Written by You can have the best lawn care business in the area, but without adequate marketing, not enough customers will know about your services. So, here are seven tips to help you spread the word far and wide about your lawn care services.
1. Focus on Your Referral Strategy and Program
Referrals are important for lawn care businesses. For one thing, referrals are an inexpensive way to do promotion, and you can build your base of return customers.
Get more referrals by asking customers to spread the word. You can do it indirectly by saying something on an invoice, online portal or service reminder like, “Refer a friend, get $25,” or “Refer a friend, and get a free lawn evaluation.” You can do it more directly too. For example, say that a homeowner praises the job your contractors did. Train your personnel to respond to such compliments with something such as, “Thank you. We take pride in the work we do. If you could tell a couple of your friends about us, that would be great.”
2. Improve Your Local Search Strategies
Many folks who need lawn work done search for lawncare businesses online. They may type phrases such as, “lawncare, Evanston, Illinois,” or “Evanston lawn maintenance company.”
Ensure that your website ranks highly for customer search phrases so that the people who need help will find you. A free tool such as Google Search Console can get this done. There are also paid tools that are more comprehensive and that may present the information in a friendlier format.
Another technique is to increase your presence on the biggest and most important local business directory sites. Here are some examples:
- Google My Business
- Yahoo Local Listing
- Bing Places for Business
- Yellow Pages
- MerchantCircle
- Landscape.com
- Foursquare
- Mapquest
- Landscapingnetwork.com
- Hotfrog
3. Establish a Reviews Program
Customer referrals are great. So are customer reviews. Encourage customers to leave reviews on sites such as HomeAdvisor,Angie’s List and Google. Your emails, texts and receipts can feature phrasing like, “Please leave a review on Google so we can help others keep their lawns green!” In your message, link to the exact website you want the reviews left on.
4. Redo Your Business Cards
It may be time to upgrade your business cards so they look more professional and enticing. One approach is to add phrases such as, “Free estimates,” to draw customers in. “Certified” and “reliable” also do well.
5. Help the Community
You, your field service technicians or contractors can give presentations on various lawn care methods at libraries, schools and Rotary club meetings. You can also ask about making appearances on local radio stations.
6. Join Gardening Groups
Your area should have at least one gardening-oriented Facebook group/social media group. Gardening enthusiasts swap ideas and tips, and you have lots of value to contribute to the discussion. You can also look for in-person groups. Meetup is a good place to start, and you can find potential customers.
7. Promote with Your Vehicles and Clothing
Have your technicians wear hats, T-shirts or applicable clothing featuring the name of your business, its logo, and if the design works, the website. Your field service vehicles should have wraps with your business name, logo and website. Consider having the design professionally done.
One last parting note: Doing all the marketing yourself as a business owner may leave you with insufficient time to focus on other tasks. One of your existing employees could handle marketing, but that may not be their area of expertise. You deserve your marketing done right. Hire someone, even just part-time, to coordinate various marketing efforts. This frees you and your technicians to focus on lawncare and other business matters.
Better yet and especially if you enjoy doing the marketing yourself, set up your business with an automation platform that can help you and your team work more efficiently on managing your jobs and customers. If you’re interested, learn more here!
Here’s to a productive summer with many new and returning customers!
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Last modified: June 3, 2019
