Lawn Care Business Marketing Tips - GopherHaul BlogLawn Care Business Marketing tips, tricks and secrets I have learned.
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Have you noticed more lawn care business owners in your area starting up? Do you find they tend to try and compete solely on price? Is it difficult for you to make a profit on lawn care when others are offering to cut lawns for $15? If so, here is some great insight from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
One of our members wrote how he combats start up lawn care businesses that charge a bare minimum per lawn.
Lawn Care Business Sales Tips
How often are you performing a service on a customer’s property when you see a problem that you feel you could fix? Do you mention this problem to the customer? If not, why not? Offering basic weekly mowing services is a great way to open the lines of communication with a customer that can lead to bigger profits if you know what to do. One of the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of his suggestions on how he makes big money with upsells to his current lawn care customers.
Lawn Care Upsells
I am always leaning something new on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and today is no exception. I would like to present to you the top 20 rules of professional lawn care the members of the forum have learned and wanted to share with you. Keep these in the back of your head at all times. There are things in this list to avoid as well as laugh hysterically at.
1. Trimming along the side of a pool & jumping over it’s corners due to junk lying around is a bad idea, you might fall in.
Have you spent much time thinking about your lawn care customer sales funnel? Many newer lawn care businesses don’t think about this so I thought it would be a good idea to bring it to their attention.
What is a sales funnel? Well think of it as a big scoop. You want to go out there and scoop up as many potential customers as you can when you broadcast your marketing message. Then you want to reel them in step by step. You want to offer something and then get something from the potential customer.
Lawn Care Customer Sales Funnel
Are you looking for a free way to market your lawn care business? A new lawn care business owner wrote to us and shared his frustration about finding customers. He said “I’m 17 and I mow and landscape with a friend of mine. We are a pretty good team and we do good work but we can’t seem find enough work. I know we are 17 but I don’t know what to do. We need some good, solid, every week lawns and we don’t have to many of them. Can you please tell me how to get more lawns?”If you find yourself in this position the one question I have to ask you is have you considered using online classified ad sites like craigslist? If not, you really need to consider this. Here is some advice from a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum who only uses craigslist solely to promote his new lawn care business. It’s quite interesting to see how involved his marketing technique is. He wrote “I pretty much only use craigslist to build my business.
I started my lawn care business in the Spring, and now have about 15 weekly lawns just from craigslist. In March/April I could only follow about 1 in 7 of my leads I was so swamped.
Lawn Care Marketing
When you are just getting your lawn care business started, missing a potential new lawn care customer’s phone call is a big deal. It’s a big deal when you have been in business for a while too, but it seems especially important when you are just getting started which leads me to this great question that was asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
A new lawn care business owner wrote “I just started my own lawn care business and passed out flyers earlier today. Later in the day, while at my baseball game, someone called wanting lawn service. I called him back right away but…
lawn care customer call
A very popular question many new lawn care business owners ask is how can they land commercial accounts. A business owner on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was kind enough to share some of his insights with us. He wrote “I start my lawn care business 2 months ago with 5 customers. As of today I have 18 residential and 3 commercial customers.”
That is fantastic work! Since many new business owners are looking to land commercial lawn mowing accounts and you have been able to do this, can you share with us a little on how you did it?
Commercial lawn care accounts
A new lawn care business owner on the Gopher Lawn Care Business forum is trying to get his business off the ground. He is stationed at a military base and ran into a few problems which he was looking for help on. He wrote “Well I had this feeling I would run into issues and I was right. I was hoping to only mow on Base but was told by my boss that it would be a conflict on the Air Force side of the base. So I decided to market on the Army side. Well after asking around I found out that door to door soliciting is not allowed. So the only thing I can do is post a flyer and/or business cards at the Commisary/BX and the gas stations. I won’t hold my breath on getting any calls. Can you offer any advice?”
Lawn Care Business Marketing
I thought this was a very creative lawn care business flyer. One of the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his creation that he uses on telephone poles and at local stores to promote his lawn care business. As you can seen, the flyer pulls you in to read it because initially you think it’s an ad about a lost pet, but as you get closer to read it, the flyer is actually promoting a lawn care business. Now as we know, the toughest part about marketing is getting the intended viewer to actually read your ad. This flyer all but guarantees it will get read.
