As a landscaping pro, you know that grass does not grow in a day. It requires time, regular maintenance, proper techniques, equipment and care, similar to growing your business. Whether you run a landscaping business in Vancouver, B.C or Hamilton, ON, implementing the right strategies can help you reach more homeowners and build and grow a profitable landscaping business. Even if you’re new to the industry or plan to expand into different neighbourhoods, getting new clients can be a challenge. To help you with landscaping lead generation, we have compiled a list of 5 easy tips you can follow to help find new clients.
1. Build a Referral Program
A customer referral program is a type of word-of-mouth advertising. By using a customer referral program, you can engage and leverage your biggest asset aka your customers, to increase revenue.
A landscaping project can be a big investment for a homeowner. When making significant investments they will likely check online review sites such as HomeStars, Canada’s number one home improvement network, and ask for peer recommendations before hiring a landscaper. You can ask your customers to participate in your referral program to get connected with other project-ready homeowners. You can easily create a customized referral program that provides attractive incentives, monetary or non-monetary. Referrals programs work as healthy encouragement for homeowners to hire your services time and again.
However, developing a referral program is not enough. You have to market your referral program to your existing customers to ensure its success. There are two easy ways to market your referral program: online and offline. You can create an attractive email listing all the benefits of your referral programs and share them with your client email list. Send these referral emails regularly to your clients encouraging them to benefit from the incentives.
In the offline method, you can share a coupon or a pamphlet to your clients at the end of a successful job to refer you to their network. Having a healthy face-to-face conversation about your referral program can certainly go a long way.
2. Create Branded Signage
Landscaping is a visual industry so you should have signage that is just as beautiful as the work you do. As your work will be visible to neighbouring homeowners (and potential clients), you want to create attractive signage that makes your brand stand out. Invest in creating custom business cards, posters and lawn signs to help promote your business. This is a great way to get the attention of potential new customers.
You can start by printing new business cards, brochures and small posters. You can add these in the weekly flyer bundles and reach out to households in your targeted neighbourhoods. Pin the posters at community centers, local libraries or bulletin boards near bus stops. In addition to your business’s name and basic details, you can include HomeStars logos such as “Read our Reviews” to help entice homeowners to visit your HomeStars profile. You can also put up attractive lawn signs on your completed or in-progress projects, with the permission of the homeowner. This way neighbouring homeowners will be able to see which company is doing the work.
Another way to promote your business is by creating branded swag. You can print your company’s name on flower pots, seed packets and even get branded uniforms and caps for your employees. If you own big landscaping equipment and vehicles, you can custom paint them in your brand’s colours and add your logo. On your vehicle, you can highlight your landscaping business licence and a crucial fact about your business like the number of years you’ve been active or your specialties like fountains or lawn maintenance. Some pros even highlight and place the HomeStars Verified logo on company vehicles sharing with homeowners that they’re a trusted business!
3. Invest in the Right Equipment
To run a successful landscaping business, you need to invest in the right equipment. Having the right equipment can make your job easier and faster to complete, while not sacrificing quality. Whether you’re a large business or a small team just starting out your landscaping business, you will require sharp hand tools, power tools, heavy equipment and personal protective equipment to deliver better results to your clients. Investing in high-quality tools will save you money in the long run and help get clients for spring as well as winter landscaping projects.
Hand tools: As landscapers, you will need hand tools to cut, dig and gather or move various materials for your project. A pair of pruning shears, hedge trimmers, a sharp curved landscaping knife and a pruning saw is considered basic cutting hand tools, whereas sharp spades, wide shovels and post-hole diggers are digging tools. You can use rakes, pitchforks, hoes, wheelbarrows and carts to gather fallen leaves or move mud or sand at your project location.
Power tools: By buying efficient power tools, you can decrease the number of hours your crew may spend on completing various landscaping tasks. You can replace your old manual trimmers, cutters and saw with powerful leaf bower, electric hedge trimmers and chain saws. Increase the efficiency of your work by decreasing the time it may take. You will be able to finish the landscaping project in tight or smaller deadlines, making your clients extremely happy. Use this as one of the selling points to attract new customers.
Heavy equipment: For big landscaping projects you will need to have access to big heavy equipment such as tillers, tractors and mowers. You can either purchase this equipment or rent them as per your requirements. Big equipment will help you manage, mow, grade, seed, lay sod and soil preparation on huge outdoor projects. It can definitely increase your chances of bagging bigger landscaping projects.
Personal protective equipment: Whether you’re a single-digit operation or have a team of more than 100 workers, having some protective equipment will help ensure your crew’s safety. When handling sharp hand tools, power tools or heavy equipment, safety should always come first. Protective gear will prevent any accidents or serious injuries providing maximum safety to your employees. Weather gloves, steel-toe work boots, non-absorbent headwear and eye protection glasses, a hearing protection device and a strong tear-resistant suit are some of the PPE or personal protective equipment commonly used by landscape developers across Canada.
If you have the right equipment, the chances of you getting bigger and more lucrative projects will likely increase. Make sure you mention owning these pieces of equipment in your client pitch and your advertising. There is nothing wrong with bragging about your ownership of one-of-a-kind equipment if you can acquire a new customer.
4. Build a Strong Social Media Presence
Social media has become an integral part of maintaining and growing a landscaping business. Having a strong social media presence will help you connect with your current and past clients, engage with new prospects, showcase your projects and establish your company as a reputable brand. You can create a business account on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Posting regular engaging content such as before and after photos can help you reach more homeowners in your area of operation. You can also promote your referral program (see tip 1!) via social media!
When posting, ensures that the content you post is relevant and consistent with your business offerings. As landscape developers, you can share tips on lawn maintenance, yard maintenance, weeding, garden, watering, lawn mowing, grass facts, planting flowers etc. You can stay relevant and connect with homeowners even during the off-season which can help you get new projects during spring and summer.
5. Get Reviews on your HomeStars Profile
Project-ready homeowners go online to search for reliable and qualified landscape contractors in their area. To help you stand out from the competition, it’s important to collect reviews from past clients. The more reviews that you have on your HomeStars profile, the stronger your Star Score will appear to potential clients. HomeStars helps homeowners make the right hiring decision by providing them tools such as reviews, Star Score and our Verification badge. When you successfully complete a project, you can ask your client to give an honest review of your work on your HomeStars business profile. These reviews will help sway the decision of numerous project-ready homeowners who are looking for a trusted contractor to work on their lawn or patio.
Make sure you ask for a review as soon as the project is completed as the experience of your work is still fresh in your customers’ minds. If you had to do many tweaks and changes in the project, request the homeowner to mention those in the review. This will help other homeowners to understand that you have the patience and willingness to work on a project as per the homeowner’s needs. Upon completion of your project, make sure that the homeowners are happy with the work you’ve done. Get a confirmation from them that the project has been completed as per their expectations and then send them a review request. The more reviews you have on your HomeStars profile will help boost your online reputation and help you close more jobs.
Implementing some of these strategies might sound overwhelming and time-consuming. With the help of HomeStars, you can achieve your online business goals with ease. HomeStars provides you with great marketing tools that can give a necessary boost to your business and reach multiple homeowners. In addition to great homeowner reviews, a Verification badge and an all-star profile can also help you get more landscaping business leads from HomeStars.
