August 10, 2016 8 min read
The following excerpt is from Entrepreneur’s Start Your Own Lawn Care or Landscaping Business. Buy it now on Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
The types of advertisements that are most effective for lawn service and landscaping companies include social networks, Yellowpages.com ads, business cards, flyers, door signs, brochures, direct mail, and word of mouth.
social network
This type of free advertising can produce powerful results. You may want to create a YouTube channel that links to your website with short homemade videos of lawn care tips. By volunteering to give informational presentations to Rotary clubs or your public radio station, you can become known in your community. Look for local and national competitions to compete in your field. When you join a gardeners meetup group, you can meet local residents who appreciate the functionality and beauty of their yards. Create a Facebook page and share green tips with your fans on a weekly basis. You have to collect fans by reaching out to the Facebook audience socially. Volunteer to help teach a worming, composting, or natural fertilization class at your local community center.
Yellow Pages Ads
Are you looking for a maintenance-free advertising medium that never closes? List your company on www.yellowpages.com now officially known as YP. According to the YP, more than 80 million people visit their website and more than 20 million companies are listed.
Business Cards
Business cards are a great way to advertise at a very low cost. These little paper rectangles aren’t just your business cards – they also remind prospects that you are only a phone call away when they’re ready to hire you. For this reason, you should distribute your cards anywhere, including anyone who happens to come up to you while you are on a construction site with a full mower or are wrestling a tiller through clay substrate.
These little workhorses are really cheap – from $ 15 for 1,000 cards in an office supply chain, or from $ 10 for delivery via online printers like 123 Print or Vistaprint. In addition to your company name and contact information, consider using free adjectives and earned credentials on your card, such as: B. “reliable” and “certified”. While people usually expect you to give them a free estimate, putting “free estimates” on your cards is still a good idea because the word “free” is such a powerful motivator.
Once you have your newly printed cards, it’s time to hit the sidewalk and take them to the crowds. Spend hours a week on sales and wear your company shirt or other clean, presentable clothing as you explore the neighborhoods so you look professional and knowledgeable. Check your local regulations – some cities don’t allow house-to-house distribution without a permit. Potential mature prospects for your services include homeowners, businesses, real estate agents, home and gardening businesses, and lawnmower repairs.
Aviator
Flyers are easy to create and inexpensive to manufacture. They’re probably the second most working weapon in your advertising arsenal. Like business cards, flyers can be widely distributed at a relatively low cost – only 8 cents each if reproduced by a quickie print shop. Leaflets are usually single-sided on letter-size paper and can be folded and placed under windshield wipers in parking lots, posted on billboards in shopping centers or supermarkets, or distributed door-to-door. To make your flyer more effective, pin one business card at a time, as people are more likely to keep a business card for future reference than a piece of paper.
You can save money by using a word processor such as Microsoft Word to design the flyer. Make it as appealing and neat as possible by using spaces, captions like bullets or lists, and no more than one or two fonts. Some of the things to emphasize in your flyer include your reliability, your professionalism, the amenities you offer, and the pride customers have when they see their beautiful courtyards. It is not necessary to include the prices in your flyer. Generate interest by using terms like “reasonable prices,” then include a phone number where you can be reached.
With hangers
Do you want to catch homeowners or office owners right where they live? Then try using door hangers, which are labels with a hole in the top so they can be hung on any doorknob. The standard size is 4×9 inches and they can be printed in black and white or color. The color versions are more eye-catching (especially important for lawn and / or landscaping companies) and can be printed on heavy duty UV-resistant paper to prevent weather damage. Typically 5,000 door signs cost around 8 to 10 cents, and many companies have templates that can help you simplify the design process.
brochures
Brochures are a great way to promote your business because you have more space to talk about your services than a flyer or door hanger, for example. Brochures are also versatile. You can distribute them around your home and garden, mail them to your prospects in a # 10 envelope, or place them in a plastic brochure holder for display in home and gardening stores. Microsoft Word has many templates you can use to design your brochure. Be aware, however, that even with a template, it can be tricky to design and the result may not be as professional as you’d like. If you’d rather hand the job off to a professional designer, you can expect to pay $ 500 or more for a triple booklet. If you don’t have creative writing skills, you may also want to hire a copywriter to write the brochure for you. This will cost in the $ 500 to $ 800 range as well.
There are a number of online companies that can print your brochure inexpensively. UPrinting offers affordable do-it-yourself brochures and other custom promotional materials with the option to review your designs before you buy. You can either use their online design templates or provide your own. For 200 triple, double-sided (8.5 “by 11”) color brochures, including shipping, it costs approximately $ 115.
Direct mail
Another way to reach potential customers right where they live is through direct mail. This is any promotional item that you send in the mail. This can include anything from brochures to newsletters to coupon books. Your direct mail does not have to be complex. A simple letter, postcard or flyer with the corresponding sales copy is sufficient. You should also add a mail-back card or business card to make it easier for your reader to contact you.
There is one more type of direct mail that needs to be mentioned here. This is the marriage mail, a package that contains flyers or coupons from various advertisers. (ValPak is the best known in the business.) The upside is that this type of package is usually quite inexpensive as you only pay a percentage of the “trip”. The downside is that your aviator will be accompanied by other aviators from nail technicians, chiropractors, chemical cleaners, and possibly other lawn or landscaping companies. But the low cost usually outweighs the cons.
Word of mouth
Not only is the price right, word of mouth (WOM) praise is also one of the most powerful advertising media available to you. One of the main benefits is that often you don’t have to do anything special to receive this type of giveaway advertising. All you do is do your job to the best of your ability and people will speak positively of you and your willingness to do whatever it takes to please the customer.
The key to a good WOM is influencing what your customers say about you. You can do this in a number of different ways. Some lawn service and landscaping company owners call their customers a few weeks after the mowing season has started or after a landscaping service has been provided to get feedback and verify their satisfaction. You may also get a recommendation or two from the happy homeowner during the conversation that you can turn into a WOM opportunity by using their name when calling the person you have been referred to.
Posting links on your own website to customer review pages that featured you encourages potential customers to read what others are saying about you. This can also give your repeat customers the idea to write their own reviews. Yelp, Angie’s List, and Viewpoints are good examples of how consumers rely on mutual testimonials when choosing products and services.
Another way you can use WOM to your advantage is to offer a Referral Rewards program to existing customers. For example, you can set up a Refer a Friend program and give current customers a $ 20 referral fee, or a 10 percent discount off monthly mowing for referrals in your service area.
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