Last updated on January 26th, 2024 at 04:19 pm
According to Invoca, “67% of consumers shopping for a lawn care company ran an online search before deciding on a company to use and 80% of potential customers looking for a landscaper did not have a specific company in mind before deciding on one.” What landscape marketing strategies should you use to maximize your business’s growth?
‘Must Try’ Landacaper Marketing Strategies
- Have the Answers to Customers’ Questions Ready – SEO
- Pull in Leads with a Clean and Functional Landscaping Website
- Five-Star Customer Review Requests
- Easy to Access Company Contact Information
- Be Recognisable – Outbound and Inbound Marketing
- Paid Online Advertising – PPC
- Lead Tracking – Know Your Return on Investment
Why Can Generating Landscape Marketing Be So Challenging?
While you may be an impeccable landscaper, word-of-mouth advertising can only spread so far. Strategic online content is necessary to generate leads. But keep in mind, online authority and traffic generation will take time and patience. Companies that have been in business longer than you and have more reviews, as well as those that have executed the above online marketing strategies for longer amounts of time, will rank more highly in search engines.
Why should attempt to rank on the first page of search engines like Google or Bing? Well, according to Backlinko, “The top three Google search results get 54.4% of all clicks.” So how can you encourage these search engines to place you in the top search slots? Keep reading to find out.
Have The Answers Your Lawn Care Customers Are Looking For
This is helpful for landscapers because the average homeowner does not have extensive knowledge of lawn service and will need guidance. How are they most likely to find help? Online! They can find informative blogs if they want to attempt to do the job on their own. They can find ways to contact and hire you if they do not want to problem-solve on their own. The first way to gain traffic to your business online is to attract prospects with valuable information. Here is how you can do that!
Landscape Marketing Strategy – Informative Content Writing
First, you can focus your efforts on answering the questions your target audience has. This included individuals who may not exactly be ready to hire you just yet. For example, try targeting keywords and questions of individuals looking to work on their yard on their own. Here are a few examples.
- What types of plants survive in a tropical climate?
- Should I cover my bushes if the temperature drops below freezing?
- How often should I weed my yard?
Targeting these questions can give your site authority with Google and Bing. It can also help you gain the trust of those who come in contact with your site such as potential customers. If you give consumers correct and digestible information for free, they are likely to want to hire you when they are unable to complete a more complex landscaping job on their own.
After you have conducted some keyword research, you can begin to optimize your website and web pages for those keywords. To do this, you should optimize the following around your keyword:
- Image Title
- Image Alternative Tags
- Keyword in body text
- Page Title
- HTML heading tags
- Meta-description
Taking on Search Engine Optimization can be a large undertaking and very time-consuming. Consider hiring a lawn care SEO agency to help with the process.
Landscape Marketing Strategy – Search Engine Optimization
Next, you can do is focus on improving your business’s search engine optimization (SEO). You can conduct keyword research and find out what your target consumer or audience is searching for. Knowing what prospects are looking for can help you publish content aligned with high-traffic searches.
For example, if you are a landscaper in Tampa, FL, you want to target keywords such as…
- Landscapers Near Me
- Lawn Care Company Tampa, FL
- Top Rated Landscaping in Florida
Pull in Leads with a Clean and Functional Landscaping Website
Next up, make sure your website is the best possible representation of your brand. It would be a shame to rank highly on Google or Bing and have potential clients click on your site, only for them to disapprove. Next thing you know, they are back to the search results and selecting a competitor of yours to book with. To avoid this, make sure your website has the following.
- Client testimonials
- Fast loading speeds
- Correct company contact information
- Easy-to-follow and functional navigational menus
- Accurate and up-to-date information
- Personalized images reflecting your branding
Individuals who are looking for lawn care help are often looking in a hurry. They are not likely to be patient with a website that is not loading properly or contains inaccurate information. That lead will likely leave your site and move on to the next landscaping company in your area.
Consider hiring a professional to build or update your website. A professional web designer should build your website with SEO in mind. Also, ensure your website is being hosted with a reputable source. Consider security, updates, and loading speeds when selecting a hosting provider. Remember, cheaper is not always better.
Lastly, ensure your website is accessible to everyone. Make sure your website is ADA-compliant to avoid legal trouble as well as to service a variety of clients. Consider hiring a company that specializes in ADA guidelines to help make your site accessible.
Five-Star Customer Review Requests
The next landscape marketing strategy to implement is to ask for five-star reviews. BrightLocal’s research states that “60% of consumers feel that the number of reviews a business has is critical when reviewing and deciding whether to use its services.”
Companies with the highest number of positive reviews are more likely to appear within the top results on search engines. A few platforms which we recommend plumbers focus on include Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Bing. These platforms have the most traffic and reviews here will be seen the most. Secondary sites that plumbers may also want to utilize include Upcity, Home Advisor, or Angie’s List. However, these will have slightly lowers traffic metrics than those mentioned previously.
Here are some ways to jump-start your review numbers. Try asking consumers to leave a review following the completion of service before leaving the property. You could also try sending them a review link along with their e-receipt. Lastly, try to email them a thank you following the service which includes a review link and a coupon for their next service.
