Lawn Care Business Marketing Tips - GopherHaul Blog

Most commercial mowers will come with  a factory installed hour meter mower. These meters are very important. They can tell you when you need to change your oil. When your mower will need an overhaul. Most importantly, they help determine the resale value of your mower. Whether you are buying a mower or selling one. The hour meter is very important. But what happens when you leave your mower to sit over a slow period and come back to find your mower meter has added thousands of extra hours!! This is a situation a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum ran into, what problems occured from it and how he resolved it.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you think of the different kind of customer to target in your business plan, you probably think of the usual residential and commercial customers. But what if you expanded your horizon and thought a little outside the box. Could you provide lawn care service to your local municipal government? Would they be a great contact to reach out and get more jobs? From what a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum said, reaching out to your local municipal government, is a great way to get and stay busy cutting lawns.

Read the rest of this entry »

We learn a lot of great lessons about business and life on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Some of these lessons stand out more than others. This specific lesson I felt was real important for everyone to read in order to have a head’s up about theft of lawn care equipment. The more you know about how thefts occur, the better you can protect yourself from them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Performing lawn care for a trailer park can differ a little from mowing residential homes. The plots are usually a lot smaller but there is also a lot more trimming than mowing. What’s the best way to price a mobile home bid? Is it even worth it? That is what one member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was wondering when he asked us about such a bid.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most lawn care business owners tend to think you need to take every bid that comes your way. The truth of it though is sometimes you need to know when to say no. Sometimes scaling up to take on a larger bid can throw off the delicate balance you have created in your business. More employees, more trucks, more mowers. All of these things that will be needed for larger commercial lawn care jobs need to be managed. A business owner only has so much time in a day and can’t manage everything. So some elect to stay at a certain size they are comfortable with. Have you reached that point? Or are you still looking to grow? Let’s look at how one lawn care business owner handled this situation he discussed on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you find it difficult to keep your lawn care customers from year to year? At the end of the year are you in panic mode trying to get all your customers to re-sign back up with you the next year? It seems some lawn care business owners have this problem while others do not. So what is the best way to handle such a problem? That is the question a lawn care business owner wondered about when he wrote us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

What a great discussion this is. Trying to figure out when is the right time to get lawn care customers. If you are new to the lawn care business or you haven’t started yet, you could potentially be picking different times of the year when you think it would be the best. You might even hold off your marketing until that time, but as we will see in this discussion, you would be making a big mistake. Let’s look at this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and see what we can learn from it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Buying an already functioning lawn care business is a way to get started with a bang. The upside to it is you should immediately have cash flow and hopefully a positive cash flow at that. But there are plenty of downsides to it as well. You need to weigh the pro’s and con’s before you consider buying any lawn care business.

Let’s take a look at one lawn care business that a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was looking into purchasing. Studying this example may help you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Read the rest of this entry »

There is or should be a getting to know your customer period when you first get them signed up. Asking them questions and learning their quirks can lead to a long and profitable customer experience. Some lawn care business owners will try to force their view onto their customer and it tends to lead to conflict. Other lawn care business owners will learn their customer’s quirks and focus on what makes them happy. Which path you choose to take will effect your business and your mental well being. Let’s take a look at how two lawn care business owners handled two quirky customers and these situations led two different outcomes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Any time I hear about how a great story on how a lawn care business owner landed some commercial accounts, I like to share the story with everyone to help you see how others do it. We all need to hear stories and experiences from others in order to broaden our horizons. This story came to us through the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum where a member shared with us how he landed 4 hotels, 2 resturants and 47 residential. Look at the way he did it and compare his operation with yours. Are there areas in your business you could improve upon?

Read the rest of this entry »

Lawn care business owners are in business to make money. It’s plain and simple. But are there ever times when it is alright to accept a lawn care or landscaping job when you know it won’t be profitable? Are there any upsides to doing this and if so, what are they? That is what one lawn care business owner questioned on the Gopher Lawn Care Business forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’d be amazed how much business you could drum up if you put your mind to it. Most lawn care business owners tend to spend more time working on jobs than marketing. What if you stepped up your marketing effort a little more? If you did, where would you put that additional energy? Would you hand out a few more business cards? Maybe distribute a few more lawn care flyers?

A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his aggressive lawn care marketing plan. You may want to compare your plan with his and see where you could improve. He wrote “this year I decided to go big, come hell or high water. I started aggressively marketing residential and commercial. Because of the new contacts I made, I just recently had the opportunity to bid on 5 large apartments. These jobs will be very good money and could launch me into the six figure income range. I will hopefully be signing the contracts next week.
Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to running the back office of your lawn care business, where do most lawn care businesses operate this from? Do they run it out of their home or do they buy office space? What about equipment storage? Where do they keep everything at the end of the day? Some lawn care business owners may have a need for an office away from their home but what ever it is you are purchasing, you always have to ask yourself, can I do it for cheaper and save that money for use elsewhere?

Read the rest of this entry »

A lawn care business owner shared with us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum a landscape trailer gate assist he made.

He wrote “I built this gate assist for my trailer so the gate would be easier to lift. I used a garage door spring that I had laying around. It didn’t take long at all to put it together. Maybe at most, a few hours with the tweaking to get it working just right.

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you been asked by any of your lawn care customers to give them a bid on adding some topsoil to their property? Did you find you were at a loss as to how to estimate such a job? A lawn care business owner had this issue and asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum “I need help on an estimate for a top soil job. The area is 40ft x 50ft. Screened top soil in my area will cost me $20.00 a ton. What should I charge to perform this job?”

