Lawn Care Business Marketing Tips - GopherHaul BlogLawn Care Business Marketing tips, tricks and secrets I have learned.
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Many lawn care business owners I have met on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum have found success through a lot of trial and error. Talking about what works and what doesn’t gives us all a chance to move on quickly from what isn’t working to find what is. One lawn care business owner in specific was finding things really coming together for him as he was growing and hiring new employees.
Most lawn care business owners are constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency. Is it more efficient to run a 1, 2 or 3 man crew? Sure everyone will have their own opinion on this but in a discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum we got a chance to talk with a business owner who has experimented with all three crew types and has come to a conclusion that will surely help you grow.
We all love to make more money and are constantly looking for new ways to do it. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum had a great idea on how to make more cash. He shared with us this story that inspired his new idea.
He wrote “my wife and I came up with this idea just the other day. It started with something I did back in December when my wife was in the hospital ( we had a new baby girl). I rented this yard stork, sign that said “IT’S A Girl ” on it for my wife to see when I brought her home. That got me thinking, what if a lawn care business owner offered things like this to their customers?
Jumping from residential lawn care to offering commercial lawn care can be tough on a newer lawn care business owner because you just aren’t used to estimating larger properties. With no example to go by you may greatly underestimate the amount of time it would take you to mow and underestimate the amount you should charge.
In a discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum a member posted an overhead image of an apartment complex he was wanting to bid on but since he had no previous commercial lawn care bidding experience he needed help.
Coming up with the proper rate to charge your lawn care customers can be difficult, especially when you are just getting started. It seems that newer businesses tend to underestimate the amount of time a job will take and therefor underestimate the price the job should be bid at.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of his tips on estimating lawns especially for beginners. He wrote “estimating a yard is easy. First I measure the dimensions. My estimates also includes weed eating. So, I measure the perimeter of the property to tell me how much weeding I will have to do.
We all want to know where we stand compared to others in the industry that have been in business for a similar time we have been. Are we ahead of others or are we lagging behind? It’s impossible to know if we live our lives in a vacuum. That is why a new lawn care business owner wrote to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and shared with us his story and where his business is currently at, in hopes of finding if he is on track or not.
When I read this discussion I really thought it covered a pretty big issue that I think the lawn care business owner just didn’t see. Then it got me thinking, we all might be doing things that we may just not realize we could be doing differently and getting better results. In this situation a lawn care business owner was out giving a mowing estimate when a neighbor called the cops on him and he was shocked this happened but let’s look into it and figure out what went wrong.
When you are coming up with a slogan or a tag line for your lawn care business you really have to think about it and look at it through the eyes of the potential customer. In fact, if you have a few slogans you are considering, you should run them by some friends or family that aren’t emotionally attached to your business and ask them what they think about the list. Which would they choose and why. You may be in for quite an education with the responses you get.
One member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum asked us about a new slogan he came up with when he wrote “I am wondering what your opinions are about having a tag line that says
When times are tough, we all tend to get a little desperate and look for a short cut or a quick way to make things better. There are also those who prey upon others looking to make a quick buck so we need to constantly be on the watch. A prime example of where a lot of underhanded business dealings can go on is when you look to grow your lawn care business fast and want to buy a bunch of lawn care accounts from a seller.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum wrote and asked us what we thought about his current situation. “Someone has offered to sell me 18 of their lawn maintenance accounts for $3,000.00. He claims he makes $3,000.00 from them. He just does the maintenance, no chemical applications. None of the accounts have contracts. That kind of worries me! What do you guys think about this?”
With anything you want to do in business and in life, there is a good way to do it and a bad way to do it. Even when it comes to advertising for a new lawn care business employee. That’s what we learned in this discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. One of the members wrote “I am trying to come up with an advertisement to run in the local newspaper and I keep banging my head against the wall. It’s a lawn care business so it’s not like I can request there resumes to be mailed in and then make a decision from there. I am open to any ideas this is what I have so far.
‘Hourly salary lawn care company now hiring. Looking for hard and fast workers.’
The end of the year can be a very slow time for lawn care business owners. However with some creativity it doesn’t have to be. Check out what this one lawn care business owner does on his slow time. He details cars and makes quite a bit of good money doing it. A great thing about offering this service is that a lot of the same customers who hire him to detail their car also hire him to mow their lawns.
In a discussion at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, he shared with us some of what he learned by doing this. He wrote “This is how I make my money in the Winter. I offer this service during other seasons as well. I usually perform the car detailing services in the afternoon.
To get your lawn care business started, it really doesn’t take much. In fact if you just one day decided to tell your friends that you started your lawn care business, then in a sense you are started. That easy, that simple. However, to actually turn it into a profitable business that you and your family can survive off of, takes a lot more work than that.
I think quite a few new business owners take some initial simple steps and consider themselves in business but they quickly come upon their first dip. What is that? It’s where things slow and don’t seem to be running as fast as their expectations are. It’s where they hand out 1,000 door hangers and get no responses. It’s where they see their bills start to stack up and their income not catch up. Then most every new business owner sits there alone, scratches their head and wonder what the heck am I doing.
I have learned in my years of running the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum that anything is possible. If you can think it, you can make it happen. I try and never shoot down an idea because each time I read something that comes across to me as not possible, I am blown away that someone makes it happen. Let me jump into this a little more to explain.
A member first started a discussion by writing “I am wondering if anyone has tried contacting lawn care outdoor power equipment manufacturers to sponsor ad space on your marketing materials? I know in other industries they give all kinds of things away. I am going to try all avenues. I was researching the forum more but it seems I am the first to try this and that might mean there is no current competition doing this.
