If you’re reading this article, then you’re either:
- An entrepreneur looking for tried-and-true landscape marketing strategies
- Still number 1, but the previous articles you’ve read about “how to grow a landscape business” were utter nonsense
Look, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but over half of the marketing tips you read online are horse shit.
Here’s the thing: they are not ineffective per se, but growing your landscape business is more than a set of tips. You need tailored and specific landscape marketing strategies to grow your business and rake more greens.
Many landscape marketing companies become household figures because of personalized and battle-tested marketing plans. And Landscape Marketing Hero has first-hand experience with skyrocketing landscape companies through sound marketing and advertising practices.
In this article, we’ll share everything we know. Read along to discover the marketing tips we have proven effective for all landscape companies, time and time again.
Landscape Marketing Statistics in the U.S.
Before we get down and dirty with the landscape marketing strategies, let us first look at some relevant statistics.
- The U.S. landscaping services industry’s market has grown 8.1 percent yearly from 2018 to 2023.
- The total revenue of the landscaping services industry is expected to reach $176.5 billion in 2023.
- Researchers expect the market size of the landscaping services industry to increase by 3.1 percent in 2023.
- Entering the landscaping industry has low barriers to entry but is met with high competition
- The landscaping industry’s market is growing faster than the U.S. economy
The landscape industry is continuously rising to rub all the above points in. On top of increasing demands from homeowners and commercial businesses, more landscapers are popping up by the hour.
As stated above, the industry’s low entry barrier is the primary reason behind this rise. You can start a landscaping company with a limited budget and only a basic set of equipment. But this benefit is also a double-edged sword for many landscapers because with more businesses comes higher competition.
Here are other stats you should know:
States With the Most Landscaping Businesses
If you belong within these states, you have your work cut out if you want to dominate the industry. Here are the states with the most landscape competition:
- Florida – 8,758 businesses
- California – 8,288 businesses
- New York – 6,958 businesses
However, do not get too comfortable even operating outside these locations. Remember, the landscape industry is rapidly growing. As these states add more landscapers to their roster, so do other places.
The question is: with all this competition around, how do you elevate your business above obscurity?
Simple, with practical, battle-tested and personalized landscape marketing strategies.
That is where Landscape Marketing Hero comes in! At LMH, we provide effective marketing services for landscape business owners so that they can win in their industry. Through deep market research and investigation, we craft compelling marketing messages that speak directly to your audience.
For all your marketing, advertising and branding needs, Landscape Marketing Hero can help you. Book a call, and let’s talk about growing your business!
11 Highly Effective Landscape Marketing Strategies for 2023
Too often, the difference between a mediocre business and a successful one is effective marketing. After all, businesses would never invest as much in promoting their brand if not for high ROI. Marketing is the key to the keyhole of success, and if you’re looking for the best strategies, we got you.
Below are the best landscape marketing strategies we have proven effective for years:
Set Up a Google My Business (GBP)
If you already have a website, the next step in your marketing scheme must be setting up a Google My Business listing. In recent years, the business landscape has focused more on digital presence. In this case, whoever wins in Google, wins the landscape marketing war.
Think about it. How many times have you searched a query before buying a product? Exactly.
Google My Business or GMB is your one-way ticket to appearing in local searches. When your target audience types in “best landscapers in [name of your city],” you come up. People will typically see the list of top landscapers beside the map.
But how do you ensure you land in the top three? Through optimization, here are the areas you must optimize:
- Ensure your NAP is present and legible (name of business, address and phone numbers).
- Choose a relevant category from Google’s list
- Use high-ranking keywords for your business description
It’s crucial to land in the top three. Otherwise, you significantly reduce your visibility and clickthrough rate.
Professional Landscaping Logo Design
People will only remember some details of your landscaping service. But they will always recall your logo.
When you see three stripes, what brand comes to mind? Adidas, right?