Finally, use an email campaign system to request reviews from customers or to encourage them to repeat services with you. You could even offer an incentive for those customers who leave you a review, such as a discount on their next month of lawn care service. Learn more about marketing automation here.
Easy to Access Company Contact Information
When potential clients are searching for a lawn care company if your area, as mentioned previously, they are most likely in a rush. Having your business information up-to-date and easily accessible in popular business directories is imperative. You can start by ensuring you have a Google Business Profile. Then you can move on to directories such as Apple Maps, Yelp, Bing, MapQuest, LinkedIn, and others. When updating your profile you will want to ensure your NAP information is correct. Your NAP information consists of your landscaping company’s name, address, and phone number.
Be Recognisable – Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing includes advertisements that potential consumers view without actively choosing to do so. For example, someone may happen to see your branding on the side of a company vehicle, on a billboard, or hear a radio ad on their way home from work. These interactions with your brand would just happen to happen, but over time will move your brand more recognizable to consumers. These also do not seem forceful or pushy as door-to-door advertising may appear. People are more likely to trust and hire a landscaper whose information they have seen around town than a landscaper whose logo they have never seen before.
Landscape Marketing – Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is when you have consumers come to you. Content writing which was mentioned earlier in this article is one example of inbound marketing.
Social Media
Another great example of inbound marketing is social media. Social media is a great tool to stay on consumers’ minds and its utilization can help you stay relevant. If you create and post engaging content, potential customers will choose to follow you and then voluntarily view your content and ads from then on.
Consider hiring a social media management company for your landscaping business!
Landscape Marketing – Paid Online Advertising
Landscape marketing can also include paying for online advertising or Pay-Per-Click (PPC). However, we suggest saving this strategy until later on in your marketing journey. You will want to be on your digital marketing A-game if you are going to pay for ads to drive traffic to your site. For example, you will want to have an organized website, high-ranking keywords, and a large portfolio of online reviews before you start to pay for site traffic. Otherwise, you could waste your ad-spent budget just for prospects to click on your site or business profile and then leave because they are unimpressed by what they see.
Also, we do not suggest having a representative from Google or Bing manage your ads. This is because this representative will want to increase your ad spend by as much as possible, they will not care about your return on investment. On the other hand, hiring an agency like Wolfpack Advising to manage your PPC is a safer choice. This is because we charge a flat rate. We will only increase your ad spend if it makes sense for your business. We will make the same amount no matter if your ad spend is $500 or $5000.
But, let’s check out a few ways to use this strategy.
Google Search Ads
Google Ads is a Pay-Per-Click strategy we recommend because it is effective for your long-term growth. You can see where your business is advertising, adjust budgets, and scale your advertising budget.
Learn more about how Google Ads can advance your business goals, or how long it takes to work.
However, be careful as advertising on Google Ads can easily go through your ad budget if you are not a professional. Hiring a PPC professional almost always pays for themselves many times over.
Google Local Ads
Similarly to Google Ads is Google Local Service Ads. Google Local Ads or Google Guaranteed Ads, helps business display their local business to consumers searching within a particular area for businesses/services like yours.
Local Google Ads for plumbers are one of the most effective online advertising strategies.
To be effective with Google Local Ads and convert leads, use call tracking to track your return on investment (ROI), answer calls quickly, and have a high amount of Google Reviews.
Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads)
Microsoft Ads which is very similar to Google Ads. Consider using Microsoft Ads to increase your traffic even more with clients who choose Bing as their search engine of choice.
Yelp Ads
Lastly, we have Yelp Ads. Yelp Ads tend to perform well for plumbers and other similar industries that have good Yelp reviews. Consider Yelp Ads along with your Google Ad strategy to diversify your marketing. Many times, one platform may see better results based on the demographics and trends of the service area.
Lead Tracking – Know Your Return On Investment
Now tie it all together by tracking your Return on Investment (ROI)! You have to know where your landscape leads are coming from! How many leads are coming in? Is your office converting the leads? How much are you making from each strategy? This is crucial because landscape marketing can take up a huge chunk of your overall budget. When utilizing so many strategies while running the day-to-day operations of your business, it can be easy to overspend in areas without seeing the full benefit from them.
For example, maybe Google Ads is a very lucrative strategy for your area and you are seeing a 300% return from it, but you are losing money every month on Yelp Ads because there are not as many Yelp users in your service area. You can use this data to make the educated decision to spend less on Yelp Ads moving forward and more on Google Ads. Knowing what is and isn’t working and making adjustments as needed to all your landscape marketing strategies is going to make you the most successful in the long term. It will also prevent your marketing dollars and efforts from going to waste.
The easiest way to track your leads is by investing in a system to help you rather than wasting time and effort doing this on your own and by hand. Consider hiring a marketing agency to help manage your leads and track your ROI.
Generate Lawn Care Leads Today!
So there you have it, the best strategies for landscape marketing! Implement a few of these strategies at a time and track your return on investment to see which are most effective for you.
Interested in landscape marketing services? Check out our marketing services for landscapers!
