Landscaping Marketing

1.  Nail Your Website Design

No matter how small your landscape business is, you need a website. Your website is your top-performing salesperson and your most valuable marketing asset. 

It’s the place where you’ll be driving all the traffic you generate through your digital marketing efforts, so step one is to make sure you get it right.

An effective landscaping website will do three things:

• • Provide key information about your services to potential customers in your local service area when they search for your business online

• • Generate traffic and provide you with a constant flow of qualified leads

• • Convert website visitors into paying customers or get them into your sales funnel.

Too many small business owners treat their website as an afterthought and don’t give it the time or attention it deserves. 

As a result, landscapers often end up with websites that look amateur, don’t convert website visitors to customers, and fail to rank in the search engine results pages for important search terms.

If you want to get as many landscaping customers as possible, your website shouldn’t just be a virtual brochure—it should be a lead-generation machine.

It should have several pages with information about your services, pricing, and contact details, and it should make it easy for visitors to take action with clearly sign-posted opt-in forms or contact forms and compelling CTAs (call-to-actions)

How To Get Started With Designing a Landscaping Business Website

There’s a lot that goes into designing a website. You must think carefully about complex technical factors like UX (user experience) and SEO (search engine optimization).

As a busy landscaping business owner, you probably don’t have time to learn the ins and outs of all this yourself. Therefore, it’s usually a better idea to leave it to the professionals. 

Here at Instinct Marketing, we’re experts in web design and have a proven track record of building conversion-focused websites that drive results for landscaping businesses. You can schedule a free consultation today to find out more.

If you choose to go at it alone, step number one is to choose a good web hosting provider and CMS or website builder (we’d recommend WordPress). From there, you can start adding pages and filling them out with content.

Remember: the goal is to convert as many website visitors into customers as possible, so make sure your landing pages are laser-targeted to sell your services or encourage visitors to join your mailing list so that you can keep communicating with them.

2. Promote Your Business on Social Media

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and promote your landscape business is through social media.

Over half the global population uses social media, and the average user spends 145 minutes on their favorite platforms every day. If you’re not already tapping into this huge audience of potential customers, you should be.

How To Get Started With Social Media Marketing

Start by making sure you have a business profile set up on all the leading social networks (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.).

Stay active by setting yourself a posting schedule. For example, you might opt to post to each platform once or twice per week. A social media calendar tool can help you to map out and schedule posts in advance.

To get more eyeballs on your promotional posts, you might consider running a paid social media ad campaign (more on this later) or launching a contest/giveaway to incentivize users to share engage with your posts or share them with friends and family.

It’s also a great idea to join local groups, particularly Facebook. Search for your local area and join as many community groups as you can. Check the rules, and if they allow advertising, share posts promoting your landscaping services there regularly. 

3. Launch a Paid Advertising Campaign

Paid advertising can be a very effective landscape marketing strategy. You might want to try various types of paid ads, but we’d recommend starting with Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

With Facebook Ads, you create your ad post, set a budget, and choose who you want to show it to by setting up your targeting options. You can get granular with this and target users based on location, age, interests, and other data.

This specific targeting is really useful for landscapers as you can set up your campaigns so that your ad only gets shown to people in your area that precisely match your ideal buyer persona.

You’ll pay per click or thousand impressions your ad receives, so being very selective with your targeting options ensures the best possible return on investment (ROI)

With Google Ads, you bid for a keyword that landscaping customers might search for (for example, “landscapers in [your area]”).

When a user searches for that keyword, if you win the ad placement, Google ranks your website page at the top of the search results. Every time someone clicks it, you pay. We call this model PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.

How To Get Started With PPC Ads 

Start small and set a minimal budget for your paid ad campaigns ($10-$20). Track the results, and if you find that your ad clicks are generating a good return on investment, you can scale it up and increase your ad spend.

But again, planning an effective paid ad campaign that generates a good ROI can be challenging and is best left to a professional PPC advertising company like Instinct Marketing. Get in touch today for a free PPC analysis.