Do you precisely remember how their patented boost soles made your feet feel? Nope, guess not.
Your logo matters because it is a significant part of your company’s identity and branding. With a good logo, you increase the chances of brand recall and awareness. This often translates to repeat business. But don’t take it from us— research tells us logo is the most recognizable asset of a brand at 75 percent.
Slap your logo on your uniform, caps, shirts, car wraps, website and social media for good measure. That’s how you make your brand memorable while looking professional!
Reviews and Recommendations
Do you agree that a review can make or break your buying decision? When did you last ask a friend about a product and then buy after hearing about their positive experience? That’s the reality.
Humans have a natural tendency to seek confirmation bias— someone to affirm our thought processes. Reviews act like the same thing.
The next in our landscape marketing strategies is perhaps the easiest.
Always ask for reviews and recommendations after rendering a landscaping service. Remember Google My Business? Aside from a good ego boost, Google rewards landscape companies with 5-star reviews. The more 5-star reviews you get on Google, the higher your rank and the more visible you become.
Here’s our pro tip: Ask your customers to leave a review on Google and describe the quality of your service. This influences Google to know what your company specializes in. So, when customers search for “best landscape designer” or “top pruning service,” you bag the top spot.
In any case, whether the Google gods bless you with rank, positive reviews are always good. People get easily swayed to buy when your business drowns in adoration.
Local Directories for the Landscape Industry
Here’s the truth: not all buyers are the same.
Some consumers choose the best that money can buy. Once they find the right services and the perfect service provider, they buy regardless of the price.
On the other hand, others are hellbent on finding the diamond in the rough. They will read reviews, see pictures, compare prices and visit local directories.
Writing “best” or “top” in your search query is a type of “informational” search. As such, Google will display not one but countless directories that list all possible landscape businesses.
So for this landscape marketing strategy, create a listing for your business in online directories. Add some professional photos of your work and write good and keyword-rich descriptions. Doing so makes your business (even if you are a start-up) look professional and attractive.
Here are some local listings to consider:
- Yelp
- Angie’s List
- Porch
- Thumbtack
- Next Door
- Houzz
Direct Mail (yep, it is not dead)
We have already established that not all buyers are the same, and direct mail is another tool to help their search for landscapers. If you think direct mail is dead, you are right and wrong.
Let me explain.
Direct mail remains effective even today when you combine this traditional strategy with today’s digital tactics. However, solely relying on direct mail for lead generation is one way to kill your business.
In a sea of digitalization, people are bombarded with 5 thousand ads daily, desensitizing people to all sorts of advertising. Direct mail is one of the landscape marketing strategies that adds freshness to a highly digital business landscape.
A professionally crafted leaflet or flyer in their spare draw can go a long way to kickstart their research. At the same time, you increase the chance of a website visit, where they will learn more about your products and services.
In today’s business landscape, winning the war is about being at the forefront of your audience’s mind. Direct mail is a strategy that puts your brand at your market’s front door.
Automated Email Marketing
If you think 2023 is the land of social media marketing, think again. Sending emails remains the king of digital marketing, provided you use your email list properly!
Building a mailing list is challenging, but keeping the people there is much more tricky. People subscribe to you because of your content— not the offers. With that in mind, avoid spamming your mailing list with sales pitches, even when they are great offers.
The secret is in proportion. The email landscape marketing strategies that work for us are 80 percent content and 20 percent sales. That means eight out of 10 times; we send educational or informative material. And then we dedicate the rest to selling attractive offers.
It’s better if you have email marketing software to automate your process. This way, you can segment your mailing list and send relevant content to the lead magnet they downloaded.
Targeted PPC Campaigns
Traditional advertising like television, radio and billboards are still effective in 2023. But that depends on various factors like your customers and budget. Consider targeted PPC ads if you want a cost-effective and efficient way to advertise your brand and solutions to your market.
