Lawn Care Business Marketing Tips - GopherHaul BlogLawn Care Business Marketing tips, tricks and secrets I have learned.
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If you haven’t gotten the phone call yet, you will. Soon your phone will ring and on the other end will be a salesman telling you about the wonderful marketing opportunities to be had with their mail-pak style mailers. You will hear these grand figures, reach 10,000 families in your area. It will only cost you $X amount of dollars. That’s only pennies per household!
We all like to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to lawn care marketing. By reading such stories on the topic, we hope to cut out those marketing ideas that are ineffective. What amazes me about all the stories we see on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, it’s amazing how one theme seems to ring true time and time again. Let’s take a look at some marketing ideas a lawn care business owner shared with us.
He wrote “As far as what has worked or hasn’t in gaining new lawn care customers:
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Nothing gets under your skin more than showing up to mow a lawn and maintain a property only to meet the customer and have them tell you to come back next week. When a customer postpones lawn service, it not only messes up your schedule, but it costs you money.
What can you do about this though? It seems inevitably a certain % of your lawn care customer base will think it is perfectly ok to not give you a heads up. That is the problem a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was dealing with when he wrote
If you are a lawn care professional there is no doubt you have to deal with customers who have pets and pets who leave a mess on the lawn. No one likes cleaning up after a dog but if the lawn is to be mower, someone has to do it. Should it be you? Should it be the customer? Or will you simply mow over it?
This is an issue that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum when a member asked “I am sure that I am not the only landscaper with some customers that have no disregard for cleaning up after their dogs. What do you guys do?
Here are some Spring lawn care marketing ideas in both flyer and postcard format. I think they are all very creative and should hopefuly inspire you when you are working on your lawn care marketing material.
They all play up the selling point of taking your weekends off. You can read more on this at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Here is a lawn care flyer design.
Lawn Care Flyer
Another member wrote” I like the idea of trying to get the lawn care customer to think that his/her weekend time should be spent doing other things than lawn work. I had a couple of requests for lawn care postcards along the same idea, just using different wording, but the same concept none the less. The two ideas are below.”
Lawn Care Postcard
Lawn Care Postcard
There is nothing like the feeling of running your own business and being an entrepreneur. You are in charge! You are calling the shots! It’s up to you to make it work! But sometimes, the realities of it are that you get burnt out. You take on too many responsibilities. You don’t delegate enough to others. The mounting weight and pressure can ultimately collapse ontop of you and then you may consider the thought of selling your lawn care business. But as we will see in this discussion, before you do it, you better think hard about it. The answer may not be in selling your business but in finding better ways to manage it so you find the love again for running your business. If we don’t wake up everyday feeling pumped about the new day and our business, something is wrong.
Here is a great question that came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Should you be looking to seal the deal everytime you go out for an estimate? One lawn care business owner initially seemed to be so focused on doing this at all costs, including his profits.
He wrote “I am going to give an estimate to a new lawn care customer that was referred to me from a current customer. I heard he is also going to get an estimate from from one of the big nationwide franchise lawn fertilization companies.
If you have been looking for some ideas to create your own lawn care quote card, check out what this Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum member put together and was using to promote his Spring lawn care services.
He wrote “My lawn care marketing plan this year is to visit a few neighborhoods and just write the mowing price on the lawn care quote card and leave it at the door. I am not looking to be the most expensive top notch lawn care operator out there. Instead I’d rather offer an affordable solution to homeowners in my area that don’t have the time or means to care for their own lawns or just need some additional help.
A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum wrote abut his situation. He had just recently gotten his lawn care business started and was finding there were plenty of things he needed to do in order to go legit. It’s pretty crazy the amount of hoops you gotta jump through to be legit, but in the end it’s worth it.
He wrote “Hi, I am a student that has started a lawn maintenance service a few months back to help myself and other students pay their tuition here in Florida. Our catch phrase is, ‘Let your grass pay for my class!’
There is a constant flow of new lawn care businesses that get started up every year as there is a constant flow of lawn care businesses that fail. Finding a niche and standing out is very important if you are going to find success. I think we all learn best when presented with examples of this, so here is an example of a lawn care business that has created a theme and a niche.
