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The Best End-to-End Landscape Management

The recent Lawn & Landscape Grow the Market Report offers terrific insight into why landscapers and lawn care professionals are hired across the US. However, knowing why customers want services is only half the battle. How do you market to the clients that need your specific expertise? And once you land these clients, how do you keep them happy while still growing your revenue and managing your other tasks? Let’s take a deep dive into solutions that you can start utilizing today. 

Why do clients want lawn maintenance services? 

The first step in attracting the right customers is understanding the diverse needs of people who hire landscaping and lawn maintenance contractors. Not everyone desires service for the same reason, and segmenting this general population will help you market more specifically and efficiently. Wasting time on marketing means wasting money, which is largely avoidable. 

So, what are some of the reasons your phone is ringing in 2021? 

  • People are short on time. Whether they’re busy working or taking care of the family, they’d rather pay someone to care for their yard than do it themselves. 
  • Landscaping professionals do a better job than most homeowners. 
  • Some folks have health issues that make yard maintenance too much for them. This includes seniors, people with allergies and asthma, and now, people who have long-term COVID symptoms post-infection
  • Neighbors in many areas put subtle or not-so-subtle pressure on people to keep up their yards, especially if there are HOA rules. 
  • Lawn care professionals and landscapers have access to more tools, products, and plant stock than the average homeowner. Also, some property owners would rather not expose themselves to the products that contain chemicals. 
  • People want to enjoy their outdoor spaces more. This is especially true since more people are working, schooling, and socializing at home. 
  • Yard maintenance improves the property’s value. With the pandemic, we’ve seen a boom in real estate sales. Buyers and sellers alike are making the most of their yards with professional upkeep. 

Of course, there are people who just don’t take a shine to working in the garden. Our landscaping friends don’t get it, but they’re happy to take up the slack for them! 
 

How do you market to lawn management customers with diverse needs? 

There’s a saying in marketing that applies to virtually every type of business: marketing to everyone is really marketing to no one. It might sound counterintuitive at first. Who wouldn’t want all the business, right? 

But when you drill down your marketing, you actually improve your success because you reach the right people for your niche, which in turn allows you to charge higher rates and improve customer retention. 

Therefore, you need to focus your business development efforts on the areas where you’re likely to see the most return on investment (ROI). There are tons of sources for targeting marketing strategies, but here are our top tips specific to the landscaping industry: 

  • Decide what your specialties are, such as lawn care or tree pruning, and stick to those. 
  • Research who is looking for your services in your particular area. Are they busy executives, people with kids, seniors, etc.? 
  • Set a marketing budget. 
  • Develop a marketing plan to reach your desired customers, using inbound and outbound leads gleaned from sources like social media, website traffic, client referrals, and the like. 
  • Make sure you have the infrastructure to pursue, track, and accept new clients, including website contact forms, someone to answer your phone, social media accounts, and client relationship management (CRM) software. 
  • Invest in a proposal and estimate-generating system that reduces labor while improving accuracy. 

For example, let’s say your business focuses on lawn care. In your locale, most people who need this service are families with young children and pets, including both homeowners and house renters responsible for their yard care. After deciding on a marketing budget, you plan to reach this demographic through four key pathways: advertising in a regional family magazine, connecting with rental agencies and property managers, posting flyers at kid- and pet-friendly businesses, and offering discount coupons to your current clients for every referral. 

To prepare for your new marketing initiative, you beef up your website, update your Facebook and Instagram pages, and set up a Yelp account to help with word-of-mouth advertising and referrals. You purchase advertising space and print flyers and coupons. As a result of your hard work, your business starts picking steam fast. Maybe a little too fast, in fact. How do you keep track of it all? 

How can you manage landscaping clients more efficiently? 

These days, there’s no need to manage your landscaping or lawn care business with old-fashioned paper and pencil when there is better technology at your fingertips. Consider using a subscription program like DynaScape Manage360 Landscape Business Management Software. There’s nothing to install on your own computer system, and you get updates every time they’re available. Manage360 provides end-to-end organization for your business, including billing, lawn maintenance software, and sales tracking. 

In the case study described above, you could use DynaScape’s Manage360 for handling the entire process. Start by tracking opportunities and your sales pipeline so you know where every potential job is in your funnel system. This lets you predict when you may need to add staff and helps those nerve-wracking avoid dry spells. 

When it’s time to submit a proposal for a job, Manage360 then lets you develop accurate bids without spending more time than pursuing the project is worth. You can estimate materials and labor quickly and precisely, as well as build in overhead costs. 

Once you’ve landed a repeat lawn client or landscaping job, take advantage of Manage360’s other features to stay on top of business: 

Perfect clients for you are out there waiting. Once you identify them, you will appreciate how easy it is to keep track of your marketing and your work with DynaScape’s Manage360. Ready to learn more? Reach out today to see how the top landscape management software can transform your business.