Dallas Business and Marketing Blog

If you are not familiar with Burpee odds are you are not now, nor have you ever been a serious gardener. Burpee is one of the oldest, most trusted and best branded companies in the United States that provides seeds and to a lesser degree gardening supplies. The company has a rich history and is about as “old school” in that respect as it gets, first founded in 1876 we are talking 132 years of domination of a very unique market.

Burpee built their success as a catalog company, mailing more then a million of these catalogs a year by 1925. I remember fondly going through their catalog with my Grandfather in the 70s and 80s. Each year we would order our favorite tried and true vegetable seeds and perhaps pick one or two new ones to try out. The old man would use nothing but Burpee seeds in his pride a joy, (quarter acre home garden with rich Pennsylvania soil that fed us and half our street by fall each year). I mean you could have given him some other seeds for free and he would have tossed them out!

Such was the loyalty created by a product that worked well and always delivered. We would start our seeds indoors in January. By late February and early March they were being moved into our cold frame and getting ready to be hardened for planting in the garden. Every year our crop was as good as it could be considering the weather and such, it was never a bad seed that made for a bad crop. Burpee didn’t have to do any branding with my Grandfather, there was no email either not that he would have used it. Further he could care less about a “review” by someone else of his favorite tomato seed, he knew what grew, he trusted the company and he always went back. Just like his father did with him as a boy.

I have fond memories of my time with my Grandpa (Andrew Spirko). He was a good man from a time we have largely forgotten. There are not many people like him around today, much of what he taught me has been lost and I imagine people such as myself who are keeping some of the really old traditions alive are a dwindling species.

However, gardening is a growing market. Technology is so fast moving, life so stressful, etc that many are looking back to that old school wisdom. One might think a “old company” like Burpee would fall behind the marketing curve but happily nothing is further from the truth. What I love about this and the reason I have put so much effort into this post is the way that Burpee has embraced both what I guess we call Web 1.0 Marketing (search, PPC, etc) and Web 2.0 Marketing with out in anyway stopping the other methods, service and concepts that built the company in its first 120 years. Those people who are still like my Grandfather and have no Internet are still getting great catalogs and still seeing their favorite brand in their favorite old media magazines.

Here is what I mean…

On the conventional Internet marketing front Burpee has done a good job with solid on page SEO. They have encouraged links and their natural strong brand has built them a solid organic search presence. They have what at least from the outside appears to be a well put together PPC approach on Google and Yahoo and even Live/MSN or whatever they finally call themselves. The Live.com move is probably a good one as many new Internet users tend to do things like type Burpee Seed into the IE Browser. They also have a very well run email marketing campaign. Overall they are doing the right things to get effective use from Search and their day to day web traffic.

In the Web 2.0 Social Networking world they have even done pretty good. They have a Gardeners Corner where members can show case their gardens with pride. There is a great data base of helpful articles and what I think is most important is that they have customer reviews on almost every seed they sell. Evidenced by the occasional negative opinion the reviews are honest, unaltered and there by trusted by other site visitors. Best of all users are creating great content for them, a goal any site should aspire to.

In the conventional world Burbee has not forgotten its roots either. They still have a great hard copy catalog and for the old school types that only use the net as needed requesting one via their site is easy. I have one sitting on my desk as I write and while well done, beautifully printed, etc it has not lost a bit of the vintage look that will appeal to the older customer base. From an operational stand point they are still staying true to their many product, on the site and in the catalog 99% of the “product” is seeds or plants. They have not tried to become a total source from everything garden, just a few select additional products.

Overall especially when I look at companies of similar age and background I rate Burpee a “A” for their efforts. To make it an A+ I do have the following recomendations.

1. The reviews are nice but Burpee should should have their own forum. With a few emails a new forum could be off the ground. Sure it would need to be kick started and moderated at first but in a short time it would be a self policing community. Appoint a few power users with Moderator powers and enjoy the rewards of free SEO, a powerful community and a growing knowledge base. I could have a forum up, installed and skinned in perhaps an hour. Small effort, great reward.

2. The Gardener’s Corner has a “tip of the day”. These should be fleshed out into a paragraph or two rather then a sentance and used as primary content for a Blog. The blog then should be set up in all the communities, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, etc. Easy to do and you also get exposure in blog search engines etc. Again not much effort to set up and one employee blogging for 15 minutes a day would build up a fast presence.

3. Burbee should have some level of a Social Media community presence. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Get out and meet and interact. Give two or three people an hour a week each to do this and you get a lot of viral bang for a few hours of work.

4. YouTube - Burpee should have a YouTube channel. A few informative quick videos a month. No big productions just some easy shooting with a 200 dollar camera, 20 minutes of editing and upload and be done with it. Get other Burpee customers building and doing their own channels and you again get a huge viral marketing return.

In spite of these additions I would suggest again I really think Burpee has done an awesome job that many other large companies could do well to emulate. What I love most though is my Rutgers Heirloom Tomatoes taste as good as I remember from my Grand Father’s garden and I can make fresh salsa and pico with out fear of salmonella or the resulting tomato shortage/ban.

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