If you work in the lawn care industry, you know that lawn care businesses are much more important and needed than some people might think. Each year, American families dedicate a significant portion of their budget to cover landscaping and lawn care services for their homes. After all, who wants to have a messy, overgrown yard?
The key to gaining a chunk of this revenue and getting more customers for your lawn care company is using the right methods for marketing and advertising.
In this blog post, we’ll walk through six marketing strategies that teach you how to build an overall marketing plan from start to finish. Most of these methods aren’t difficult or complex. They simply require time, effort, and commitment—in other words, don’t give up before you’ve even started.
Use these tried-and-true marketing tactics to get more lawn care customers whose yards need your help all year round!
1. Define your ideal customer profile
You can’t attract your ideal customer for lawn services if you don’t know who they are. That’s why the first step to any marketing campaign is to develop a solid idea of your target audience.
An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the perfect customer for your business. Once you’ve defined your ICP, your marketing team can create content that caters to them. Selling to your ideal customer (rather than just any old customer) will increase revenue and retention.
Use these steps to help find your ideal lawn care clients:
- Look at your past and current customers and consider their demographic (do they live in a certain city? Are they a certain age? Homeowners or renters? What’s their average yearly income?).
- Identify customer pain points and goals (do they want their yard to look nice, but don’t have the time for the necessary upkeep?).
- Conduct market research to get more data (this might be surveys, focus groups, or interviews).
- Segment your customers where needed (based on categories like age or location).
Knowing who your ideal customer is and what they want enables you to create a campaign that effectively presents your company as the solution.
2. Build a strong online presence
After finding your ICP, the next step is creating an online presence that caters to them.
First, design an appealing website. Use your brand colors, typography, and other elements to stay consistent across the site. The site should be easy and intuitive to navigate, with your contact information above the fold so users don’t have to scroll down to find your phone number or email address. Add a visible navigation menu with three to five tabs, too.
Next, optimize your mowing service website for SEO so it will rank highly in search results on Google and other search engines. While it’s important to use keywords that will help people find you (like “metro Atlanta lawn care” or “hedge trimming service”), make sure these keywords are incorporated naturally across your site rather than being forced into the content unnaturally.
Links are another important element of SEO—for example, backlinks (when another website links to yours) help your site build authority so Google will rank it more highly.
One final way to build a better presence online is by using QR Codes and shortened links. Bitly helps with both, generating QR Codes to create an interactive digital experience that increases conversions and shortens links and URLs to better align with your brand. Explore Bitly QR Code solutions here.
3. Try a brick-and-mortar marketing strategy
Digital marketing is important. But brick-and-mortar methods aren’t completely obsolete. In fact, they’re still a crucial way of attracting new customers—especially for local businesses like lawn care companies.
Physical interaction with customers (whether you’re speaking with them face-to-face or simply placing signs around town) offers something tangible, building your trust and credibility. And when integrated with your digital efforts, the overall effect is a powerful marketing strategy that people can’t help but notice.
Consider using non-digital marketing methods like:
- Sponsoring a local nonprofit or youth sports team.
- Offering to do pro bono yard work for a charity or other local business in return for their advertisement and referrals.
- Setting up a booth at farmer’s markets or other community events.
- Taking advantage of any networking resources your town offers for business owners.
- Passing out flyers, setting up signs, or putting up door hangers.
Looking for more innovative brick-and-mortar marketing strategies? Check out our latest blog post full of ideas that drive foot traffic.
4. Implement a word-of-mouth marketing strategy
Encouraging satisfied customers to write reviews and provide referrals is a great way to get more lawn care customers for your business.
This is what word-of-mouth marketing is all about—real people simply sharing their experience with your company. Their family, friends, and anyone who comes across their recommendation will be more likely to choose your services after hearing a personal review. It’s free marketing, and it’s extremely effective!
Getting more online reviews is the first step. Over 99.9% of consumers say they read reviews when shopping online. Once you’ve finished a job and the customer is pleased, ask them if they’d be willing to write a quick review.
Platforms like Yelp or Google Maps are great places for local businesses and lawn care professionals to build up customer reviews. Make sure to continually obtain new reviews on a rolling basis so curious potential customers will see plenty of recent good reviews (71% of people consider recency when reading reviews).
You can also create a customer referral program. With this type of program, you offer your customers an incentive to send their friends to you. For example, suppose one of your previous customers refers somebody to you, and they become a customer, too. In that case, you might give the original customer a discount on their next lawn service.
Building strong relationships with existing customers can help you get repeat business and new customers through referrals and reviews.
5. Run effective advertising campaigns
Insider Intelligence predicts over $278 billion in U.S. digital ad spending in 2023, and there’s a good reason for this massive number: Digital advertising increases brand awareness, drives web traffic and revenue, and has an excellent ROI.
Run advertising campaigns using targeted ads across different social platforms. The best platforms for you will depend on where your ideal customer spends their time—maybe Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.
The way you’ll set these ads up can vary by platform. But regardless, targeted ads are an opportunity to reach customers with engaging information that piques their interest in your company.
And while digital ads are a must in today’s connected world, you don’t have to stop there. Use traditional advertising methods, too—like flyers, billboards, or direct mail. Marketing tactics like these often have a higher ROI than you might think.
Whether your ads are online or around town, remember to track and analyze your advertising campaigns. Keep an eye on metrics like impressions, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Then evaluate the ad performance to figure out which areas need improvement.
6. Provide exceptional customer service
You can have beautifully designed flyers, a killer digital ad strategy, and great SEO on your website. But if your customer service isn’t up to par, it might not matter. Sixty-one percent of customers would jump ship to another company after just a single bad experience. And after two negative experiences, 76% of customers are moving to your competitor. But get it right, and your company will see more growth and better customer retention.
According to the same study, customers will spend more with companies that:
- Offer their preferred option to reach customer service.
- Ensure they won’t need to repeat information.
- Personalize customer service.
- Let them find answers online without having to contact anyone.
Implement these tips into your customer service to create a better experience for customers across the board.
Find out how Bitly can help your lawn care business
Whether you’re a new lawn care business or a local staple, you still need to increase and maintain your customer base over time, and that’s where these lawn care marketing ideas come in. To reach potential clients, use strategic methods like a company Facebook page, customer testimonials, and social media channels. These are a few of the best marketing tools and techniques to market your lawn care business.
Ready to get serious about drawing in more customers? Set yourself up for success by adding tools like Bitly to your marketing toolbox. With a QR Code generator, URL shortener, link management capabilities, and robust analytics, Bitly can help position your landscaping business to succeed. Find the ideal solution for your business and get started today for free.