4. Focus On Local SEO

Paid ads provide rapid results and are great for short-term marketing goals, but nothing provides a better return on investment than SEO over the long term.

SEO is a marketing strategy that focuses on improving your website’s visibility in the organic (unpaid) search results. In other words, the goal of SEO is to make sure your website shows up when your target customers search sites like Google for related search terms.

Local SEO is a sub-branch of SEO that focuses specifically on achieving better visibility in local search results. 

For landscapers, that means having your business show up in the Map Pack or on the first page whenever someone in your area searches for a keyword like “landscaping services near me” or “best landscaper in [ area].”

How To Get Started With Local SEO

Mastering local SEO means optimizing your business around local search ranking factors. There are tons of ranking factors that affect how likely you are to show up in the search results, but some of the most important are:

• • Your Google My Business profile

• • NAP (name, address, phone number) citations

• • Positive reviews

• • Backlinks

• • On-page optimization

There’s a lot to learn about these factors and how to optimize for them. Many landscapers choose to outsource local SEO to third-party SEO marketing companies.

5. Utilize Email Marketing to Nurture Leads

Customers go on a journey before they make a purchase. Most of the people that click through to your landscape business website will probably be in the research phase of that journey—they’re considering paying for a landscaping service but aren’t ready to commit just yet.

One way to land more sales is to capture the contact information of these types of prospects so you can continue to communicate with them and ‘nurture’ them until they’re ready to buy. That’s where your email marketing strategy comes in.

How To Get Started With Email Marketing

Add a lead capture form to your website landing pages so that visitors can subscribe to your mailing list. You might consider using a lead magnet to attract more opt-ins. For example, you might offer downloadable resources like a free landscaping guide in exchange for a visitor’s contact details.

Once you have a mailing list, you can set up automated email sequences that guide your leads down your funnel toward making a purchase decision. 

For example, a day after a prospect first visits your website; you might send them an email with some follow-up information about your services. Then a few days after that, send them an exclusive discount offer to encourage them to take action.

6. Network With Local Businesses

Take the time to build a relationship with other local businesses in your area. These connections can later pay dividends and become a powerful source of leads.

For example, something as simple as having a friendly relationship with the local barman or shop owner might mean they recommend you whenever one of their customers mentions they need landscaping services.

How To Network With Local Businesses

Speak to your local Chamber of Commerce or ask your network of friends and family to introduce you to any local realtors they know.

After you’ve built a relationship with them, provide them with professional materials to share, like your business card or lawn care flyers. It might even be worth offering a special discount to any clients they refer.

7. Earn Word-Of-Mouth Referrals

Arguably the most important marketing channel for landscapers is word of mouth. Happy customers can act as your brand ambassadors and take care of your advertising for you.

If a client is delighted with the service you provide, they’re more likely to recommend you to their friends and family. That’s why it’s important to go above and beyond every time to make sure your customers are satisfied.

How To Boost Word-Of-Mouth Referrals

Aside from providing top-quality service, there are a few other tips and tricks you can use to boost word-of-mouth referrals.

For example, you could consider setting up a referral program in which you offer repeat customers a discount when they refer their friends.

You could even ask your current clients to write a Google review or share a Facebook post recommending your landscape business.

Are You Ready to Improve Your Marketing for Your Landscape Company?

There you have it—seven lawn care marketing ideas that can help you to get more landscaping customers!

If you’re new to the world of digital marketing, following the strategies mapped out in this article may feel like a challenge. But don’t worry; we can help! 

Here at Instinct Marketing, we specialize in helping our clients to market their businesses effectively online. We can help you to get more website clicks, rank higher in the search engine results pages, and, most importantly, land more sales.

Get in touch today if you’re ready to improve your online brand and get ahead of the competition. After learning more about your business and its needs, we’ll provide a free estimate and advice on the next steps.