5 Ways Marketing Can Solve Your Top Landscaping Industry Challenges
If you own a landscaping company, odds are you’re trying to grow and address certain landscaping industry challenges that come with that growth.
Get ahead of these landscaping industry challenges with the development and installation of a marketing process.
Here’s how I’ve been able to help the owners of landscaping companies address top industry challenges:
Retaining top talent
Keeping your best employees can be as hard as finding them. One marketing strategy to use for the retention of top talent is creating a career ladder. A career ladder is key to employee retention in any field, and this is where many lawn and landscape companies fall short.
Often in the landscaping world, you hear “come grow with us” or “come work with us” but the visual representation is missing. A lot of your best prospective talent will need to see their career path. How does your hiring process differ from the next landscaping company? In order to stand out and retain your best talent create a visual career ladder.
We’ve been working with a local landscaping company Green Side Up and they’ll be the first to tell you that hiring has been a real challenge. But since adding a visual career ladder poster to their hiring process, on their website, and posting it where potential and current employees can see it, there has seen a drastic increase in their retained talent.
Posting your career ladder is an important element as it’ll serve as a visual reminder and motivation for your current employees to gather the skills and training necessary for that next position.
Too few resources
Many landscape companies operate businesses that are too lean administratively, often because there is a strong focus on simply getting the work done. However, when your marketing strategy starts to make the phone ring and increase your visibility, you may start to see emails and phone calls go unanswered, the struggle of managing your day-to-day and meeting with prospective homeowners starts to set in.
Your resources aren’t staffed properly, but landscape requests and billing is on the rise. To stay ahead of increased phone calls one marketing strategy you can explore is hiring a phone answering service. The service picks up when you are unavailable to answer the phone so you won’t miss opportunities and prospective customers get the attention they deserve. They are also trained to schedule appointments and walk prospective customers through scheduling an initial quote and assessment visit.
Showcase your expertise
Potential customers like to see the work that you’ve done in the past. This helps them get an idea of the quality of your work as well as the services you provide. They can more easily envision what you may be able to do for their home. Build a marketing strategy to show what you do best and make your expertise visible.
In photos
Encourage your team to take photos of their landscaping work and develop a system for uploading, storing and sharing these photos. Some places to share these photos are through your newsletter, website, marketing materials and social media. You can also approach this by creating strategic photo sessions with a professional photographer to capture how your company maintains a property through the change of seasons.
Local “best landscaping” awards
Local recognition is great for business. It builds your name recognition, validates the quality of your work, and helps you reach new audiences. But, getting locally recognized doesn’t happen overnight or without a plan to make sure your work is seen and considered. Participate in any available opportunities to be voted “the best in landscaping”— don’t forget to involve your customers.
A Happy Customer
The best marketing of all is a happy customer. Work to develop your processes and services to ensure that your customer experience generates a happy customer. A happy customer means more referrals and great online reviews available for potential customers to get a glimpse of your service.
Focus on the best opportunities
Not every homeowner has the motivation to do something to their landscaping. Some want the monthly retainer, while others want one-time tasks completed. Through all your requests, you have to find a way to focus on the best opportunities.
One marketing area to explore is software that integrates with your website so that online scheduling can help filter through the requests, saving you from an in-person meeting that may result in you determining that the request is out of your service area or expertise.
Through online scheduling, your landscaping consultant can quickly determine if that request is worth pursuing. Is it a problem you can solve? Is it something you are in expert in? Is it in a neighborhood you typically service? Focus on the very best opportunities that will showcase what you do well. Work smarter, not harder.
Training
Growth is exciting! For a business with seasonal work, like landscaping, peak seasons are a chance to improve your brand recognition and capture new customers. It’s a busy time of year. In a time when you need as many hands as possible working to complete jobs, but have little time to interview prospective employees, bringing on new hires can be tricky.
You may consider incorporating some training components into mandatory weekly meetings. Making training available on-the-go in video format also makes it easier for staff to refer to a training video while on the job. If they have a specific question, such as “How to sharpen a blade” or “complete bed edging,” they can access the videos on their phones. This ensures that every job is undertaken in a way that’s consistent with your company training, no matter who is completing the service.
Making training not just accessible, but mandatory as it eliminates dissatisfied customers, equipment damage, workers’ compensation claims, increased insurance premiums, and negative reviews.
Keep your business moving forward by getting ahead of these five landscape industry challenges. Just as you shop for the tools that will ensure quality landscaping, you also need to use your marketing that will ensure smooth growth.
Want to learn more? Schedule a consultation
with us so we can talk about how to do this for your business.
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.