Develop An Effective Direct Mail Strategy
Sending postcards can be a great lawn care lead generation strategy. A carefully executed campaign should result in a 1.5 -3.5% return. This means if youre sending 10,000 lawn care postcards, you should be getting 150-350 new lawn care leads. If thats not happening, there is an issue with your list, timing, offer, design, or website landing page.
Being The Guide For Your Landscaping Customers
Once you determine your customers problems and begin to develop landscaping marketing materials around that, then you want to show them how you can be their guide in terms of the solution.
This marketing messaging approach illustrates that companies shouldnt be heroes , they should be the guide to the hero. If youre a Star Wars fan, think of it this way, youre Yoda, the customer is Luke Skywalker. This is where you can show off some of your expertise and what sort of value theyd get out of hiring you.
Do A Deal With A Local Lawn Care Operator
This is something that hardly ever happens and it works really well. I have had very few calls over the years from new lawn care companies wanting my excess leads. I am selling pre qualified leads at the moment to another lawn care operator at the moment for $17.50 a lead but I have given them away for free before.
The first thing you need to do is find a lawn care operator that has been around for a while and is working close to full capacity with no plans on expansion.
You then call them and offer to take their excess leads. A lot of lawn care operators are happy to give callers another number if they cannot accept any more customers. You may have to offer money if they do not sound too keen when you talk to them. If you are going to pay for the leads remember to set a few ground rules. Here are a few that I use.
- For a One-Off cut, set a minimum charge that the customer must agree to before you take the lead. As a seller, I tell the customer that while the estimate is free but it will not be any less then $50 if they want to go ahead. I then package and sell the lead.
- You need an address, full name and contact number and whether it is a One-Off or regular mow.
- All leads must be sent through to you by text within 10 minutes of coming in.
- It needs to be an exclusive arrangement. The person who takes the call needs to give the customers your name and let them know that you will be coming around.
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Deliver For The Customers You Currently Have
Believe it or not, your current customers will play a vital role in your ability to draw in new ones. Firstly, delivering high-quality service allows you to remain in business and hence work to attract more customers. Secondly, by delivering for your current customers, you open yourself up to positive word-of-mouth referrals.
Word of mouth is powerful in business ultimately, you want your customers to have the best experiences with your lawn care company. People talk to their friends about both good and bad experiences alike therefore, good service increases the likelihood of your customers referring your lawn care services to their friends. Great customer service can also earn your lawn care business positive reviews online this is something that new prospective customers will likely review before hiring your business.
In some cases, word-of-mouth referrals can carry as much weight as marketing, if not more so.
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Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts
Many lawn care professionals overlook advertising efforts.
Smaller teams might not have the time or resources to devote to advertising, and they stick to free or low-cost channels like Craigslist or their local Nextdoor page.
While it doesnt hurt to get your name in as many local public spaces as possible, there are more marketing strategies to consider to bring in leads and clients.
- Vehicle advertising and signage can be easily created by your local print shop or even ordered online for around $100. A large magnetic sign turns your service vehicle into a moving billboard. Put your brand name, website, and phone number prominently on the vehicles you bring to job sites so that potential customers can see who their neighbors are trusting for landscaping.
- Direct mail and door hangers are ideal for introducing yourself to new neighborhoods. Door hangers, postcards, and fliers are incredibly cost-effective, and they can cost as little as a couple pennies apiece to make.These are also a great place to advertise any tailored offers or services you have for specific neighborhoods or business. Research the area and tweak offers to fit specific needs, such as lawn care for neighborhoods and gardens for condo buildings.
- Take your lawn care company online. Ninety-one percent of consumers search the internet for local goods and services.
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Why Should Your Lawn Care Service Text
It all comes down to the numbers.
- 95% of texts are read within 3 minutes
- 89% of people prefer to text with businesses
- The average response time for a text is only 90 seconds
- Customers are about 20X more likely to take a next step after getting a text compared to an email
So what does this mean for your business?
It means that by adding text to your arsenal youll be able to communicate faster through a channel people enjoy using. That leads to more prospects, customers, reviews, and revenue. Heres how.
