How to Grow a Landscaping Business 

Are you wondering how to kick things up a notch and grow your landscaping business? 

There are lots of ways to find new local customers who need your help. You could introduce new services like winter lawn prep or Christmas light installation to keep your landscaping team busy all year round. You could expand beyond your current market — adding commercial properties in addition to residential clients, for example. 

Or if there’s potential to grow your client base exactly where you are, you could simply hire a larger sales team to canvas neighborhoods, distribute fliers, or build relationships with local businesses and increase customer retention. A strong team will incorporate services into the winter months if possible and appease their ideal customers and new clients with their off-season services and typical services a landscape company provides.

You have a lot of options. Almost all carry a degree of risk, and some could involve significant upfront expenditure on new tools, equipment, and staff. There are many landscaping business growth strategies you can incorporate into your landscaping company to improve your business plan, profit margins, and service offerings. Having competitive pricing and superior customer communication is a great way to build positive brand awareness and be the best landscape company in your area.

As you weigh the costs and benefits of the various alternatives, you should consider the one course of action that will increase your visibility quickly and cost-effectively and strive for the most business success. 

That option is digital marketing. 

With 81% of buyers now researching their purchases online, digital marketing is the simplest and most cost-effective way to get noticed by prospective customers. In this article, we outline seven key elements of a digital marketing strategy that will give your landscaping company an edge over the competition and make your business stand out from other lawn care business owners.

Understand Your Target Audience 

Clearly defining the customers your business aims to serve is the starting point of all your marketing efforts, digital and otherwise. Decisions about who will benefit most from your services will determine everything from your choice of business name and logo to the types of services you offer to the methods you use to promote yourself. 

The easiest way to start narrowing down your ideal customer is by evaluating your existing customer base and analyzing your competitors. 

• What common qualities do your existing customers share? Are they men? Women? Single? Married? Do they live in a particular part of town? 
• What are the most common services they request? Is there more business with customers who need lawn care? Gutter cleaning? Planting and trimming? 
• Which customers spend the most with your business and what services are they requesting? 
• Who do your competitors target?  
• Do customers seem to want services off-season and should you introduce seasonal services?
• Does it make more sense to go after the same types of customers as your competitors or to target a different group? 
• Are new customers using most of your landscaping services?
• Are your landscaping customers different than your competitors?
• Do other landscaping businesses have residential clients or commercial clients?

Defining the audience most likely to buy your services according to certain shared characteristics helps to focus your marketing activities. In addition, it makes it easier to identify and analyze your competitors so you can understand how to outperform them. Another landscape business might only serve seasonal services and small businesses, while you can specialize and introduce seasonal services that competitors use in the off-season.

Build a Strong Online Presence as a Landscaping Company

While a website is the foundation of your digital marketing strategy, developing an attractive, user-friendly site is only the first step to building a strong online presence. To connect effectively with prospects online, your home base on the internet should also be easy to find, deliver relevant and useful information, and encourage both repeat visits and user participation. 

Optimizing Your Website for Search ENGINES (SEO) 

Search engine optimization (SEO) boosts your website’s visibility on search pages and increases the likelihood that users will find their way to it. Successful business processes always include SEO strategies in their business operations and help create their positive brand awareness. More customers will find your off-season services and can become a part of your sales pipeline.

Creating Engaging and Informative Content 

In addition to the standard about, home, and contact pages, your site should offer customized content on topics of specific interest or use to your target audience, expressed in the language they relate to. For homeowners, topics could include seasonal planting ideas, news from local nurseries, tips on caring for particular plants, and recommendations about fertilizing or dealing with bug infestations. Commercial property owners might want to learn about large-scale irrigation systems or how best to maintain herbaceous borders around common pathways. The strategies should be slightly different for commercial clients’ landscaping services versus residential clients’ needs. Any new business might have specific landscaping needs compared to most of your existing customers.

Implementing a Blogging Strategy 

Users who find a reliable supply of relevant and helpful information will become regular visitors to your site. The best way to achieve a constant flow of fresh and interesting landscaping content that builds likeability and trust is to establish a blog and create and publish material according to a pre-determined schedule. Other services like tree trimming, snow removal, and lawn mowing jobs are key factors to mention in your social media frequently and include when you appear in an online search. You will have lost revenue if your landscaping business doesn’t take advantage of email marketing and has a strong team to incorporate your high-quality service online.

Harness the Power of Social Media in the Lawn Care Business

Supporting your online presence with active participation on the social media channels your customers frequent is crucial. Social channels extend your reach into communities that are similar to your current clientele and allow you to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, build strong customer relationships, and increase customer retention. 

Like your blog articles, your social media posts should be engaging and published on a regular schedule. Monitoring your feeds and responding promptly to yard maintenance questions will give your business a friendly, human face. 

Actively Address Online Reputation Management 

There are online platforms aside from social channels where customers and prospects can publicly express opinions — both positive and negative — about your business. These include review platforms such as Yelp and Facebook as well as HomeAdvisor and the Better Business Bureau. Existing clients and new customers will likely both search for landscaping businesses in the area, so building relationships with existing customers and allowing your growing business to rely on word-of-mouth marketing to build positive brand awareness is the best way to beat your competitors. You need to make every effort to monitor and respond to online reviews wherever they occur, to address negative feedback appropriately, and to encourage positive reviews from customers at every opportunity.  

Implement Google Ads 

Paid advertising is a powerful method of generating leads that may not surface as a result of your content marketing efforts. It’s not cheap, but with geo-targeting, only potential customers in your area will see your ads. That means you don’t waste money paying for clicks from people outside of your region. Landscaping businesses that don’t use advertising and rely solely on word-of-mouth marketing will not be able to beat a landscaping business that understands that it is an important factor to add good marketing efforts focused on market research to their landscaping business growth strategies.

Setting up campaigns in Google ads requires some expertise, so you might consider paying for a specialist’s help. A seasoned marketer can conduct the necessary keyword research on terms like “yard maintenance,” “weed control,” and “lawn care” to optimize your ad copy and landing pages. 

Maximize Local SEO Strategies for your Lawn Care Company

To ensure your business features prominently on the platforms your prospects will consult first, you should claim and optimize your Google Business profile and your place in all available online directories and local listings. Wherever possible, include customer reviews in your listings. 

Track and Measure Digital Marketing Success 

The beauty of digital marketing lies in your ability to attribute outcomes to specific activities based on data collection and analysis. To set yourself up to make data-driven marketing decisions, establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to set targets for your marketing activities, and use analytics tools to measure your progress against those targets and guide your next steps. Lawn care business owners who use market research as a guide for their content marketing are better off than a business that focuses outside their service area and the right customers.

Growing Your Landscaping Business: Putting It All Together 

Does it feel like a lot? Do you feel like you need a hand?

If you’re ready to partner with a digital marketing agency that gets landscaping and how to help your lawn care company, click here to learn how Socius can help! We are experts at digital marketing, getting involved in new markets, and know how a business grows.