Everyone is always looking for ways to save a buck or two. It’s the way of business. There are many cost cutting methods one can employee to keep their expenses in check, but when your lawn care business decides that it’s better to have independent contractors working than it is employees, you better make darn sure they are properly categorized as contractors as defined by the I.R.S. or you are in for a bruising.
How do I get new lawn care customers? How can I find more success in the lawn care industry? These are two of the big questions we often see on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. What amazes me is that all too often, business owners are looking for some secret to doing this when in reality it comes down to doing the basics and doing them well. Here are two examples of what it takes to be successful in the lawn care industry.
One lawn care business owner wrote “Everyone on here is asking how to grow their business all the time. We see a lot of the same questions over & over & that’s fine.
If you keep your feelers out there listening to what’s going on in your area, every once in a while you will hear of a lawn care company that wants to sell their customer base for what ever reason. It might sound like a sweet deal at first or maybe the lawn care business owner is asking too much for the contract. Before you go jumping in head first on such a deal, what are some of the things you should be considering? This is a topic that came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
When you are looking to scale up your equipment and expand the services your lawn care business offers, instead of simply buying the next larger sized ZTR mower, why not consider a tractor? A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did and it has opened the doors to many new services that make him stand out from local competitors. Most newer lawn care businesses don’t own a tractor so they simply won’t be able to compete with you.
He told us about the equipment is now using. “I have a quick connection on the front of my tractor which allows me to go from bucket to snow plow in under two minutes. It’s 6′ wide. I had John Deere put a special valve on so I can press a button and it switches the hydro from the curl on the loader to the angle on the plow or the top and tilt cylinder on the box blade, I just use the loader joystick rather than adding another control unit.”
The vast majority of lawn care businesses that exist are solo operations. What I mean by this is that they are a one man show. There are good sides to running your operation like this because it’s easy to get started and you get to keep all the profit. There are downsides too. The big one is, what will happen to your lawn care business if you get sick? That’s a topic we discussed on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and we learned quite a bit about planning from it.
A lawn care business owner wrote “how many of you guys running solo have a back up plan if something were to happen to you like an accident or sickness and you could not service your lawn accounts?
Are you getting your Spring lawn care marketing campaign together yet? A lot of lawn care business owners are. Here is a lawn care postcard that a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum got printed up. He will be sending out these cards soon.
He wrote “I ordered these lawn care postcards about 10 days ago and am very happy with the quality of the printing and the stock the printer used. Although they are post cards I designed the back to be full color.
When you first get your lawn care business started you tend to be more desperate for work. You also are unsure of your costs and what you should charge so you tend to waiver a lot on your prices.
Over time as your lawn care business is around longer, you build up more confidence because you learn you can do a quality job and customers will pay your price to do the work. This allows you to gain more customers and feel more confident with the prices you charge.
Combining your love of multiple interests can really help set you apart from competitors and give you a unique marketing angle that is all your own. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was doing just that when he wrote us about a local outdoor cooking competition he was taking part in and wanted to use it to further promote his lawn care business.
He wrote “I am entering in a King of the Wing competion/trade show. Basically what it is is that I cook wings and have them judged. It is being held in a gated community at their community pool. Many residents are being encouraged to attend.
A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his experience with running a property management company and why he got out of it in order to focus on his landscaping business. This might help you gain some insight if you were thinking about expanding into property management in the future.
He wrote and gave us the low down. “Hi all, I am 37 years old and run a landscaping business with around 30 customers so far. I have two trucks with plows on them. They are both older models but they work great.
There are many ways to market your lawn care and landscaping business. The best ways tend to be the ones where you can visit person to person with members of your community. Saying hello to them, shaking their hand, and getting to know them all help you sell. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was able to jump on an opportunity to meet with local community members and get press coverage when he took part in a local ground breaking ceremony.
Here is what he told us about the event. “A few months ago I bid on a local city contract. There were two parts I was able to bid on and they had broken out each phase as separate contracts.
How often have you created a new landscape project or hardscape project and thoughts to yourself, ‘if only the neighbors could see this place, they’d all want me to do this for them.’ This thought may come up especially as the scale of the project increases as well as the amount of profits.