Create A Killer Lawn Care Website
Your website has two goals, 1) to attract prospective clients and 2) turn those website visitors into qualified leads for your sales team. Lawn care SEO is a widely misunderstood and oversimplified term. The core concept is that implementing certain online strategies both on and off of your lawn care website will allow it to appear higher in organic search results for hundreds of phrases consumers will enter into search engines.
Traffic is great, but you should also be converting anywhere from 1-3% of all website visitors into a qualified lead. If you are finding that isnt the case, it could point to fixing major flaws with the user experience, images, videos, and copywriting. If you do this right, organic website traffic and lawn care leads will increase over time to deliver results for years to come.
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Up Your Phone Game To Track & Close More Leads
Do you know what happens when a prospect calls into your landscaping business?
When a prospect calls your business, you dont want to waste the call.
With prospects doing a lot of their purchase research online, when you have a prospect on the phone, you want to be on your A game.
Plus:
When a prospect calls in, you can ask what lawn service advertising they saw.
Make it easy on whoever mans the phones by using a new caller sheet
An easy-to-use sheet that helps your receptionist to get ALL the necessary information from the prospect about what lawn maintenance advertising or landscaping flyers they received or saw.
Plus:
You can also record incoming calls at your office so you can listen and actually hear how your receptionist or other staff handle prospective new customers.
Also called call tracking
We use this in our Everywhere Small Business program so that business owners can not only hear how their prospect calls are handled
But they can use this insight to train their staff to receive calls properly with the intention of getting appointments for sales purposes.
And your new caller sheet will also help you do one of the most important things you can do in your landscaping marketing plan, explained in #25 below!
Run A Google Adwords Ad
You will have to pay to run Google AdWords but it is definitely worth it as this can bring you calls in immediately. You can have this up and running in a morning and it is definitely time well spent.
It is not hard to set up a Google Ad and as long as you keep control of the budget and use the right keywords you will definitely get a few calls coming in. If you would like Google to lead you through this process then you can use the .
If you are patient, you can get a discount. You will need to sign up a couple of weeks before advertising and then do nothing. After your account has sat idle for a couple of weeks, then Google will email you a discount voucher. Its usually something like you spend $90 and get a $90 credit.
If you are going to use Google Adwords, do remember to keep and eye on what the other lawn care operators are doing. See who is spending the most to come up near the top on a regular basis. Pay attention to what they are doing. Start by doing the most common search which is lawn care name of your city here. Example lawn care Hamilton. This will give you and idea of who is doing what.
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Letting Somebody Else Find Customers For You
Tip 1: Get listed on traditional online directories . These listing sites can help to drive customers to your site, while you are out mowing lawns. However, it can be difficult to get noticed on the directories that have thousands of listings on them.
Tip 2:Register with expertEasy If youd prefer to mow the lawn and let someone else find your customers, we truely believe this will work for you, expertEasy is a marketplace that specialises in lawn mowing, gardening, landscaping and home improvement. We send customer jobs to you to provide quotes for, and save you having to go out to find jobs on your own to bid on. There are other websites like ours that work a similar way charging for leads. However, usually, those sites send the opportunity for quotes to a greater number of lawn mowing businesses, they charge more per lead and some of them also charge an initial listing fee. We only send jobs to at most three local lawn mowing business, and we have transparent pricing with a satification guarantee.
Set Up Multiple Social Media Accounts And Post Daily
This is actually a lot easier then you would think. The main accounts you want to set up as listed below.
- Set up a business page. If you do not know how to do this I have a tutorial here.
- Set up a business profile here too.
- Instagram or Linkedin You can use these but I have found that the results are not that great for a lawn care business.
- Google Business Otherwise known as Google Places or Google Maps but you have already done that, havent you?
Now set up daily posts on all these profiles. That might sound like a lot of work but it is not really. All you need is a library and you can have your posts set on recycling then you only have to write a post once and you can post it once a month.
I build my library by writing 8 posts a week for four weeks. I then just add a few new ones every month and my library keeps on growing. I do try to focus on evergreen topics . If you write any seasonal posts then keep track of them and stop them when the season ends.
