Don’t worry, this isn’t your average cut and paste list of marketing ideas, supposedly “tailored” to your market. These are real, proven marketing techniques that are genuinely specific and relevant to landscapers and hardscapers. This is one of our core areas of expertise, and we want to share the best strategies, tips, and techniques to grow your business. Let’s dive in!
1) Don’t Try to Be All Things to All People
Most landscapers make the mistake of going too broad with their positioning strategy. They think that being “full-service”, covering a large area, taking jobs of all sizes, and working both residential and commercial jobs is the way to go. This is an understandable point of view, but is typically unprofitable in the long run.
Successful landscapers focus on the job types and service areas that are most profitable, choose either residential or commercial, and know which job sizes are right for them.
2) Manage Your Online Reputation
Reviews matter–today more than ever. Too many negative reviews can greatly hinder your business (sometimes without you even realizing it), and glowing positive reviews will bring you tons of free customers.
Make sure you have set up, claimed, and are monitoring your Google My Business listing. You should be actively responding to reviews, both positive and negative. Not sure how to respond to bad reviews? Click here for a copy of our Free Negative Review Response Guide.
3) Refresh Your Branding
We’ve come across hundreds of landscaping companies with outdated, busy, or cookie-cutter logos. Set your company apart with a sleek, modern logo with clean lines and a simple font. Don’t go overboard with icons or a long tagline. Green is the top choice for landscaping branding for obvious reasons, but don’t be afraid to differentiate yourself with a different color choice.
Branding is more than just your logo; your truck, print materials, online assets, and your business name all contribute to your branding. Vehicle wraps in particular are extremely important for landscapers. If you’re still driving a cluttered, beat-up truck with a small logo magnet on the side, it may be time to invest in a tasteful vehicle wrap.
4) Use High-Quality Images & Video
Landscaping work lends itself to visual mediums, but few landscapers capitalize on this. Professional photography and videos of your landscaping and hardscaping projects will entice your customers and provide visual proof of the quality of work you provide. Low-quality images and videos snapped with your smartphone could actually have the opposite effect, so be sure to work with a professional for best results.
5) Track Marketing Performance
If you aren’t tracking your marketing efforts, how do you know which specific channels and campaigns are working? You don’t! Chances are you are wasting money on marketing that isn’t performing, and potentially under-investing on what is working well.
Make sure you have conversion tracking set up for all of your marketing campaigns. If you are paying an agency to handle your marketing and they are not providing you with conversion data, fire them!
6) Market Your Services BEFORE Peak Season
If you wait until spring to start advertising, it could already be too late. Get ahead of the game by reaching prospects first, weeks or months before your competition. To win at landscape marketing, you have to reach people first AND more often than your competitors. Start early and fill up your calendar before the competition has even started brainstorming ad ideas.
7) Use Google Ads to Generate High-Quality Leads
97% of consumers search online to find a local service. And when they do, paid ads are the first results they’ll see at the top of Google. Take advantage of this prime digital real estate to promote your business anytime a user searches for landscaping services in your area, and bring quality traffic and leads to your website.
Landscaping, and especially hardscaping, is a “catch them in the moment” type industry. It’s more likely that potential customers will find you on Google than on social media, but we like to use both, since they complement each other well when used together.
8) Use Facebook Ads to Target Key Audiences
Facebook Ads can work very well for residential landscaping and hardscaping services. These leads also tend to be less expensive than paid search ads (although typically somewhat lower quality.)
Keep in mind, you can’t simply run a generic ad with broad targeting and expect to see amazing results. Your ad must be well-written, have engaging copy and visuals, and target the right demographics. Consider your ideal customer–their age, income level, marriage/parental status, behavior/interests, etc. Another KEY factor is geo-location.
The great thing about online paid advertising is that you get to choose exactly where your ads are shown down to the zip code, so you can strategically grow your business since gas/travel time is a major factor for operating a lawn care business. You don’t want to waste money on areas that are too far away or spread out. Facebook offers extensive targeting options so you can build and test customized audiences.
9) Use Sales Automation for Lead Nurturing
79% of leads never convert into sales. This is typically due to a lack of lead nurture.
- Does it take you or your sales team hours or even days to follow-up with leads?
- Do you typically give up after one failed attempt to get in touch?
- Do you let leads that initially turned you down slip through the cracks, and never reach out again?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you can benefit from sales automation that tracks and nurtures leads, so you’ll never let prospects slip away again. This will help streamline your sales process and result in more conversions, which increases your ROI on marketing spend.
Not sure where to start? We offer a powerful, easy-to-use Lead Engine. Click here to book a free demo.
10) Hire A (Reputable) Marketing Agency
Feeling a little overwhelmed by all these marketing ideas? We get it. Marketing is a lot of work, especially when you have all the other demands of running your landscaping business.
If you need help implementing any (or all) of these marketing best practices, reach out to a top-rated, reputable marketing agency. Like us, for example 😉
We specialize in all forms of online advertising and sales automation for landscapers and hardscapers, and we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy clients. If you’re ready to optimize your business and experience the growth and results you deserve, book a free consultation today.