The Complete Guide to Marketing for Landscapers – With Video

In most landscaping businesses, marketing can be the source of significant frustration. That’s especially the case if you’re not a marketer by trade. If you don’t know where to start when it comes to marketing for landscapers, you may wind up pouring your hard earned money down the drain faster than you thought was possible. The guide below contains all of the insights you need to make the best decisions regarding your landscaping marketing strategy. 

Step 1: Create a Customer Profile Based On Your Dream Client

You won’t attract your ideal client unless you have an understanding of who they are, or what they’re seeking. That’s where creating a customer profile comes into play. The process of creating a customer profile entails noting the characteristics that your best customer would likely possess. Then, once you’ve finished creating your customer profile (or profiles), you can strategize on how to reach audiences containing your ideal client.

Pretend your goal is to attract more clientele that uses your services for more than just a monthly touch up. If you’re aiming to attract clients that need weekly services, mulch removal or design, you’ll want to start by envisioning a customer that owns a home and has the disposable income for these services. Another factor to keep in mind is how long this person has been in their home, since a newcomer to the area is less likely to have a landscaper. Other factors that should be taken into consideration include age, neighborhood and household size to name a few.

Step 2: Educate Yourself on All of Your Potential Marketing Options

Diving into a campaign head-first prior to exploring all of the marketing options you have available is among the worst landscaping marketing mistakes you could possibly make. If the choice you make doesn’t work out, it could make you apprehensive about trying similar marketing strategies in the future. Some of the most commonly used marketing methods for landscapers include:

• Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM):

  Mailing all of the households within a specific mailing route has more benefits than you might think. Aside from allowing you to spread your message for as low as $0.19 per postcard, all you have to do to begin sending mail with EDDM is choose your mailing route, design your campaign and choose your delivery date. And with GrowMail’s EDDM Map Tool, you can easily identify mailing routes that contain a high concentration of your ideal client.

• Targeted Direct Mail:
  

  Personalization is the key to making your marketing efforts stand out. And with targeted direct mail you can personalize your postcards to include important characteristics about your recipient. A few categories you can use includes cities, names, home ownership status and more. Additionally, targeted direct mail allows users to create mailing lists based on a wide variety of criteria, allowing you to craft a mail piece that deeply resonates with a specific segment of your audience.

• Non Mailing Printed Products:

  There’s a wide variety of printed materials that are capable of leaving your landscaping company at the top of the minds of prospective clients. For instance, you can save on postage by leaving door hangers that contain your brand name and contact information on the doors in the neighborhoods where you have jobs. Along with door hangers, flyers, brochures offering lawn health tips and yard signs are also capable of improving brand recognition.

Step 3: Track Your Direct Mail Campaigns

Another commonly made mistake when it comes to marketing for landscapers is failing to track campaign results. There are dozens of reasons why failing to track your campaigns is among the most costly errors you could make regarding your marketing efforts. But the biggest reason is without tracking you’ll never be able to pinpoint how much business your campaign yielded. Tracking your next direct mail campaign is easy, too. A few of the most effective tracking methods include:

• QR Codes:

  For marketers, QR codes can act as a Swiss Army Knife considering everything it can accomplish. Not only does including QR codes onto mailers help to immediately grab the attention of recipients, they also make the process of leading recipients towards your booking site easier. And when you add QR codes onto your postcards, you’ll receive a report detailing how many people scanned it. This is great for testing, too. Send out a small batch of mailers, each with different designs and copy to two similar audiences to see which performs better. Whichever receives more scans is the one you should use for your live campaign.
  

• Unique Tracking Phone Number:

  It likely goes without saying that you’ll include a contact number onto your postcards. But adding a tracking phone number allows you to easily trace how many phone calls your postcard campaign delivered. And since most people nowadays have a tough time remembering phone numbers, including a tracking phone number that differs from your ordinary line could be a great way to get more recipients to save your mailer.

• Personalized URL and Landing Page:

  Another way to capture the attention of your audience is by providing a unique URL that includes their name or an exclusive offer. And including a corresponding landing page helps to reinforce your brand and message digitally. Let’s say for instance that you receive two postcards from competing landscaping companies. One includes a few photos, along with a discount. But the competing postcard contains a link that ends with /johnsmithfirstappointmentdiscount. Then, once you navigate to the site it allows you to easily book a service date. Clearly the latter postcard is more likely to yield the results you need than the first one. And once your campaign ends, you’ll receive a report on how much traffic your specialized landing page received, so you know what changes to make moving forward.

Step 4: Use Direct Mail to Create an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Your ideal clients don’t consume marketing messages from just one source. In order to get the marketing results you need, you have to provide informative, actionable materials on multiple channels. This is what’s known as an omnichannel marketing strategy. Considering how much marketing your audience is inundated with nowadays, developing an omnichannel strategy is a must. That’s especially the case when you consider how much of your competition is saturating multiple different mediums at a time.

Suppose right now that your main area of focus is on social media marketing. In this case, while you’re effectively communicating with your audience that’s active on social media, members of your audience that don’t log on regularly will miss your message and offers entirely. By including direct mail in your marketing strategy, while still maintaining an active social media presence you can reach your audience that exists both on and offline. Bridging the gap between your online and offline presence with vehicle graphics, postcards and other printed materials is vital for building brand recognition.

Bonus Tip: User Generated Content (UGC) Enhances Marketing for Landscapers – So Be Sure to Include Some!

Nowadays, your audience wants to hear from people who are familiar with your services firsthand. And one of the best ways of doing that is by including content from customers who are pleased with your work. This type of insight is known as user generated content, and serves as another way to tie your online and offline marketing efforts together. There are numerous ways to integrate UGC into your mailing campaigns, including:

• Reviews and Testimonials:

  There are a couple of reasons why reviews or testimonials from your previous customers on your postcards helps recipients decide whether or not to use your services. First it allows recipients to find out how good of a job your team does without searching online. Also, including reviews or testimonials allows your audience to potentially get questions answered they may not have felt comfortable asking. It’s a safe assumption that most of your audience reads reviews prior to making a buying decision. Including them on your postcard also eliminates the possibility of recipients getting distracted by the reviews of other landscaping companies.

• Trust Badges & Certifications:
  

  Showing audiences that you’re not just another amateur could massively affect your ability to earn more repeat business. If you’ve received awards or certifications for your landscaping work, showcasing them on postcards could increase trust with unfamiliar recipients. After all, you’ve worked hard to achieve these certifications or awards, why not show them off?

• Social Media Feedback:
  

  Pretend you’ve just completed a landscaping design job for a brand-new client. They’ve uploaded photos on Facebook and Instagram and tagged you, praising the hard work you’ve done. Photos combined with high praise could convince recipients to trust you with their lawns more than anything else! And suppose the recipient is a part of your social media audience. There’s no guarantee they’ll see it unless you share it on a postcard. Including positive feedback from social media on your postcards could deliver new followers while increasing your book of clients.

Get More Insight About Marketing for Landscapers During a Free Consultation With GrowMail – Sign Up Below!

You don’t have to embark on your next campaign alone. GrowMail provides all of the marketing expertise you need to begin attracting the repeat business you’re searching for. Whether it’s help with design, targeting or anything else, we can point you in the right direction. Find out why so many businesses just like yours rely on GrowMail when it comes to marketing for landscapers by starting a campaign today. Get started by downloading a free direct mail template.