Online-only garden centre Primrose was founded in 2003, and is now a market leader in its sector. It was bought in late 2020 by Risk Capital Partners. Primrose is interesting as they have a prolific collection of ‘How to’ video articles to support their online sales, with 10s of thousands of followers on each channel.
While it’s unarguable that their products lend themselves to demonstrations and advice, they are a great exemplar of how an audience can be engaged and drawn into the sales funnel for future purchases.
Primrose’s website is easy to find since it leads the results returned on a search of its name, in both paid and organic search, while its products also feature in shopping results. Shoppers can search a range of more than 18,000 items, from plants and planters to outdoor heating and garden furniture, or navigate using filters including popular and seasonal categories, species, and rootstock.
Advice is available throughout the website – flagged up on the home page but also appearing next to searches, with guides such as how to prune a tree. Visitors can also join the Primrose gardening club or read its blog for articles and advice in areas from what items are used to how to choose and use them. It also offers advice and demonstration via YouTube where it has 12.5k subscribers. The website links to its presence on five social media channels – Facebook, where it has its largest, 43.2k, following, for a mixture of inspirational images, advice and how to guides as well as a shop front – Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.
As you would expect, Primrose content features their products, some overtly product pitches but many attracting views for their ‘How to’ content and gardening ideas. In all videos you’ll find links to the products featured enabling a simply route to purchase.
On the product page, shoppers can see whether an item is in stock, and when it would be delivered if ordered immediately. They can also read in-depth information in areas from care to rootstock and reviews as well as practical issues such as how orders will be delivered.
Three to five day delivery to most UK postcodes is is free on orders over £40, and items can be returned for up to 14 days from delivery.
Checkout options include Klarna, PayPal, Amazon Checkout, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Primrose are one of the featured case studies in our RX Growth 2000 report. You can download the full report with further case studies here.
