Marketing Tips For a Lawn Care Business
Marketing Tips For a Lawn Care Business
There are many ways to market your lawn care business and finding the right one takes time because every area and market is different. One thing that doesn’t change is that marketing your landscaping and lawn care business is a numbers game. The more people you reach, the higher your inquiries, because not everyone is interested in your services when they get your advertising but may be a few months from now so repetition is key to ongoing success.
Here are a list of proven methods for marketing your lawn care business.
Flyers
Flyers are an effective advertising method but only expect a 1-5% response rate, depending on your area, and it will probably take a few weeks before you start seeing any responses.
The professionalism of your marketing materials will be perceived by customers as how professional your services will be. Regardless of how good your work is, if you are handing out unprofessional documents you may not even have a chance with many clients. Professional does not mean spend a lot of money. While you can hire a professional or student, templates are available at many online printing companies that look good and are not expensive. A flyer with just your company name and contact information is too passive and unlikely to get you many calls. What you need is a “call to action” that gives people an incentive to call you. That incentive can be a one-time discount, soil testing, free offer for one of your related services or whatever, just as long as it makes them want to try you. Also be sure to keep your text and photos to a minimum, people won’t take the time to read one with too much stuff on it or if it is too “busy” looking.
Ways to get your flyers out include:
Placing flyers or advertisements in homeowners associations if you have them. These areas tend to not be the do-it-yourselfer and have the money to hire their lawn care.
Putting flyers on the homeowner’s door. Please don’t use tape to stick them to the door as this will likely irritate them. Instead put in the handle.
Whatever you do, don’t put the flyers on or in the mailbox as it is a federal offense to do so. One way around it would be to put them in newspaper holders.
Place them in high-traffic areas such as supermarkets, gas stations and other retail stores that provide a display board. Don’t expect too much through here as most people will pass them by.
Postcards
Postcard marketing is an effective way to reach a large number of people. The price of printing and mailing postcards can cost 0/1,000 depending on the company you go with. You could save the cost of stamps and deliver yourself, but factor in your time and vehicle expense. Also do not put the postcard in mailboxes as this is a federal offense and could wind up costing a lot of money.
Many online printers offer templates for lawn care companies that are pretty nice and you can also have someone design one for you which will cost a little more. Be sure to have it look professional or your response rate will be a lot lower.
If you are mailing your postcards you will need a list to send them too. List prices can vary in price and availability depending on where you are located. You can have your list segmented by zip code, household income along with various demographic profiles. You can also get a list from the county courthouse with a list of recent home purchases.
Sending the postcards can be done a few ways. One way is to stamp and mail yourself. The other is through a bulk mailing company. Depending on how many postcards you are sending it may be cheaper (not to mention saving you a bunch of time) to have a bulk mailing company do it because they pass along savings by pre-sorting and pre-processing your bulk mail campaign. The post office offers significant savings since their staff will not have to do this work. The savings can be passed on directly to you. But there are rules and procedures that must be followed, and a bulk mailing company will know how to handle this process effectively. Many of the online printing companies already mentioned provide this mailing service as do many local printers.
Like the flyer, you need to have an incentive on your postcard for it to be effective. You can expect approximately a 2-5% response rate from the post card mailing, depending on the quality of your list and your incentive.
Several lawn companies use the post card in the bag with a rock trick and throw them into driveways and lawns. While this is a fast way to distribute, it really puts an unprofessional and inconsiderate image to those companies, not to mention illegal in several states.
Door hangers
Door hangers are another way to promote
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