Mori Gardens Growing on Social Media

Nestled in quaint Niagara-on-the-lake is home to Mori Gardens. Since 1974, Mori Gardens has provided exceptional trees, perennials, flowering shrubs, roses, colourful annuals and the list goes on. More than simply a garden centre they offer award-winning designs with free consultations as well as inspiring gardening and decorating ideas from knowledgeable, friendly garden consultants. They also are one of Canada’s only green rentals, meaning you can rent out their beautiful greenery to use at events such as weddings, galas, corporate events, etc and they are doing events themselves.

Walking into Mori Gardens is an experience in itself. They have transformed the space so that you will leaving “feeling a greater love for nature.” You can stroll through their gardens, around the pond, or sit in gazebo surrounded by beautiful greenery. This same feeling is embraced and mirrored in their social media. Its easy to browse thorough their pages and be inspired. Their beautifully curated images and videos reflect their storefront and the Mori Garden brand.

About a year ago Mori Gardens revamped their online presence including their social media to better reflect their organizational goals. They are currently active on Facebook, Grow Niagara (a blog and newsletter), Meetup and Eventbrite as well as three Instagram pages to focus on different services and target different clientele (@Morigardens, @greenrentals_by_morigardens, and @niagaraonthelakemarket).

I recently had a phone conversation with Miguel Mori, who is the lead of the social media and marketing team at Mori Gardens. We talked about the ways social media is integrated throughout Mori Gardens and how it is helping with their company’s goals.

Customer engagement and social media marketing go hand in hand and play a large role in their social media’s usage. Mori Gardens is looking to engage and build relationships with current and potential customers by providing value and inspiration. By knowing their demographics and where they are active online, they can better assess content they will post. For example, they are using Facebook to target women ages 45- 65+ who are most likely looking at their second (+) home/empty nesters and Instagram for the new home/garden owners (35-45).

Mori Gardens is not only using high-quality images and videos but providing information and tips for different products they have in their storefront. They are also utilizing features such as Instagram stories, Facebook events etc, they have specific hashtags and are regramming customers photos. By asking for feedback and running polls as well as always responding to comments they are creating a dialogue with their customers.

Building partnerships with local businesses is also an area where they focus their social media efforts. Last month they hosted A Very Mori Christmas Palooza, a winter wonderland market type event where they showcased their own products as well as vendor spotlights throughout their social media.  They are looking to continue these relationships as they can help each other out by sharing to like-minded customers.

Miguel noted he pays close attention to metrics. He reveled that he checks them daily to see how the posts are doing and their engagement levels. He told me he also likes to see the correlation between a post or series of posts and how they offer a ROI in the storefront. By checking product sales, he can see if his efforts on the social media platforms are making a direct impact in the products they are selling. He can also use the information gathered to see where there is interest and plan to hold a free seminar on the topic.

Knowing that social media effort is long term, Mori Gardens is looking forward to continuing their current goals and looking forward to future new developments. Taking a lead in a current technology, this year Mori Gardens has implemented a chatbot, which they will hoping will be beneficial during their peek time. Customers expect a quick response, and this is a tool that will aid them in doing so.

Lessons for Others

Incorporating social media throughout your organization can have beneficial results. Its also important to include that it doesn’t happen overnight and building social media into your whole enterprise takes time. Marketing and customer engagement are both great areas to start.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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