Read the rest of this entry »

I know it sounds so cliche to say listen to your lawn care customers, but I think this is one of those simple issues that is way to often overlooked. One lawn care business got on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and shared with us a story on how he has been able to grow his business by listening to his customers. What he found was, the more he listened, the happier the customer was with him and the more referrals he got from them!

Read the rest of this entry »

Does your lawn care business have a website? If you do, congratulations you are ahead of the game. Many new lawn care business owners put off a website for far too long. It’s important to have a website to attract lawn care customers that are searching the internet for local lawn care providers. But just having a website is not enough.  If a potential customer can’t find your site, they won’t be calling you. Instead they will be calling your competitor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finding commercial lawn care bids is not as difficult as you may think. Most times it comes down to picking up the phone and finding who to talk to or simply visiting the establishment and asking a few questions. That is what a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did when he found a fast food business who needed a lawn care bid for five of their properties.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of lawn care business owners have experiences and skills from others industries that may not seem to mesh with lawn care at first glance. With some creativity, they may end up meshing perfectly. Take for instance this new lawn care business owner who shared with us his story on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. He used to work as an auto detailer and found mixing his skills could attract new lawn care customers.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think most new lawn care business owners will go through a time when they sit for a moment and really question what it is they are doing. Are they making enough? Do they have enough customers? Is this business of theirs going to work or is it failing and they just haven’t accepted it yet? That is what one member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum wondered when he asked “I’m sure a lot of people ask this question, when is enough enough already? Is enough enough when you just don’t enjoy it anymore? When it gets harder to make ends meet? How long must I be on the end of the losing side before I give up?”

Read the rest of this entry »

We got into a discussion about classified ads on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. This is a very important topic because a lot of lawn care business owners experiment with them. Print media is not yet dead. As long as your potential customers are reading the newspaper everyday, classified advertising is still a viable marketing method to attract them. No matter what marketing method you are using, you always want to get the most bang for your buck. Here are some tips on how to make your classified ads as effective as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most new lawn care businesses start out with a lot of time on their hands and little money. You may think this puts you at a disadvantage, but that is not the case. It actually is the exact ingredients you need to find success in your lawn care marketing. As you will see in this discussion, the key to success in lawn care marketing is found in the quality of your campaign, not in the quantity. A new business owner brought this up in the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

A great service you can offer to perform when you can’t mow due to rain, is pressure washing. Getting started offering this service shouldn’t be that difficult and it can help your business expand outwards. One lawn care business owner was looking to get into power washing and had a few questions about getting started that he posted on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

What would you do if you received a phone call from a local landscaping company and they offered to give you all their lawn care customers? Would you find this to be a curse or a blessing? At first glance it may seem like a fantastic opportunity to jump on, however there are many issues to consider. This is a situation a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was facing when he wrote us about it. How much growth is helpful and how much is too much?

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the big questions I tend to hear from entrepreneurs who are considering starting up a lawn care business is, how much will it cost to start up my new business? Costs can vary greatly depending on how big you go or how cheap you have to keep it but I thought if I could show you at least what four business owners thought of this topic, it would give you a pretty well rounded answer. To review more start up costs visit this discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

• One lawn care business owner shared:

Well for me taking into consideration I was mostly a landscaping business:

Truck $5000
Trailer $1000
Advertising $120
Equipment $700 (rakes, shovels, wheel barrows, etc.)
Truck insurance $300/yr
Company registration $100
Business insurance $700/yr
Truck registration $120
Trailer registration $70

So about $8000 in total.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every lawn care customer is different and each will have a different view on how well they want their lawn maintained. Some customers will want their lawn to look as nice as possible and require a weekly mowing while others will want a cheaper job and have the lawn cut every two weeks. How should these different customers be charged though? Should there be a difference in price between weekly and bi-weekly customers? That is what a lawn care business owner was curious to see how other business owners handle this situation when he asked his question on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

For many new lawn care business owners, there is this tendency to be a wishful thinker. If a lawn care customer owes you for one month’s worth of work already, you might find that you try to justify in your head if you keep working, they will eventually pay you. You may also be afraid to stop work, because as a new business owner, you most likely need all the money you can get. This behavior takes you into a dangerous area where you most likely will get burned. If you find yourself dealing with a few situations like this in a row, it may push you to a breaking point where you throw your hands up in the air and simply give up. Here is a story that deals with a difficult customer from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Use this story to help gain foresight and know you don’t want to repeat this same situation in your business.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are so many different ways to bill your lawn care customers, the number of choices can make your head spin. What methods works well for some lawn care may not work so well for others. There are many factors to consider when you are creating your billing frequency.

Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has their own view of what kind of lawn care equipment you should get when you are new to the lawn care industry. Some will want to buy cheap equipment, others will spend their entire savings. But what would a lawn care equipment dealer recommend? Surely they have seen many new lawn care business owners make many mistakes when it comes to buying equipment. Here is a view from a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum who also owns an outdoor power equipment business.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you start up your lawn care business, you can go a couple of ways when it comes to equipment. You can either take the low dow approach, which means the cheapest equipment you can find, or spend some big bucks to get new commercial equipment. Which way you go depends a lot on the amount of start up capital you have. If you are broke, obviously you need to start dirt cheap, but as we will see in this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, cheap equipment won’t cut it for long.

Read the rest of this entry »