Build a following

Since TikTok has amassed more than 1 billion users, you may wonder if it’s too late to benefit from the viral video platform.

The short answer is no. TikTok users are hungry for more than entertainment — they also enjoy education — and the green industry can provide both.

Users spend an average of 1½ hours on TikTok daily. That’s a lot of time to introduce users to our products, explain how plants offer mental and physical health benefits, or teach people about watering that new monstera. Engagement on TikTok is decreasing, according to Social Insider, but it’s still leaps and bound above other platforms (4.25% average engagement rate on TikTok by followers vs. 0.60% on Instagram and 0.15% on Facebook). Whether you’re a wholesale grower, a garden center or an allied company, TikTok offers a playful and creative environment to showcase your business and the green industry.

School is in session

Michael Fiore’s TikTok journey began around 18 months ago when he read an article saying that more hours were spent watching videos on TikTok than YouTube. 

“That was a big eye-opening moment for me,” he says. “It made me realize that this platform is not going away any time soon and there were a ton of people on it. And it was all ages of people on it, not just young folks.” 

Fiore, the fourth-generation operator of Wichita Falls, Texas-based grower-retailer Smith’s Gardentown (@smithsgardentown), believed in the power of TikTok so much that he hired a woman named Felicia Garza as a full-time content creator to make videos. He says her pay is comparable to an experienced cashier. 

“I knew that consistency is key,” he says, “and whenever people have other responsibilities, those other responsibilities come before sitting down to edit a video or film a video. I inherently knew that we needed to have someone whose only job was to do that.” He notes that they also cross post content to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube as those brands have begun to try to compete directly with TikTok. 

The “surprisingly easy” part, Fiore says, was finding Garza. 

“She was a customer of ours and a fan of ours,” he says. “And the reason I reached out to her was because she had her own TikTok channel and was doing well with it, so I knew she knew more about it than I did. She’s really blossomed in the role.” 

The content strategy, Fiore says, is to post a video every day even if it’s “simple and fast” while finding what videos worked. The niche Smith’s Gardentown settled into was education videos, ranging from showing gardeners how to deadhead petunias or how to use a scented geranium to keep away mosquitos. Multiple customers every day, he says, mention how much they learn.  

“I don’t have hard evidence,” Fiore says, “but I have loads and loads of anecdotal evidence of people just coming in constantly talking about and asking about something I’ve said in videos.”  

It took time to find the right voice. He says they tried “everything and anything under the sun.” 

“The market was already saturated with the trending stuff and the viral stuff and what people were looking for was serious, educational content,” he says. “And TikTok as a whole was shifting to more of an education-based content platform.”

“You don’t know what video is going to do the best. Sometimes, you do a video that you think is going to knock it out of the park and it gets 100 views. And sometimes you do something that you throw together and it gets a million. It’s really interesting in that regard.”

The benefits of posting Smith’s Gardentown content, Fiore says, is also about staying up to speed with the modern economy.

“The green industry tends to be 10 to 20 years behind other industries when it comes to technology adaptation and marketing and things like that,” he says. “I don’t want to be that business that gets left behind.”

Global and local reach

When Debbie Foisy, owner of Deb’s Greenhouse (@debsgreen house) in Alberta, Canada, posted her first TikTok more than a year ago, it was more experimental than intentional.

“My teens were talking about it,” she says, “and I decided to get my name out on it and see how it went.”

It turned out to be a serendipitous move when the grower-retailer’s Facebook account was hacked about a year ago.

“I couldn’t access my Facebook account, and my Instagram account is tied to it, and I didn’t know if would ever be able to get it back. I have a lot of followers on those platforms,” Foisy says. “And I did a lot of Facebook Live videos and had a lot of content on there. So, I hit hard on TikTok and people started following the business.”

As she was building up her audience on TikTok, Foisy got her company’s Facebook and Instagram account back. But she was enjoying enough success on TikTok, she continued to post on three platforms. Now, instead of doing Facebook Live, she now records and uploads videos separately to each platform.