There are plenty of times when you will be working on a landscape project that simply won’t be seen by anyone else beyond the home owner, so you aren’t going to get as much marketing buzz out of it as if you might get from a well mowed front lawn. So what should you do?
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us a postcard he had designed for his lawn care marketing campaign. In the postcard he was promoting an annual contract fee that would include all sorts of services a lawn care customer would get throughout the year if they signed up with him.
When I saw it I thought to myself, I liked the creativity he used to put it together but I wondered about promoting an annual lawn care mowing price and if it would be effective.
We all know you need liability insurance when you are driving around in your car. You also need liability insurance when you are running a lawn care business just in case you injury someone. But what happens if you are out on a job site working on a lawn and you get injured? Things can get really messy really quick.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his experience of being injured on the job and what the fall out from it was. He wrote “I recently got hurt while working and made the mistake thinking I was covered by my wife’s health care insurance through her job. I didn’t think much more about it. Well, wouldn’t you know it, she was laid off from her job and a month later I ended up in the hospital.
If you are a lawn care business owner you would probably agree with me when I say no matter where you go there will most likely be heavy competition. This is a discussion we were having on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Another business owner shared “I feel this is correct. Where I am, it’s all about equipment, quality of work and word of mouth, price is not always the deciding factor.
Unless you have a hundred grand of cash to invest, in my city, you will probably starve. You need to build relationships with paying clients and your company has to be structured to attract them. With my business I found a niche above the small businesses and below the big companies. I found there is money to be made in the middle ground. I proved this to myself early in my business which is growing at an insane pace.
Have you been trying to find ways to reach out further in your service area and attract more lawn care customers? Local home & garden trade shows can be a great way to meet and talk with home owners in your area. Here are some suggestions members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum offered to help you get the most out of your trade show presentation.
One lawn care business owner said “trade shows put us on the map. They can be very expensive but the key I learned is to look bigger than you are. Know your stuff inside out, and be very professional. Image, knowledge of your offerings in lawn care are key to success. You have to produce results.
I love to showcase some of the landscape projects, members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum share with us. They are great learning tools because you get a chance to see a before and after image along with the bid price and the amount of profit the job generated. From this you can compare and contrast your jobs and get an idea what others are charging for similar work. Or if you have yet to offer such landscape services, this will give you an idea how much you can make if you did start offering them.
Are you looking for more ways to improve your sales skills? A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of sales secrets. He wrote “I have 7 years of sales experience in retail and business. What got me to start my lawn care business is one day when I was speaking to my neighbor about getting loam and seeds for his front yard and I told him I could do it and gave him a quote. He liked and accepted it. So I did the math and my profit was only $300.00. Yes that’s for a day but I wanted more. Am I greedy? Yes but that’s what makes the world go round. So I used my sales skills and up sold him a retaining wall, plants, landscape lighting as well as a walkway. Now my profit was higher and he was happy.”
Is it a good idea to give a kick back to get a lawn care bid? It seems when you start to go down this path, it has a tendency to get messy and the end results may become undesirable. This is a situation that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. A lawn care business owner shared with us an interesting situation that you may at one time find yourself considering.
He wrote “this guy recently called and asked me to mow his neighbors yard. He told me that the neighbor is abroad and asked him to take care of it for him. I get out there and give an estimate. He gives me the go ahead. I do a great job on it. Before I can finish he calls me and asks me to do his yard too.
Have you ever experimented with advertising your lawn care business in local newspapers? Did you find you got good results from your ad or no results at all? There are so many variables that can effect the results of your marketing campaign, it’s mind boggling. Did you know that the category your ad appears in the paper can have a great impact on how many calls you get?
This is somethign I learned when a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his experience of advertising in his local paper when he wrote “this is horrible. It really makes me want to take legal action but I am afraid I am just screwed.
When you are bidding jobs for lawn care or landscaping projects, should you let your customer know how much you are charging them per hour or should this be something you keep to yourself and simply bid on the job as a whole? That is a question that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum when a lawn care business owner asked “has anyone in the landscape construction field doing residential, bid a job by telling the customer the cost of materials and told them your rate per hour to prevent yourself from underbidding? It just seems like an easier way to bid to me.”
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