PPC or pay-per-click means you only pay once people click on your advertisement. That is what makes it cost-effective. If users are not interested, they will not bother clicking. In other words, they see and read your ad at no cost to you.
In today’s business landscape, two primary platforms dominate the PPC advertising scene:
- Google (Google Ads)
- Facebook (Facebook Ads)
Both platforms have their pros and cons. As such, they are leveraging these landscape marketing strategies can help you win the ad wars against competitors.
Google Ads
You bid on keywords like “landscape service Ohio” or “affordable lawn care,” and your ads appear when people search those keywords. If your ads appear in an irrelevant query, users are unlikely to click anyway, so you are safe. As mentioned above, you only get charged when users click on your ads.
One big perk of using Google Ads is instant search visibility because you appear above the organic results.
Facebook Ads
In many ways, Facebook and Google Ads are similar. However, instead of choosing keywords, Facebook allows you to target personas for your ads. For instance, you are choosing their gender, interests, location, age group, income and other factors.
But here’s what you should remember. Scrolling through Facebook and browsing on Google are different activities with contrasting purposes. For Google, people are actively searching for answers. But on Facebook, they want to connect with friends or see memes.
That means hard selling is a no-no! Only powerful visuals and a compelling copy can get people to stop and watch your ads. Otherwise, they will scroll past you and need to remember your ad even exists. Good thing our copywriting pros at Landscape Marketing Hero can craft those ads for you.
Regularly Publish Optimized Blogs
Having a dedicated blog webpage on your website is a non-negotiable in 2023. With increasing competition, people are searching for the most competitive service provider. And blogs are the best ways to demonstrate your expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness to your market.
But what types of content should you write about?
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Anything under the sun you deem relevant to your brand.
If you are focused on lawn care and maintenance, write about those. If your business leans more toward fertilization and pest management, focus on those.
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Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is one of the most complicated activities before writing. But you need it to publish relevant articles amidst increasing landscape competition.
Conducting keyword research gives you insight into the keywords that your market is searching for. Plus, they tell you how hard it is to rank for those keywords for article writing and PPC advertising. Ultimately, using popular keywords helps the search engine optimization of your blog posts. In other words, Google will favor blogs infused with relevant keywords over those without.
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Ask your customers for blog ideas
This may sound desperate, but it is not. It even shows how much you value your mailing lists’ opinions. Plus, it allows you to write relevant articles about your market’s personal lives.
You can be as direct or as subtle in asking them for ideas. Saying, “what concepts of landscaping do you need help with?” is one way to know their preferences.
Multi-platform Video Content
Did you know that people prefer watching videos over reading?
That is true, speaking from a marketing standpoint. It does not imply that today’s generation is lazy (although it looks like it). It simply means people want to digest information quicker, and videos do that better than written words.
According to Wave.video, there are seven reasons why videos are better for social media content:
- Better audience engagement
- Statistically drives more traffic
- Effective attention-grabber
- Improves brand recall
- Compels viewers to do an action
- Easier to create (sometimes)
- More humanistic and personal
A simple video of your employees breaking a sweat while working on a landscape is powerful. First, it gives your audience social proof that you are a legitimate company. Second, you can repurpose that video for various platforms.
Create an exciting and engaging reel for TikTok or Facebook. For instance, upload the entire thing on YouTube or cut the video into bite-sized clips for Instagram. You may even embed video clips on your website and blog articles.
In other words, the possibilities for using videos are endless!
But among this list, videos are one of entrepreneurs’ most dreaded landscape marketing strategies. Many think you need expensive equipment to make one— that’s not true. An iPhone is enough to capture mesmerizing clips, and tons of free editing software are available. In any case, you can always reach out to Landscape Marketing Hero to do them for you.
Time Your Marketing Perfectly!
One of the most significant landscape marketing strategies that many landscapers overlook is timing.
I hate to break it to you, but good marketing without proper timing can still hamper your advertising efforts. The secret is marketing your services before your audience even needs them. That is how you capture and capitalize on their share of mind.