Foisy does most of the videos, with her staff filling in sometimes. They don’t use a content calendar and do many off-the-cuff type videos. But her themed videos, such as “today’s top five plants” or planting tutorials, are planned and perform very well, she says. When she records a top-five segment, her staff’s “homework assignment” is to know all the plants on that list so when it goes live, they are familiar with those five plants.

“Our top five videos are simple, short and sweet, and people watch them to the end,” Foisy says. “Our first tutorial video this spring had 58,000 views on TikTok. I feel like we’re getting a lot more views on TikTok compared to Instagram.”

But most of her Instagram and Facebook followers are in her buying area, so those platforms still hold value for her business.

“On TikTok, you’re reaching the world, not necessarily you’re trading area,” she says. “But every city or town has their own hashtag, so take advantage of that. We have people come into the store and say, ‘You’re the TikTok lady’ or ‘I saw that plant on TikTok.’”

While Foisy’s TikTok page is consumer facing, she said B2B companies have a place on the platform, too. And if you’re already creating content for other platforms, she says you may as well be using it on TikTok.

“If you’ve never done videos, get rid of that nervous ache in your stomach and just do it or get someone on your team to go for it. Share your knowledge, don’t use jargon, don’t complicate things and make people successful at gardening,” she says.

Foisy spends about an hour and a half to two hours per day making, editing and uploading videos. She uses an app called Splice (which requires a subscription to access premium features) to edit videos on her phone.

She enjoys being on TikTok — not just from a marketing standpoint, but she spends time on it recreationally, too.

“I follow historians and other garden centers. I like being on it,” she says. “One of the IGCs I follow is Smith’s Gardentown. He’s like an idol. I dream to be as good on TikTok as he is.”

According to Costa Farms senior brand manager Justin Hancock, TikTok is a platform they knew they had to be on.

“It’s more of a question for other segments of the industry,” he says. “But for Costa Farms, since a lot of our focus is on houseplants and houseplants skew younger, it was a no-brainer for us to do it as soon as we could build up our strategy. I think if you’re focusing on trees or shrubs or some of the other categories, then it’s more of a question.”

Costa launched its TikTok account (@costa.farms) in 2022 and hit the ground running with a targeted education campaign. The strategy, says consumer marketing manager Nisha Singh, was aimed at “the really organic elements of TikTok that are really working.”

“It worked on TikTok,” Singh says, noting they had people send in their videos of them trying to pronounce Latin plant names. “TikTok is a platform we all know is very trendy as of the last couple of years. I think given the fact that it really escalated into a search engine, falling no. 2 after Google, is big.”

Costa has done other TikTok projects too, including Q&As on houseplant care and an informational video about why poinsettias became ubiquitous with the holidays. According to Hancock, the overall point of each post is to meet the customer where they are at online and learn from them.

“It’s also just not what consumers are talking about, but how they are doing it,” he says. “These insights help generate thoughts on the type of content that we produce on other channels, as well in some cases, operationally. If we see on TikTok that people are experiencing a pain point with one of our plants, then that’s great learning we can take back to the team and figure out how to address the pain point.”

“From a grower perspective, don’t be intimated,” Singh says. “I know that sounds silly to say, but it’s like Google. It’s a search engine. And instead of focusing on what the algorithm is feeding you, use the search tool to research what you like. I’m a firm believer that your community is represented by what your best friends would be, your inner circle. Researching what resonates with you is the first step in figuring out what will resonate with the community. And once you have that research, remember that content is just information. When you have valuable information to share, this is the platform to do it.”

Don’t forget to have fun

A team of staffers from different age groups is in charge of TikTok posts at Bayside Garden Center (@baysidegarden centermke), a retail grower based in Bayside, Wisconsin, that also operates a wholesale division.

“Most of our staff is older so there was a learning curve, but we pushed each other,” says Jessi Holmes, Bayside’s store manager.