You can download it for free at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here.
Other lawn care business owners shared their opinion on the flyer. One said “Very, Very clever, I like it and you had me until I started reading, my initial thought was what a cute puppy and I love dogs, made me take a read!” Another said “That is a true eye catcher and would probably work.” Experiment with this flyer and see what it can do for you.
Lawn Care Flyer Template
When a lawn care customer decides mid-season they want to save money and only have you mow their property every other week, how should you handle this or even bill this? This was a dilemma that was presented to the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. The member wrote “I’ve had this weekly mowed lawn care customer since I started my business and now they want me to cut the grass every 2 weeks because they are “seniors” and they are getting low on “money” (that’s an excuse I think)
This yard I do, takes me 2 hrs with my tractor and another 15 to 20 minutes to trim all his stuff all over the yard.
Weekly lawn care customer
Nothing helps us learn how to be successful than to hear stories from those who have found success and then ask them how they did it. A new lawn care business owner shared with us his story on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum on how he went from 3 to 20 lawn care customers in all of 3 months. I was able to talk with him and get some insights as to how he did it. I hope this discussion really helps you grow your lawn care business.
lawn care customers
Have you experimented much with your different lawn care procedures? Should you mow first or trim? What about edging first? What saves the most time and makes the lawn look the best that it can? This is a great topic that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Let me share with you some of the insights that were presented in hopes they will help get you to think of ways to be more productive..
One of our forum members wrote “In my area, if you edge the lawn before you mow then you’ll have compressed moist dirt into the concrete. That takes a lot of time to clean up.
Mowing and trimming
This is a quickie but still very important article on mulch bed thickness. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum asked “I am doing a mulching job for an apartment complex. I was trying to decide how thick I should lay it. The landscape has no existing mulch. Should I lay it at 3 in. Or less, like 2.”
Here are a couple of responses that will help you out. One lawn care business owner said ” A few factors such as type of mulch, type of bed, and reason for mulching determine how thick you should mulch.
mulch bed
Here is a really interesting question that was posted on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. One of our friends wrote in and he had this idea for his new lawn care business name. His name is Brian S. and he was asking “What do you guys think about naming the business B.S. Lawn Care???? They happen to be my initials, do you think this would be a bad name or a good one cause people would remember it????”
B.S. Lawn Care Business
Richard posted some great lawn stripe pictures on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and along with the pictures he shared with us many of his secrets on how he gets his lawns to look so great.
Here are some of the questions he was asked. How long does it take to get the lawn to look so great. Would the stripes show up as well as they do after the first mowing or does it take many mowings for them to really show up?
Lawn Mowing Stripes
I get a chance to see many lawn care business marketing designs and I try to share with you as many as I possibly can. I think they will help you in the creation of your own lawn care marketing material. One of our friends made a post on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum to show us his flyer. This design has a row of vertical tabs at the bottom that allow a potential customer to tear one off and have the contact information. Such flyer designs ideally can be used on telephone poles or at stores that have local bulletin boards or anywhere else you have foot traffic.
Experiment with your own lawn care business flyer and see what elements bring in the most calls.
One of our members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum wrote and said “A friend of mine (who is a graphic designer) is re-doing my lawn care business logo for me. Right now he has 5 different ideas for it and I’m wanting some opinions. My phone number and website will be added to the final logo.”
So he shared with us an image of all 5 lawn care logo designs. Which do you like best? Add your opinion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Lawn Care Business Logo
When you are out and about giving new landscaping estimates to customers, when should you stick with your bid price and when should you pass the job on to someone else? This is a great topic and it was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum by our friend Tom. He wrote “I have a question regarding a mulch quote. I went to home of someone getting several quotes on a mulch job yesterday. I was told the industry standard for quoting is about $100.00 per yard. The mulch job was for 9 yards of mulch (he also wants all his beds edged). Given my costs of $24 per yard plus delivery plus an extra worker. $290.20 mulch plus delivery then the extra worker $135. Total cost $425.20.
Landscaping bid
How important is it to have signs and marketing material on your landscaping truck and trailer? This is a very good question that was asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. A member wrote “things are really taking off here this Spring and it has has been crazy in a good way. My question is has anyone used vinyl lettering on there trucks and or trailers? How does it hold up over the long haul? I’m looking to have this done to my truck as well as having some lawn signs made up, just waiting on the estimate to come back.