Let me explain.
Landscaping is a seasonal job. That means demand is high during peak seasons, but this plummets out of season— like winter.
If you offer winter services like dethatching, lawn fertilization or snow removal, do not wait until winter to advertise. Begin marketing your winter-related landscape services in September or November. That way, people already have you on the forefront of their minds come the winter season.
One popular free trend-capturing tool is Google Trends. Using this resource allows you to track the annual search history of global users. You can set specific areas and determine how your landscape market’s search queries behave throughout the year.
Look at this example below:
Snow removal services often occur from December to January, as illustrated by the peak points in this graph. However, the upward trend often begins in September. In other words, people start looking for snow removal services two to three months before they need them. You must do the same practice in your advertising.
Offer FREE Material
Finally, last but certainly not least in our landscape marketing strategies is offering FREE material.
We, people, LOVE free things. And we will never complain if we can get away with every delightful thing for free. Offering free material to your audience typically follows this same logic, and it’s called a lead magnet. Or it is what attracts leads to go to your business willingly.
Landscape Marketing Hero is familiar with offering free things, especially if they add value to landscapers’ lives. Here are some of our free offers:
The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Growing
This free ebook packs the training and lessons landscapers need to build a multi-million landscaping business. From finding motivated employees to attracting high-quality customers, we have them all covered in this guide. And yes, we reveal these trade secrets at zero cost to you.
Free landscaping tools
Using complex algorithms, LMH created two computational tools to help landscapers as you succeed:
- Pricing estimate calculator: to help you determine the best-asking price for your services
- Growth calculator: to measure how much you need to invest in marketing to grow your business
And speaking of budget, let’s talk about that below.
How Much Should I Budget for Landscape Marketing?
Before we fully capture the importance of setting a marketing budget, let’s consider two scenarios first:
On one corner is Michael, a landscaper who relies on no landscape marketing strategies to grow his business. Let’s say he gets an average of 10 leads a month, but when competitors pop up, he loses two leads. Unfortunately, dry spell seasons like winter messes up his game and his leads drop to a measly three.
Why?
He lacks marketing channels to fall back on during difficult times.
Conversely, here’s another landscaper named Jim, who employs sound landscape marketing strategies for his business. He also gets 10 leads per month despite marketing and advertising. However, thanks to his marketing efforts, he maintains 10 leads even with new competition. And during tough seasons, he still gets 10 landscaping gigs.
Why?
Because he is attentive to his marketing, which grants him a fallback for low-demand periods like winter. Marketing and advertising enabled him to establish a strong brand with solid brand recall among customers. As such, his business is at the forefront of their thoughts.
Marketing matters. And engaging in marketing entails cost: time and money.
Here’s the truth: you can try to start and learn marketing on your own— it is possible. However, expect the process to take a heckuva long time before mastery. After which, you’ll test your theories in the real world to verify their effectiveness— this will cost money. Additionally, your focus on marketing will consume the time supposedly for managing your team and nurturing a strong company culture.
Conversely, the other option you can choose is to work with landscape marketing specialists. Doing so allows you to maintain your command of time, which you can use management and leadership. Meanwhile, you leave the marketing to the pros, as they give you a constant flow of leads every month.
We recommend marketing budget be at least three to six percent of your annual revenue. However, this value may ramp up during the experimental phase to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns.
That is where the growth calculator comes in! To help measure your ideal marketing budget based on your revenue and your company’s health. Feel free to use our tool with no strings attached— ever.
Now we have told you the battle-tested landscape marketing strategies we use for our landscaper clients. We have also shared important tools to help you succeed in marketing.
What you do from here on out is your call, and LMH will always be here to support you.
If you’re looking for the pros to take your business to the next level, look no further! With years of experience building household names in marketing and advertising, we can help you achieve the same. Give us a call, and let’s talk.