Their posts “tend to lean toward being goofy or highlighting something that’s visually appealing,” she says. “Rare plants also get a lot of attention on our TikTok account.”Whether the posts are on trends, what looks good in the store or something funny the team noticed, the time spent on the platform varies from week to week.

“It could be less than an hour or up to three hours per week. We do some planning on the backend, but posts tend to be more successful if we just run with an idea,” Holmes explains. “We all take different approaches. I pre-record clips and then put them together, but someone else will film and pause over and over, and when it’s done, it’s done. Both approaches work. And if you don’t know what to do, TikTok has templates you can use.”

Bayside has a following on Facebook and Instagram, too, but “TikTok is developing into a top contender as far as search engine optimization,” Holmes explains. “The engagement on TikTok overall is better. It’s a more open platform with a wider audience, and it’s faster to reach that wider audience. Our Instagram and Facebook accounts are more quality than quantity, and that’s where most of our followers are actual customers. TikTok is worldwide and it opens up conversations for us, especially with houseplants.”

If TikTok is banned in the U.S., Holmes says it would certainly be an inconvenience, “but at the end of the day, people will just move on to another platform.”

Currently, Bayside’s TikTok posts are more consumer centric, but Holmes sees the value in crossing over into some B2B posts.

“We also have a floral division and I’d like to do more with it, too,” she adds.

Take the plunge into PlantToks

For Paula Amezquita, whose family owns Perfect Choice Nursery (@perfectchoicenursery) and its sister company, exotic wholesale grower Aroid Greenhouses, joining TikTok was a no-brainer — especially when the pandemic hit in 2020.

“The garden center was open for landscapers only since it’s outdoors, and my dad wanted me to stay home. So, what is there to do at home? Nothing! So I finally downloaded TikTok,” Amezquita says. As she was scrolling, she noticed that there weren’t many PlantToks and PlantTokkers (influencers and content specifically centered around plants) on the app.

Amezquita, who heads social marketing, already had a passion for video editing, so she began making videos on her personal account. But as interest in her videos grew, she knew there was an opportunity for Perfect Choice to be one of the first IGCs to break into the space. 

With an inspired mindset, she launched the IGC’s account in the spring of 2020. She recruited her sister, Melody Amezquita, to assist in videos. They started a series in which Melody “interviewed” plants around the greenhouse with a mini mic, with Paula filming and voicing the different plants.

“We made a whole series of it, and it was great. That was the one that people really grabbed onto,” Amezquita says. Now, the IGC’s follower count is above 15,000.

Before Instagram Reels, Amezquita says she felt that TikTok was the only platform where users could upload videos with music. TikTok’s cyclical song and dance trends flood users’ For You Pages and are popular amongst participating creators. However, she avoids participating in them, instead creating videos when the mood strikes, gleaning inspiration from the plants and the garden center.

As the sole person behind the account, Amezquita doesn’t have the time to create daily videos. Another reason she doesn’t post every day is that she fears the content would be forced. Back when she started the account, there weren’t many plant-centered topics or creators on the app, but as TikTok has solidified itself as a mainstay force, there’s more competition. Additionally, users’ preferences tend to change, as does the algorithm.

“Now, I’ve noticed that people want to learn on TikTok. They like to have someone talk to them about the plant or how to take care of it. There’s much more learning going on, and more educational [content],” she says. “I’m more of a montage person, I’m more, “OK, let’s put some clips together and make a really beautiful video with nice music in the background. That’s more my style.”

Now, when she’s chatting with customers, many Gen Z and millennial customers who come into the store tell her they found Perfect Choice via TikTok.

“I thought, ‘How did that happen?’ I’m very surprised that people found us on TikTok before they found us on Instagram,” she says. “I’m still learning every single day on TikTok. I’m constantly trying to learn and figure it out. The social media platforms are constantly changing, so it’s hard to keep track. Something that that worked for you a year ago may not work for you this year.”