I thought about magnets, but I see them on the side of the road here and there. How cost effective is it?”
Landscape trailer signs
When you are mowing a customer’s lawn do you mulch the grass clippings or use your mower’s side discharge? That is a question asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and I found the results to be very interesting.
One of our members wrote “I have noticed a lot of local lawn care folks are side discharging, which I had always done on my own yard, until I got the mulching kit.
Mulch or side discharge lawn mower
With the advent of google maps and other similar services, your lawn care business might feel more inclined now to pull up an overhead map of a new customers home to review their yard. Once you calculate the dimensions of the property, you may even feel compelled to give the new lawn care customer a price quote over the phone to mow their lawn, site unseen.
Here is a prime example of why you shouldn’t do that.
Walk the lawn before you bid it.
Creating a catchy idea or phrase to stand out with your lawn care business can be very difficult. Unless you are doing creative thinking everyday, when you need to be creative it can be tough to pull these ideas out of nothing. This leads me to a question Kurtis wrote on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. He asked “Anyone have any catchy T-Shirt design ideas? I have our logo for the front left breast - but what is something catchy that we can have printed on the back?”
Lawn Care T-Shirt
Have you ever driven through a neighborhood and seen some lawns that really strike you as amazing! You look at them and ask yourself how the heck can the lawn care business owner do such a great job. Well I felt that way when Sean posted some of his striped lawn photos in the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Can you imagine working on the neighbors lawn and having your customer say, I want my lawn looking like that one over there! WOW. Well lucky enough for us, Sean shared with us a little how he works such magic.
Lawn Stripes
When you are thinking about marketing your lawn care business, why not consider using postcards? That’s what one of our forum members did and he has been getting great results. He wrote “Hey, I just wanted to share with you my new oversized postcards. I am very happy with them and have been getting great responses. The top is the front and back is the bottom.”
I was really impressed with what he was doing so I asked How have you been distributing them? What made you decide to experiment with lawn care postcards?
Lawn Care Business Postcard
Did you know you can appear on google’s search engine even if you don’t have a website? And if you have a lawn care website, here is a tip that you really need to take advantage of. The best part about all of this, is that it’s FREE. It’s amazing what you can learn when you read the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Google has a section on their search engine called the ‘Local Business Center.’ Do a quick search on google to find it.
Lawn Care Website Search Engine Optimization
Are you looking to add another revenue generator to your lawn care business? Do you find your area is highly competitive when it comes to offering lawn mowing services, well how about adding on organic lawn spraying. No license is required. Results will be visible quickly and you can add much needed profit to your bottom line. Let’s see what other business owners are saying about this add on service in the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Liquid Organic Lawn Spraying
Here is the latest free lawn care business flyer added to our collection. You can download and edit this flyer template with the free word processing program OpenOffice. Edit and alter it to fit your lawn care business needs and start handing them out. To download this lawn mowing flyer or any of our others, visit the free lawn care business flyer template section located at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here.
Lawn Care Business Flyer Template
If you think by offering to do a landscape project for cheap will make the customer more appreciative, think again. One of our Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum members offered a customer a really good price on two jobs and he found himself running into problems. Here is what he said.
“I’m about to lose my mind with this landscaping customer. I am offering such an inexpensive service for two big landscaping jobs. I was hoping if my price was low, he’d at least be able to afford the needed supplies & I’d be in & out!
Landscape Project Discounting Problem
“Back in the days when you were starting your lawn care business, did you encounter the ‘Why would I hire you if you’re so new?’ dilemma?
I’d like to have some way of spinning that question into a positive if and when that should arise.”
That’s the question asked to us by Scott, a new lawn care business owner on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
Lawn Care Business Owner Newbie
Here is a new FREE lawn mowing flyer template entitled ‘Dug yourself into a hole.?’ The goal of this flyer is to make the reader think of all the lawn care and landscape projects they started and never got finished. Or the all the landscape projects they wanted to do but never got a chance to start. Make your mowing flyer stand out from others by helping the customer solve a problem they have.
Lawn Care Business Flyer Template
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