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Getting your landscaping business going can be difficult. Getting the right customers for your landscaping business is important to the success of your business. Taking the leap of faith towards starting your landscaping business full time you likely have had some experience landscaping. Now starting your business makes you more than just a landscaper. It makes you a business owner which brings on so many more roles than you could ever expect. It goes without saying that without customers coming into your business, you will not have much of a business at all. Finding those customers can be the difficult task, especially when you need to focus on the customers you already have and to get the jobs done.
Working to get customers on a consistent basis can be exhausting especially when you need to work in your business to keep it running as well. Luckily you can establish a consistent flow of leads coming into your landscaping business through online sources. Though this will either take some of your time or some of your money, investing in your business’ online presence can really work to benefit your landscaping business.
There are ways to establish a consistent flow of leads into your business. It does require work, both online and offline. In this post, we are going to go through various offline methods to keep the leads coming in to your landscaping business. We are going to introduce and discuss various ways that you can work to earn leads online through various avenues from the obvious to the less obvious.
How to Get Landscaping Contracts
There are many ways that you can start getting leads for your landscaping business. It takes some work to get these leads, but they are great ways to get a consistent stream of work coming into your business to keep you busy. Put these together with an online marketing strategy and your business will skyrocket.
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Meet Every Landscaping Dealer
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Contact Every Asphalt Paving Company
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Contact Every Major Landscape Company
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Go Door-to-Door / Hand Out Flyers
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Make a Magnet or Wrap Your Vehicle
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Make Business Cards
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Network
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Online
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Do Good Work
Dealers will provide contractors that they believe will do good work for their customers with good leads. Therefore establishing a relationship with local dealers is extremely important.
Start by mapping out every dealer in the area and the names of the owners / operators. This is a great thing to do during the slow season as they will likely be less busy and will have a moment to talk. Give them a call and ask if they have some time beforehand to set up a meeting. Ask them if they are looking for more contractors in their referral program and what time would be good to meet.
On your first meeting perhaps bring some coffee and donuts along with a portfolio of your work. Make sure to pick out the best of your work when putting together your portfolio. During your meeting, be sure to let the dealer know what is the best type of work for your company. Whether you prefer smaller jobs, patios, or retaining walls, letting them know the work you prefer will also provide you with the best leads for your business.
Whether or not they say that they will send you some leads, at least you have begun a relationship with them and they know who you are. It is a good start and could lead into something bigger in the future.
After you have met all of the landscape dealers, it is time to contact all of the asphalt companies in the area. Why asphalt paving companies?
Well, they often times have to tear out a driveway that is connected to a front walkway or side walkway. This means that it is the perfect time to repair that front walkway or side walkway to make sure it is at the level of the new driveway.
These are small jobs, but they can easily lead into larger jobs. At first it is all about getting your name out there, and even though a job may look small it could lead to more work for the same customer or even neighbors. When you are starting out, never downplay a small job. You never know what it could lead to.
For asphalt paving companies, you will want to search every company and write down their name and their owners name. Contact them by phone as they are usually extremely busy and may not have a main office. Alternatively you can send them and email detailing that you are a landscaper looking to work with them on projects that include more than just asphalting.
Sometimes asphalt companies do their own landscape work, but more often than not they prefer to just stick to the asphalt side of things. This is where your business will come in and grow.
When you are first starting out, you will likely be working with smaller projects while you build a name for yourself. Never think this as a disadvantage. There is a place in the market for businesses like this. Often times the larger companies do not want the smaller jobs and will overestimate them to deter the customer away. This means that you can take on these smaller jobs with great profit margins.
The other thing about this is that larger landscaping companies do not like to say no to customers without providing them with an option or maybe even subcontracting out the work. This is where your business can come in. You want your business to be the go-to company for these larger landscaping companies.
Make a list of every one of these major landscape companies in your area, write down their names, and their owners names, and give them a call or email them much like you did with the asphalt paving companies. Let them know that you are interested in taking on any smaller projects that they are not willing to take on. In return, you would be more than happy to send them larger projects that your business is just not suited to handle at the moment.
This means that whenever a job comes your way that is just too large or requires skills you do not have, you can send it on to them and build a good relationship with these businesses. It is all about creating a relationship of giving and taking with them in order for it to be mutually beneficial.
This is an even more time consuming method to getting clients than the previous few we have already mentioned. However, being presentable and making a good first impression is a good step in the right direction when meeting your future clients.
Going door-to-door requires you to have strong people skills, though likely since you are starting your own business you are already willing to talk to people. The best way to go about this is to seek out newly constructed areas in your city and target them for door-to-door. These places generally have minimal landscaping done, and if you can get in to one of these areas and impress the neighbors then you can have an endless supply of work.
You will need to create some flyers for this, especially if no one answers the door or if you just want to hand out flyers. Alternatively, you can hire somebody to hand out flyers for you or even have flyers mailed for you. These will cost a little bit more, but will save you from expending any additional time into this.
