Marketing & Sales Insight for the Lawn & Landscape Industry

Well, it happened..."Oh cool. I got to review...Huh? That's nice." (puts phone away and forgets about it)...

Or maybe it went a little something like this..."Oh No, you didn't Mr. Jones!" (furiously typing)...

Reviews on Google. You're going to get them. Good, bad and UGLY. Today I am going to break down how you should respond in every situation. Stay tuned.

Are you frustrated because you don't have enough good Google reviews for your business? You have hundreds, maybe thousands of happy lawn care and landscaping customers, but where are their reviews? 

Today I'm going to show you a proven method to get hundreds of great Google reviews for your lawn care landscaping business. Stay tuned.

SEO...who ever thought that three little letters could cause such frustration and confusion for lawn care and landscaping companies?

I've gotta say...I really love working with lawn care companies.

Maybe it's due to the fact that for eight years, I treated thousands of lawns.

Maybe it was due to the fact that this type of work seemed to be the easiest service for me to sell at my 7-year stint as a salesperson at a full-service lawn and landscape company. 

Or possibly it was the thrill I felt figuring out new ways to market lawn care services to add thousands of new lawn care customers each year. 

Whatever the case, it's a rush. But, I get as equally frustrated when I see lawn care companies trying to do their best but failing or getting lackluster results.

Over the years, lawn care and landscaping companies have asked us a LOT of questions about various advertising mediums.

But the one that seems to come up the most often (with skepticism and criticism) is Google Ads (also referred to as PPC, Pay Per Click, or Google Adwords.

Do you find yourself at one of these places?

• You're contemplating using Google Ads for lawn care or landscaping leads

• You did your own Pay Per Click in the past but weren't that impressed

• You hired a marketing agency to place PPC ads for lawn care or landscaping lead generation

• You've grown your business without this advertising medium but are always looking for ways to land new customers

Well, I am assuming most (if not all) of you fit into one of those categories. If so, I've got something special for you. Over the past month, I've taken this complicated (and most often very boring) topic and created a series of videos for you. 

This series of videos highlights both good and bad decisions when it comes to the words you choose for the homepage of your lawn care and landscaping website. 

Roll back the calendar...it’s 2016. I’ve had my own frustrating experiences marketing at a $13 million lawn and landscape company and now, after coming to work at Landscape Leadership, I have realized my misfortune was a common green industry marketing epidemic.

Ask me the question, “Is Pay-Per-Click (PPC), specifically with Google Adwords, a good idea for a lawn care company?”

The answer then was, “No. Stop wasting your money.”

But...now I would say, “Maybe…” Let me explain why.

“Yeah, we tried postcards and mailers and they didn’t work. Oh, and we spent all this money to put ads in this magazine and that was a bust too.”

I get it. I managed an annual marketing budget of over $300,000 for many years for a full-service lawn and landscape company and tried all sorts of mailers and ads. Unfortunately, it’s a lot of trial and error.

But, I may be able to spare you some frustration. After all, if you’re dropping tens of thousands of dollars each year on lawn care and landscaping mailers or advertisements, you should be able to achieve and measure success, right?

Purchase our entire collection of Green Ways comics on Amazon

Just as photography has the potential for a positive reaction, it also carries the tremendous capacity to leave a very bad taste in your mouth. As our friends at Greenbelt Outdoor Services in this week’s Green Ways comic are realizing, what they expected is not what they got. It’s like when a cook substitutes, miscalculates or completely omits an ingredient. Yuck!

The old saying of, “A picture’s worth a thousand words”, definitely holds true. If you’ve been following our content for some time, you’ve heard us advocating for the value of professional photography for marketing landscaping, lawn care, and tree services.

But your picture’s “thousand words” are going to come across as  bitter, dry, flat chocolate cake if you leave out the necessary ingredients or don’t execute them in a specific manner.