You have probably been in this situation in the past where you are mowing a lawn care customer’s property and they come out to ask you how much it would cost to have you ——–. You eyeball the job and because you don’t know how much the materials are going to cost, you ballpark the job figure. The customer thinks for a moment about the price you just gave them and then agrees. Little do you know that you now committed yourself to that exact price, even if you told the customer it’s a ballpark figure. That customer just might get fixated on that price and may refuse to budge later if the material costs are higher than expected. Here is an example from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum on how such landscape project bidding can become a disaster.
When you take a moment to reflect on where you spend your time while servicing a lawn care customers you may find there are a lot of extra steps you are adding that are not necessary. If you find a way to optimize the time spent at each location the net result will be more profits for you. Edging a lawn is one of those services that can be a large time waster depending on the way it is performed.
There are so many lawn mower manufacturers that offer so many different models and cutting widths. Some cutting decks are marketed as 36 inches wide but when measured with all their attachments, their true width can be much wider. This may not sound like a big deal to you until you have finite widths you need your new mower to fit through, like fence gates.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his recent experience and cautionary tale of purchasing his most recent lawn mower. He wrote “this year I decided to try to start a grass cutting business. I did my advertising and got a few clients. I went to buy a mower and every dealer of course tells me their mower is the best made.
This always makes for a lively debate on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Should you build your lawn care business on commercial lawn care customers or residential customers and why? The answer a lot of times is shaped by the experience each business owner has had with these different types of customers. However when everything settles down, some common points seem to become clear and one path seems to stand out as a better way to go.
One lawn care business owner asked “I have built my business with about 95% residential lawn care clients and have done a few big commercial lawn car bids in the past week or so (still no word on if I got them or not). But to be honest I kinda hope I don’t get them & may turn them down if I do. It seems to me everybody out there wants the big commercial lawn mowing jobs so bad that it’s extremely cut throat and not worth it.
Is your lawn care business growing and are you finding that your old lawn truck just isn’t performing the way you need it to. This tends to happen to most new lawn care businesses after their first year but usually it’s a bad financial time to be out looking for a new truck. What options does he have? That’s the situations a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum found himself in when he told us about his current lawn care equipment situation.
We can all create a list of items we would like to buy for our business. Maybe it’s a new mower, a truck, a trailer. Whatever it is, before you buy it, you need to ask yourself, do you need it? If you end the business year scratching your head wondering where all your profits went, you might want to reconsider how you spend your money.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum owner wrote about his decision to purchase a dump trailer. What he learned from it was a great lesson in buying what you need versus want. He wrote “I recently read an AMAZING article where the author talked about a successful friend of his and this friend’s secret to successes.
In a previous discussion I had talked about 7 tips to getting a commercial lawn care business loan approved. That discussion opened up to include a few more important issues I wanted to pass on to you. These may not be issues you find yourself dealing with day-in and day-out unless you are looking to get a loan for a lawn care equipment purchase upgrade.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was kind enough to have his wife share with us some important insights she had acquired while working in the commercial loan division of a bank.
It is always fascinating to study how lawn care business owners find new clients. We can learn something new from it every time. A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us how he got his new lawn care business started and quickly ramped up to servicing 27 properties. He wrote “I opened my lawn care business this year. It is owned and operated by me, my wife, my daughter and her husband. Now, only 8 weeks in and starting with “zip, zero, nadda” accounts, we now have 27 properties to service. They range from weekly service to once every 3 weeks. I wasn’t too wild about the three week cycle, but this client has 6 properties so I wasn’t going to pass it up. I guess you could call me a “habitual business owner”. I have had 9 businesses including this one. The first was in 1981 while I was still in the Air Force. Since retiring in 94′ I have sold antiques, dabbled in EBay, bought and operated a second-hand store (still operating) and now I’m in the lawn care business. I must say, by far, this business shows the most promise.
How often have you heard someone say “it takes money to make money?” Usually you hear that right before a new business owner is about to lay down some serious cash to purchase something big they don’t need at the moment. However there are times when a lawn care business owner needs to make a purchase to grow and needs a commercial loan from a bank to be able to do it. But before you walk into your local bank, you may want to get some things in order to improve your chances of getting that loan. But what kind of things should you do to prepare?
When it comes to marketing, we tend to look at how much it is going to cost us to print out 1,000 flyers or door hangers and ask ourselves if we can afford it. After a quick knee jerk reaction we either go or don’t go for it. Not much thought is generally placed on such marketing efforts but when you look at where you are spending your money and where you are actually getting clients from, you might be shocked.
For every marketing dollar you are spending, you want it to work for you and you want it to bring you in customers. If it’s not, then cut it loose and get rid of it. There are more ways to waste money in marketing attempts than there are ways to make money.
Winter will be gone soon and some lawn care business owners will be looking for ways to attract new lawn care customers. One of the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of his tips for successfully using lawn care bandit signs.
This discussion all started off when a member wrote “I am just getting my lawn care business started and I need an effective sign to get lawn mowing customers. What do your favorite or most effective signs say?
As with all other types of outdoor equipment, there are a ton of options out there. Which hedge trimmers are the best for commercial usage? This conversation came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and we all learned a lot from it. A new lawn care business owner wrote and asked “I will be buying my first hedge trimmer in the next few days and figure you guys know the ones to buy, and the ones to not buy. Interested in knowing both. I live in a small town so my store options are limited.”
I got the latest version of LawnMail up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum for you to download. This package of web code is jam packed with problem solving features.
First off, what is LawnMail? Basically it is a website platform that allows your lawn care customers to have more interaction with you.
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?
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