Going door-to-door is best done after working hours. In this case you will likely be interrupting them from their dinners or their own time which is valuable. You need to be fast with what you are offering and have a flyer in hand for them to take a look at. With your opening line of your services and handing them a flyer, they have all they need if they want to continue the discussion about your services or if they want to call you at a later date.
Another way to do this is to hang door hangers on people’s front doors while you are working in the area. If you have some down time or one of your workers are currently not doing anything, have them go door-to-door hanging these little flyers on people’s doors to spread awareness about your business.
This is a great way to advertise your business. You are likely in your vehicle a lot. Make it a moving billboard for your business. Advertise your business and the services you provide, as well as a clearly displayed phone number where you can be reached.
A vehicle wrap is more on the expensive end, whereas a magnet is a less expensive alternative. Either of these will definitely help you get your business name out there. Even better, go to a landscape dealer that gets a lot of weekend traffic and park in their parking lot doing your quotes.
With all of the retail customers coming in on the weekend, they are bound to see your vehicle and come up to ask you questions about a project they want completed. This is a great way to get more leads in to your business. Just make sure that you are giving that dealer some business or at least asking them for pricing and not just showing up to park in their lot. They will also know it is you parked out there because of your vehicle.
These are essential to growing your business. Make sure you always have some on you. Have them simple and clearly displaying your information. Give them to anybody who asks about your business. It should become second nature to have one on hand as soon as someone inquires about landscaping.
You can even provide somebody with more than one if they think that their neighbors would also be interested in some work being done. Do not be frugal with giving out as many as possible.
Networking is important in any business. Anything you can do to network and meet more people is always good. Let them know what you do so they can keep you in mind whenever they need something done or they know somebody who needs something done.
Going to industry events and seminars, volunteering your time in your city, or just getting out and meeting new people are all great ways to get your business’s name out there and to start to generate more leads for your landscaping company.
You can also use the many online resources to get leads into your landscaping business. This begins with creating your own website for your business where you can show off your work and have a contact form for potential customers to contact you, continues with you registering with various online outlets to grow your online network of leads to flow into your business, and never ends as you continue to look for ways to improve your online presence to bring leads into your business.
We will dive deep into various online methods to bring leads into your landscaping business here.
This is the simplest one on this list, but your work will speak for itself. If you do good work, you will grow your business with word of mouth. Everybody will want to provide your name to the people that they know if you are incredible at your craft.
Install some incredible designs, be extremely friendly, and be willing to work extra hard when you are first starting your landscaping business. All of these will really set the tone for your business and people will want to help you grow your business if you show them the amazing work that you can do.
Work hard to do quality work.
Getting a consistent flow of leads into your business is like a snowball effect. At the beginning it will take some time, but as soon as you get that thing moving you quickly become bigger and bigger without any effort. Making sure that you are putting in the work upfront to get the payout on the back end is important to the success of your landscaping business.
There is no doubt that if you implement these steps you are likely to be on your way to creating a successful landscaping business. Never forget to always be working to meet new people and to keep the quality of your work at its highest. These are the best ways to grow your landscaping business.
Landscaping Online Marketing Strategy
Thankfully for our generation of landscapers, we have numerous avenues to get customers into your business. Creating and registering your business online through various entities can really help to grow your landscaping business and bring in a consistent amount of customers.
There is no better feeling then having too much business for your company to handle at any given point in time. This is when you know you are ready to scale up your business or to pick and choose the projects and customers you want to deal with.
Either way, it is a great thing to accomplish and it is worth the time, money, and energy to establish your business online. We have worked to put together a list of ways to grow your business’ online presence and to begin to bring customers into your business.
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Start a Landscaping Website
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Sign Up for Social Media Platforms
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Register for Online Directories
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Register with Referral Sites
Starting a website should be your first priority when working to set up an online presence that will bring customers to your business. This is the headquarters for your online presence. The foundation of your business online where customers will be able to see your work, learn more about your business, and contact you.
A website is a must-have for your business because it is the only thing online that you 100% control. Everything else we mention in this article to get leads into your business online are all controlled by other businesses. Though your website is yours and getting traffic onto your website will bring leads into your business.
Getting traffic to your website is the difficult part. Adding your website URL to your business cards, email signatures, vehicle magnets, yard signs, and any other offline marketing materials you produce to get some traffic and potential customers to your website.
Online ways to get traffic to your website involve either spending money or spending time on your efforts. Spending money on ads including social media and search engine advertisements are the best way to get qualified traffic to your website, but we will get into those later.
Search engine optimization or SEO is the best thing to invest either your time or your money into on your website to get qualified traffic flowing in for free. However, this involves understanding the ins and outs of SEO or investing some money into your website.
We will publish a more in depth article on SEO for landscapers in a later article, but the basics involve creating pages on your website that target certain keywords or phrases that people search for online. In the case of a landscaping company, you want to target customers living in your area searching for landscaping companies. Therefore, you might create some pages and write content about landscaping company in “X” city.
