Here is a Strategy that is Helping Green Industry Professionals Achieve Expert Status

Nothing beats being called an "expert" in your field--it's a nice little boost to the ego. And who doesn't like that?

Along with your ego, expert status can also give a little boost to your bottom line.

A great way to become known as an expert in your community is by hosting free seminars for homeowners.

While speaking at garden clubs and similar venues can also be effective, hosting your own event gives you total control over how you market and structure the seminar, as well as whom you target for your audience.

By hosting your own event, you will be speaking directly to qualified prospects.

Tim Thoelecke, founder of The American Academy of Landscape Design, did exactly this with his company Garden Concepts in Glenview, Illinois.

He wrote about his experience in the following case study taken from The Little Green Book of Big Marketing Tips and Tactics for Landscape Professionals:

In March, 2003, Smart Money Magazine published a special report entitled Fertile Ground: Add 15% To Your Home's Value. What a gold mine for the landscape industry!

My first impression when reading the article was, Hey, why didn't they interview me? A number of industry friends were interviewed for the article and I felt a little left out. But, I thought, perhaps I can use that to my benefit!

So here is what I did. I crafted a presentation on the topic and offered it to the public for free! Now, I'm not going to claim to be a first class orator, but I am an experienced industry speaker, and I really enjoy getting up in front of people, so that part of this was not uncharted territory. Also, I own a projector and have a lot of good photos to use, so I had a head start.

We sent a press release ahead of time to local papers before sending post cards to a targeted demographic of prospects. We bought some mailing lists for our post cards.

In all it cost a few thousand dollars with the biggest expense being printing and mailing of the post cards. But, if you think about it, one client, and it's paid for. If you have an email list, this would be a good way to market your free seminar as well.

A follow up press release was also sent after the event describing the success we had. Even better would be to invite a member of the press to attend the seminar!

We rented rooms for the numerous seminars in zip codes where we like to work. We also provided soft drinks, coffee and snacks for each seminar.

The presentation was the easiest part. I simply showed slides of our work as examples of how people could increase the value of their homes and tied it into the Smart Money Magazine article.

Each presentation was one hour in length and typically attracted 15 to 30 people.

We, of course, collected lots of information from people, and contacted them later. But, as you can imagine, people who attend these things may not have an immediate need. Many are planning for a project down the road. So if you plan to do this, collect email addresses and add them to your regular email newsletter list. We also raffled off a book at the end, which is how we collected the "please contact me" info.

Members of LandscapeLeadership.com can download the original post card used by Tim to promote his free seminars. You can also download a reprint of the Smart Money Magazine article Tim referred to in this Case Study (Learn how you can become a member of LandscapeLeadership.com--it's FREE!)

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