For a greener landscape business, get marketing on the list, there are no two ways about it.
In the current scenario, marketing isn’t something that should be considered optional for the landscape industry. Perceive marketing as organic fertilizer for your business. Marketing is what tells your prospective customers that you exist. So do it right and let the customers come to you instead of you chasing them. Here is a marketing cheat sheet for your landscape business.
1) Focus on Creating a Brand
With the growing competition in both the residential and commercial landscape industry, it is becoming challenging to stand out. Good branding helps you overcome the obstacle. Focus on establishing a brand identity that helps you differentiate yourself from others. Have a specialization or a unique offering? Say it out and loud. The best way to ensure people remember your brand is to use your branding at all potential spots. Here are 4 creative ideas to put your brand forward.
- Start with using your very own assets, for example, add a noticeable logo/branding message to your vehicle/trucks. Make sure it has your contact details – that’s your call to action.
- Use landscape software, you can easily add your brand’s logo to all your customer interactions, such as invoices, proposals, and designs.
- Speak professionalism with your crew’s apparel. Add branding to your crew’s attire as it creates brand recall, and when people often see you around, they build familiarity and trust for the brand.
- Once your job is complete, ask your client if you could place a small yard sign with your branding and contact details on it, so if someone is impressed with your job, they can give you a call right then and there.
2) Make Professional Landscape Business Software a Part of your Business Strategy
Along with focusing on advertising and marketing, it is essential to keep a check on your backend operations because even the best marketing can’t help you sell poor performance.
A few fundamental questions to keep your landscape business strategy on track: are you spending too much time managing your administrative tasks? Or are you able to organize your service calls efficiently? Are your overheads under control? These questions ensure that you focus your resources on providing more billable services than administrative tasks.
For example, rather than using your resources to hire additional administrative staff, you can invest in professional landscaping software that helps you stay organized and gives you more control over your business. Using landscape business management software will equip you for better crew and job management. Right from assigning jobs to crew members to keeping track of the expenses and invoicing customers at each milestone. Auto-populate your proposals from the job order data
And have a faster turnaround. Further, improve the design aspects of your proposal by adding a 3D landscape design software to your suite. With 3D renders of your drawings, you can better market your design skills and ultimately win more clients.
3) Add Modern Marketing, Build a Social Media Presence
The interesting link between your landscape businesses and social media is visual appeal. You beautify people’s lawns, yards and gardens and attractive content fuels social media engagement. Share the before, and after images of your projects, they’ll speak for your performance. Share about your upcoming projects, so your audience knows what all kinds of services you provide. Let people see you in action. Take them through your ideas and impress them with your skills. So the next time they are thinking of upgrading their landscape, they think of you.
Social media gives you the ability to establish your reputation with a customer even before you have met them. To use social media to its full potential, add relevant hashtags and location tags. People establish a trust factor if they see that people in their area have trusted you with their job. Hashtags help people discover you. Many people use social media for ideation, so someone looking for a cabana design might find your work under #cabanadesigns and contact you directly to work for them.
4) Make Referral Programs a Win-Win Strategy
Boosting sales with referrals is a sure shot idea. For an effective referral program, consider adding some referral incentives, such as a discounted service or merchandise. You can even add your branding to the merchandise.
Build your online review pile; social proof always works. A creative way to do that is by adding a review request to your invoices- “If you like our work, leave us a review” followed by your google business page name or Facebook handle.
5) Increase Community Engagement
Giving back to the community can reward you a lot in return. Consider volunteering to makeover a park/public space in your focus areas. Once the project is complete, you can add your yard sign to it, if permissions allow. This gives your business recognition, and people see your brand in a positive light. If your budget allows, you can get custom yard signs with positive quotes for people to enjoy and increase the visibility of your brand name. You can even host a public event in the area that you wish to target. Like a BBQ event or a fireworks show on a holiday, this will give you a chance to interact with your prospective customers and a space to showcase your branding.
Taking small steps to improve your marketing today will go a long way for your landscape business and add a sense of pride in you and your team.