Getting the word out about your business can seem like an endless and expensive pursuit. How can you effectively market your lawn care business without breaking the bank? How can you continue to get the word out, reach new customers, and grow your company?

Here’s the dirty mow down on the top ways to breathe some new life into your lawn care business marketing strategy:

Create a Strong Online Presence

Social media is an excellent and affordable tool for marketing new businesses. There are many online platforms to choose from, and it’s fairly easy to use. 

Facebook is among the most popular for adults. It costs nothing except your time to create a business page on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can save time by linking these platforms and posting to your Instagram and then having it also post to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. How convenient! 

Tips for using social media to market your business: 

• Be consistent in posting. For example, don’t go from posting daily to not posting for a month. Customers will associate regularity with reliability. 
• Use hashtags and keywords like lawn care, landscaping, and lawn. Make sure when you use hashtags, words that are usually two words, like lawn maintenance, are presented as #lawnmaintenance
• Keep posts simple and to the point. Potential customers don’t want to sift through a bunch of jargon that isn’t relevant to the post.

Let’s not forget about creating a free business page on Google and Yelp. Those platforms have a worldwide and established following for marketing your lawn care business because often when potential clients are scouting for lawn care services, they will go to Google or Yelp and read the reviews. 

Online Advertising

Facebook allows you to set parameters to work with a budget and specific demographics. For example, you may only have $20 to spend on running an ad, or you may want to market specifically to a certain age bracket, gender, location, etc. For example, let’s say you decided to market your lawn care business to clients 40-60 years old living in a particular area of town.

Yelp also offers targeted advertising by working within a specific daily budget, allowing you to define your target audience and show the results of that ad, similar to Facebook but through Yelp.

Google offers similar targeted ads with setting a monthly budget. It’s as easy as figuring out: your goal, message, keywords, budget, and location. The bonus is that it is a more universal platform.

Customer Engagement

Here are a few ways to amp up customer engagement:

• Offer timely and thoughtful responses to existing and potential customers. 
• Take the time to connect with your customers and request feedback. 
• Respond to comments on social media. 
• Encourage customer reviews on Facebook, Google, Yelp, and your website. 

On the subject of reviews: One way to encourage reviews is to offer an incentive, such as a discount on their next service. While we all dread a not-so-positive review, it could happen at some point. Make sure to handle mediocre or negative reviews with the same courteousness, promptness, and dedication to customer satisfaction as positive reviews. 

Consider offering a referral incentive program when clients refer others who then become a client, they then get a discount or credit to their account for future services. 

Market Your Lawn Care Business Locally

There’s no shame in driving around the areas you serve, scouting out overgrown lawns of homes or businesses, and placing a brochure or flyer for lawn services on the door. Or what about reaching out to local realtors to tend the lawns of homes still for sale? Who knows, you may get even more business with word of mouth.

Let’s not underestimate the power of good, old-fashioned advertising on company trucks, billboards, in newspapers and magazines, over the radio, or in T.V. commercials.

Show up for your community

Build some strong relationships in your community. Get involved in things you believe in. For example, sponsor a kids’ sports team, become a local Chamber of Commerce member, volunteer, and support charities and events. If you see a neglected lawn, volunteer to mow it. 

Attend local neighborhood meetings and events and get to know the community you’re serving. Showing a genuine interest and community involvement can build trust and relationships with potential clients and strengthen the bonds with existing ones. 

In Conclusion

By now, you have a few ideas brewing for how you’ll market your lawn care business moving forward and can start to take on more customers as demand grows. With growth comes change, and scheduling jobs and optimizing your routes can get a bit tricky doing it yourself.

Using ServiceWorks software, you can easily set up an online ordering system that lets your customers schedule their appointments. In addition, ServiceWorks will optimize your staff scheduling and route planning, let you accept credit card payments, and provide powerful analytics tools to help you understand your customer base. See how your business can grow with this ServiceWorks 14 day free trial.