http://lawnchat.com Lawn Care Business Marketing tips, tricks and secrets I have learned. Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:46:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1884 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? ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1882 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1879 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1877 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1875 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1873 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1870 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1868 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1865 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1862 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1860 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1857 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1855 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. ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1847 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1843 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1841 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1839 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1836 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1833 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1831 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1829 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1826 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1823 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, ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1821 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1818 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1816 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. ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1814 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. That is ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1812 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1807 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 ... http://lawnchat.com/?p=1805