm’s triumph in the Marketing Innovation Award has been heartening. “The staff have been over the moon with the win – and we’ve had a good reaction from our customers, too,” says Mr Suggit.

"December is a fairly quiet month for us, having a seasonal product, but we’re close to our customers and when we put the news of the win out on social media, we got lots of positive comments.”

Social media has been an important part of the successful marketing strategy. “We’re really focused on getting Plantgrow in front of people who crave this kind of environmentally sustainable, green product,” Mr Suggit explains.

He stresses the importance of finding people who can act as brand-ambassadors – for instance Plantgrow has developed and excellent relationship with Alan Gray of East Ruston Old Vicarage Gardens.

“We have the huge benefit that customers will talk about our product,” Mr Suggit explains. "When they’ve found it and they like it, they’ll tell other gardeners about it.”

Plantgrow has the coveted Soil Association and Vegan Society approvals to show the products are 100% organic and plant-based (Image: Plantgrow)

Plantgrow also works with a marketing agency to introduce new gardeners to the brand. “Data is so important when your business operates in such a specialist area as gardening,” Mr Suggit says. "We have to look at trends and understand what the data tells us.”

When putting a campaign together, he says, it’s crucial to stay focused on the unique aspects of the product or service. “For us it’s the organic, environmentally sustainable nature of the product. There’s a huge demand for that – so our challenge is to get it in front of as many people as possible,” he says.

“Choose exactly when and how the product needs to be seen – and understand who you want to see the product. Then use targeted social media and print ads to reach them,” he advises.

This is exactly what Plantgrow does, complementing its online marketing with print advertising in selected regional papers and some gardening magazine - in 2021 it ran a year-long campaign in Grow Your Own magazine.

To reach an even bigger audience in 2021, the firm launched its first television advert. “Creating and running the TV ad was the biggest marketing initiative of the year,” Mr Suggit says. “It was a national campaign, featuring in breaks in the key gardening programmes – and we saw a huge response from it.”

This was important as, like so many businesses, Plantgrow had been affected by the lockdowns. “Our route to customers through garden centres disappeared overnight, as they were all forced to close,” Mr Suggit explains.

“At the same time, gardeners were at home more and they were ordering a lot direct from us. We were fortunate that even though we had lost one side of the business, the other side flourished.”

While lockdown closed garden centres, customers were able to order Plantgrow online (Image: Plantgrow)

Since then the business has gone from strength to strength. It has recently earned Soil Association and Vegan Society approval, which reassure buyers that its products are entirely organic and plant-based. It is also expanding the team and redeveloping its site, to increase production and storage facilities.

For more information, see www.plantgrow.co.uk