Marketing & Sales Insight for the Lawn & Landscape Industry

This article is the first in a two-part series diving deep into how to better track your offline marketing efforts. Next week's article will focus on the use of QR codes.

While your website can be a top generator of online leads, most lawn and landscape companies also get plenty of business over the phone. Accurately tracking what led that prospect to call you (whether it was a postcard mailer, a newspaper ad, or somewhere else) can be really challenging.

You have to remember to ask how they heard about you—and frankly, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, prospects have seen your company name in more than one location before they actually pick up the phone and call and you’re left to rely on what they recall in the moment, versus what actually prompted their call.

Asking, “How did you hear about us?”, is not a reliable tracking method.

The answer to this challenge is call tracking. Call tracking is exactly what it sounds like—it’s the process of using software to track which marketing campaign led to the phone call. If you’re not using call tracking, you’re probably having a really difficult time making marketing decisions—such as whether that $10,000 postcard mailer last season was really worth it or not.

In this article, we’ll discuss call tracking in more depth including why it’s important for lawn and landscape companies and how you can get the most out of it.

Developing an effective marketing strategy that helps your company to connect with prospects in a meaningful way can be challenging enough on its own. But when you start adding in the fact that your landscaping or lawn care business is growing into multiple locations, it can become downright daunting.

For many, the fear is that your messaging will become diluted as it spreads. How can you ensure that you’re able to achieve optimal coverage with consistency—plus effectively use your budget to market all locations?

We understand how challenging it can become to feel that you’re maintaining consistency and implementing highly effective marketing strategies as your business grows. Everything from budgets to brand guidelines to the need for additional technology and people can seem to muddy the waters.

However, it really doesn’t have to be as overwhelming or stressful as it feels. With the right multi-location marketing strategy for your landscaping or lawn care business, you can approach your growth with confidence that everything is under control.

There is one question I frequently get from company owners struggling to grow a lawn care business.

“How long will it take to triple our website leads?” 

If you are investing tens of thousands of dollars to get more lawn care customers, you don’t want to flush marketing dollars down the toilet (while wasting time and energy). 

You want a lot of leads. You want results.

Today, I am going to share what has been proven to work time and time again. These strategies worked when I directed marketing at a $13 million company and they have worked for our lawn care clients over the past 10 years.

(And I say that you should dream BIGGER than 3x your current results.)

Marketing a lawn care business often carries with it a degree of experimentation.

Unfortunately, trial and error can mean wasted money, time, and missed opportunities to get more lawn care customers.

You already put so much blood, sweat, and tears into growing a lawn care business. The last thing you want is to rub salt in the wound with tactics that pan out to be a colossal waste of time (and money).

About 15 years ago, a “RotoZip” saw was on my Christmas wishlist. I just had to have it. 

As of today, I have yet to use it. 

The tool, itself, is fantastic. I can think of many practical uses. Ironically, the RotoZip would have been perfect for cutting a hole in my drywall, just a month ago. 

But...I forgot all about it. It has been collecting dust in my tool cabinet.

At one point, video production may have found its way onto your wishlist. 

Maybe you spent a ton of time creating your own videos. 

Maybe you paid a videographer a few (or tens of ) thousands of dollars... 

Big investment...and yet there the videos sit...

My wife and I were friends for an excruciating period of time until I got the first date. 

When it did happen, I did not want to disappoint her. 

✅ Dancing in the cold to our favorite songs at the park. 

✅ Checking off her bucket list item of “flying a plane” with a flight lesson. 

✅ Poetry.

✅ Candlelit dinner.

This hopeless romantic pulled out all of the stops. No way was I letting this one get away. And the romantic gestures continued. If we ever meet, ask me to tell you the story of how I eventually proposed to her. 

When it comes to how you treat your new lawn care or landscaping customers, it may be good to take a lesson from this.

(Here's a teaser video with 1 example of each of the 10 tips mentioned below. Read on for 30 more tips.)

Over the past two years I’ve spent a lot of time scouring YouTube and the Internet. I’ve wanted to get a really good sense of what kind of marketing tips are out there for lawn and landscape companies.

I’ve made a few general observations…

• The large majority of content addressing marketing for landscapers is geared towards entrepreneurs and businesses under $2 million in annual revenue. 
• Most of the people offering these tips are either A) well-intentioned small business owners sharing their personal advice or, B) landscaping marketing agencies that specialize in small businesses.
• And lastly, most of the popular "influencers" make money by producing videos (ads on YouTube, product endorsements, selling software, franchises, or courses for startup businesses).

None of these things are bad. However, these landscaping marketing strategies may not apply for companies with an annual revenue of over $2M or for companies pursuing aggressive growth goals. These tips are aimed at the bulk of the landscape industry, small startup businesses.

Just like you don’t want to be Just Another Landscaper, I don’t want this to be just another article about marketing for landscapers. These are not basic tips. They are specifically for companies that plan on surpassing $2M in annual revenue (or are well past it already).

In the past 20+ years that I’ve been in the lawn and landscape industry, I’ve noticed a growing trend in which many lawn care companies and even some landscapers are adding pest control services to their offerings.

After all, if you are already maintaining your customer’s property as a trusted partner, why not offer them more ways you can help them while growing your lawn care or landscape business with a highly-profitable new service line?

Personally, I worked at a full-service firm that added, inside-out pest control services. It was so successful that it grew to about $1.2 million in annual revenue in just about seven years. It was also one of our most profitable departments with the lowest cancellation rates.