Consider this your formal invitation to partake in marketing initiatives for your business.
Who: Lawn care and landscape professionals
What: Marketing strategies
Purpose of the plan:
The purpose of marketing really depends on a company’s goals, says Tony Ricketts, founder and CEO of Lawnline Marketing.
“Are you looking to build a bigger landscape company? Are you looking to build a small business for yourself?” Ricketts asks. “When it comes to the marketing side, that's where you can drive a lot of real growth and get in front of people who don't know who you are or who your brand is. The marketing comes into play when you're talking about wanting to grow your business up to whatever that next level may be.”
Where:
There are limitless ways to market your company, but many of them break down into two routes: in real life and online.
First, let’s dig in to real life.
“Marketing would encompass everything that a company does that is public facing,” says Joe Shooner, president of Focal Point Communications. “Having good-looking and clean trucks and vehicles and using clear and legible posting signs on your properties are more passive advertising, but they’re incredibly important because it's only over time that people start to recognize that you are a valid option in their marketplace.”
Direct mailers, door hangers and billboard ads are other “traditional” ways companies can connect in real life.
For items like direct mailers, Shooner suggests mailing to people just before the front edge of that natural interest level.
“So, if calls start ramping up March 15, make sure you get something into people’s hands the first two weeks of March,” Shooner says.
Looking online, there seem to be infinite—and counting—ways companies can market their services.
“Nowadays, everybody goes to the internet to look for services that they need, whether they're looking for a plumber, an electrician, a restaurant. A lawn care and landscape company is no different,” Ricketts says. “People go to Google and search for lawn care services. They do research, and your marketing should be there to introduce your business to all of those potential customers that are looking for your services.”
Companies can turn to platforms like Google for paid ads and also create their own organic content (see “the plan” below for more details).
Social media campaigns, organic content posted to the website and e-newsletters are other digital ways companies can market. E-blasts, in particular, Shooner says, can be a very cost-effective way to do so.
For email campaigns, Shooner recommends thinking about the situation from the customer’s perspective, understanding the buying cycle and sending out consistent messaging, for example, once per month.
“There is a real challenge in balancing against annoying your customer because everyone gets so many emails and everyone is bombarded with so many digital messages these days,” Shooner says. “A lot of it comes down to knowing your clients, having a good gut feeling for how they want to be communicated with and then adjusting your communication plan accordingly."
Software can also come into play by fast tracking how companies release content such as blog posts on the website, project case studies and more.
“There’s a lot of content to be created,” Ricketts says. “You can utilize things like AI, for example, to help plan those topics and come up with talking points. You can even have it provide drafts for you, and then do edits and revisions for you.”
Another way that you can utilize software is for tracking. Once you have your marketing campaigns up and running, utilize software to understand what is working and what is not. The software will then show how the customer found you and what content they engaged with. Then, the software can attribute that revenue from that customer back to those original marketing campaigns, Ricketts says.
“All of those initial touchpoints are all tracked through software, and it will give you a breakdown of where your return on investment is coming from," Ricketts says. "You can actually calculate a true return on investment of the money that you spent on that particular campaign and relate it to the amount of money that was generated from that campaign.”
When:
Marketing a business can take place at any time, but for those just starting out, there are better times of the year to plan and execute the plan, especially for paid advertising in which companies put advertising dollars toward Google and Facebook to place ads in front of customers.
For example, the majority of landscape companies in the U.S. will kick off in the springtime, so companies will want to make sure they have everything planned, set up and ready to execute by then.
“The best time to get started on your upcoming marketing is going to be September and October for the upcoming season,” Ricketts says. “You can’t wait until March and April to start strategizing, planning and implementing. At that point, you have to be ready to pull the trigger, and everything already has to be in place.”
To boost search engine optimization organically, in which companies aim to have their company rank on search engines without paying for it, companies will want to start sooner rather than later.
“The sooner you can start SEO, the better off you’re going to be because you have to have time to produce that content,” Ricketts says. “You have to get it published. Google has to index it. You have to build your authority. You have to get traffic to it. You have to have all of these various things already happening for Google to start showing your content. Late summer, early fall is going to be the better time for that, because that gives you six months to actually be working toward an SEO effort before it needs to come into play."
The plan:
When it comes to messaging, there are several different ways to reach customers, according to Ricketts,
1. Promotional: Discusses what a company does, where they do it, why they’re great at it.
2. Educational: Informs potential customers through educational resources like blog posts about, for example, the benefits of fertilization.
3. Cultural: Shows who a company is through the presentation of trucks, professionalism of employees, who it hires, educational offerings to employees, professional licensing, how well properties are maintained, etc.
“Your marketing should have a mixture of the promotional, the educational and the cultural aspects to give a full picture of who you guys are as a long landscape company,” Ricketts says.
Attire:
In order to properly execute the plan, lawn care and landscape companies should equip themselves with the right tools—and personnel.
Ricketts recommends hiring an agency or staff member dedicated to marketing initiatives.
“Marketing campaigns, especially if you're talking paid ads or SEO, are very technical things that you don't want to try to do yourself as a business owner. It’s a poor use of their time to try and learn it themselves,” Ricketts says. “Content is a specialist. Paid advertising is a specialist. SEO is a specialist. Don't try to eat the whole elephant by yourself.”
Ricketts also recommends equipping the company with tracking systems in place so the company knows what’s working—and what’s not.
“Even if somebody tells you they found you from Google, that doesn't tell you anything about how to better optimize your campaigns or your marketing because you don't know which one of four placements Google offers they may have come from,” Ricketts says. “With software, you can tell exactly which one of those four placements they came from, which campaign they selected, which keywords they clicked on, how much you paid for that click. All of that data gets tracked by the software, and then you can use that information to modify your strategies.”
Lawn care and landscape companies should also be equipped and ready to upsell current customers and ask for referrals from existing customers as well.
“You may have someone on a maintenance program, but you may be able to double that revenue over the course of the year with enhancements and additional work, assuming that those customers know you offer these services and that you were able to communicate,” Shooner says. “There’s an awful lot of ground to be gained from existing clients, as long as those clients are educated and informed about the services you offer and the importance of those.”
For requesting referrals, Shooner recommends a systematic approach.
“A lot of times, that’s just a matter of staying in touch with your existing customers and letting them know, ‘Hey, we would love to work with people like you. If you know anyone that could use our services, please send them our direction,’ and then making sure there’s a clear method for them to get in touch with you,” Shooner says.