If you dont want to do the posting yourself the are a few programs you can use. There is the one I use and it will let you post on 3 profiles for free and have a library of 100 posts. That should keep you going for a while.
I manage half a dozen business using this software so if you dont feel up to it you can always contact me and I can do it for you.
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Associations Groups And Networking Events
Homeowners Associations and similar real estate groups, Building Owners and Managers Associations, Chamber of Commerce meetings and other networking-type events can get you in front of the right people. You might be able to make deals at the events themselves, or at the least will have a reference point when you follow up later on.
Getting to know government officials can give you a huge leg up when it comes to winning new accounts. Government officials know what big projects are coming up and also have a network of other corporations in the community that will have commercial landscaping needs. Especially if you live in an area with a high amount of commercial properties, you will want to have a network of people who can let you know when a big account might be looking for a new vendor or taking bids.
Helping You Grow Your Landscaping Customer Base
At Include Software, were passionate about the landscaping industry. We also like that were able to share success tips in general, not just information on how landscaping companies are running more efficient organizations with landscape business software. Thats because we understand you have other areas of interest and are always looking for ways you can attract more of the right kind of new customers.
Having been through this messaging refinement process ourselves, weve been able to witness the difference its made for our company in terms of our marketing success. We want to be able to pass that value on to you.
You shouldnt continue struggling with poor results from failed marketing campaigns. By implementing some of these concepts or even going through this messaging process yourself, we think youll find that you can improve your companys messaging and attract more customers as a result.
We love that innovative landscaping companies are always looking for ways to be better. If you want to talk about how using the right software is another way to improve your business, lets explore and see what Asset can do for you.
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Hire Only The Best Workers
As a lawn care business owner, the people you hire to work for you can make or break the company. This is why you need to find the best lawn care workers for your business
Chances are, your lawn care staff will have more face-to-face interactions with customers than you do. For this reason, you need to be sure your workers know what theyre doing. This isnt just about knowing about lawn care or landscaping either make sure your staffers are best equipped to get work done punctually and with integrity.
It is also important to ensure that your lawn care workers can handle tense situations with customers. A situation may arise when a customer is having a bad day the last thing you want in a scenario like this is an employee who flies off the handle. This can cause great harm to your lawn care business, especially if its in the earlier stages.
As you are going through the onboarding process, be sure to have a list of requirements that each of your staffers meets.
Create Moments Of Delight
Providing great customer service is par for the course. Every customer expects and deserves that, whether they are a one-off, first-time, or lifelong client.
To earn repeat business, you need to set yourself apart. This doesnt mean going beyond reasonable means or running up your overhead.
It simply means finding small opportunities to delight your customers, make them smile, and remind them why youre better than any nickle-and-dime competitor, period.
Returning phone calls is something a customer expects. However, if you are working at an elderly ladys house and you bring their garbage can up from the street that would be more of an unexpected and awesome experience. Royce Ard, My Amazing Maid
If a customer asks you to do something, or you see an opportunity that will take you less than 10 minutes, challenge your team to go the extra mile.
That could mean changing a smoke alarm battery, carrying a package up the stairs, or unloading groceries.
Look for these moments of delight and then build them into your business. Youll have happier customers, more repeat business, and a business model to be proud of.
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Offer Discounts For New Customers
When youre working to grow your lawn care business, handing out discounts may seem like the last thing to do however, by offering discounts to new customers, you are playing the long game, rather than the short one.
As a company, you want to incentivize customers to come to you. Discounts for new customers let you draw in new business you can then turn these new customers into repeat customers by delivering excellent service. In the long run, initial discounts will pay for themselves by establishing a loyal base of repeat customers.
At the end of the day, value and high-quality service determine whether new customers become repeat ones.
Reach Out To Other Similar Businesses And Form Partnerships
What other businesses have clients who need your landscaping services?
How about these:
Just to name a few!
If youre not in the loop with your local Chamber of Commerce, this is a great place to rub elbows with other local businessmen and women
ALL of whom could either use your landscaping expertise or know others who can!
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