However, this is only one page that you can create. So, you want to create a page following this template for every service that you offer. For example, if you offer hardscaping, lighting, pond construction, and sodding services, you will want to create a page for each of these services specific to the city or cities that you service.
The thing about doing this and investing your time or money into SEO is that you will not see the results until at least six months later. It also takes an ongoing effort to create content on your website to show search engines that your website is still active. This is easy for a landscaping company as you could create a blog post about each and every project that you complete.
With these efforts, you can be well on your way into creating a website that will rank high in search engines for people searching for a landscaping company in the area you service which will in turn bring leads into your landscaping company.
Being where your potential customers are online is your next step. Where people are these days is on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on. Though you need to think of the platforms that will best serve your business and focus your efforts on those. Better to be active in one place then to be inactive in a lot.
We have found our efforts as a landscaping company were best placed in Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is a great place to create a page for your company to release information and special offers for your business, whereas Instagram is a visual platform that will allow you to show off your company’s work and serve as an online portfolio of sorts.
These are two great places to be active as they both serve different purposes and they are both owned by the same company meaning that you can use the ad platform to show your ads on both to grow your audience base.
You can decide if Twitter and Pinterest are relevant to your business and if you have enough time and energy to dedicate to these platforms, though Twitter is more of a discussion based platform reserved more for current events and Pinterest is another visual based platform like Instagram but it is a search engine like Google where your company can be found. However, most people will not be searching on Pinterest for your business, but more so for landscaping design ideas for their place. YouTube is another place that you can be present if video interests you, though this generally requires much more time and energy to remain consistent with.
Signing up for these social media platforms is free and easy. Using their ad platforms is a little bit more challenging and requires more research. These will be discussed more in depth in a future article.
There are several online directories that you can register for your business. These are free directories where you can list your business for potential customers to discover. They also have their own ad platforms for you to pay to have your business found by customers searching for a landscaping company.
Google is one such online directory that you have likely heard of. Here you can list your business for free so that potential customers searching for landscaping businesses near them will be able to discover your business. You need to sign up your business for Google My Business as soon as you can.
Here you will register your business and the business address. They will mail you a confirmation form to make sure that you have registered a proper business address where you will then input the code to verify your business. You can then add information about your business including hours of operation, contact details, and photos of your work.
It is also a good place to get customer reviews as people discovering your business online will want to know that your business has good reviews. Asking for reviews from current or past customers is a great way to help the exposure of your business on Google.
You can also register with Google Adwords to begin showing ads to customers searching for specific terms on Google. For example, you can pay to have your business show up first for the result of somebody searching “landscaping business in
Another directory that you should register for is Yelp. This is a business directory of sorts where people can search for landscaping companies in their area and can find a list of companies that are popular and well-reviewed among many others. It is free to register and you should also be working to get your customers both past and present to review your company on Yelp. This will help your business become discovered more.
Once you become more acquainted with the platform, you can invest some money into the ads that the website offers to have your business rank higher in the results. When you register your business, you will be provided with an ad credit. However, we suggest to use this after you have some reviews on your business as people discovering your business through your ad would still likely rather see some reviews about your company before they contact you.
Referral sites focus on sending your business referrals based on customers looking for specific landscaping needs. You simply register your business and specify the services you offer. You can then receive referrals based on customers in your serviceable area looking for the services you offer. However, each of these websites work differently.
Some of them offer a job prospect with limited information and you can pay to have the remainder of the information and customer information sent to you. These websites happen to be the most transparent as you generally can see a description of what the customer wants, sometimes photos, a date that they want the work to begin, and sometimes a budget. This way you can see how interested the customer is in having this work done based on how much information they provide. The more the information, the more they are likely interested in having the work done and not just kicking tires. If the date does not work for you or is unrealistic, you do not need to pay for the referral. If the budget is unrealistic or you do not believe you can do the work for that budget, you can simply decline the referral.
However, other websites operate on a subscription basis that your business pays and they send referrals to you. In these cases, you are not necessarily paying for quality or quantity. It tends to be a little bit more hit and miss with these websites as some contractors have a lot of good luck with these websites and are able to find a lot of great work based on our surveying of landscapers. However, other companies will tell you to steer clear from these websites as they charge way too much for what they are worth.
Here is a list of websites that you can register your business with to obtain referrals:
Conclusion
There are a significant amount of ways that you can earn landscaping leads online. Starting with a website, expanding your efforts on social media, and making sure that your website is searchable are all ways that your efforts will provide results in the long run online.
Though your time spent online will not offer immediate results, you can always invest some money into driving leads into your business online. However, creating a solid foundation for your landscaping business online will help to drive significant traffic and inevitably leads into your business without investing the same amount of money.
In future posts we will be diving deeper into each of these strategies to grow your online presence and how you can use them to your advantage to grow your landscaping business.