7 Tips for Growing Your Landscaping Business: Facebook Marketing Strategies
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. It has over 1 billion active users and it offers landscapers a great opportunity to market their landscaping business. In this blog post, we will discuss how you can use Facebook to grow your landscaping business and be successful with marketing on this site. We offer 7 tips that are sure to help you drive more traffic and increase sales for your landscaping company!
(1) Create a Facebook Page for Your Landscaping Business
The first thing you need to do is create a Facebook page for your landscaping business. It should be easy to find, so make sure that the URL includes keywords related to landscaping such as [business-name] or something similar. You may also want to include an image of your logo as your profile picture, but make sure it's easy to read when the image is small!
You'll also want to create a Facebook Business account as a way to give employees access and contain all of your business assets under one umbrella.
(2) Post Photos of Completed Projects
It's important to post photos of landscaping projects that have been completed. This will help your potential customers get an idea of how you work and what they can expect if they hire you for a landscaping project.
You'll want to make sure the photo includes enough information about the finished product and, if possible, stitch in (or include separately) a before picture.
These kinds of posts are great on-going content that makes your page feel "alive" - and they also build a great back catalog of images you can use to create ads later.
(3) Promote Your Facebook Page to Your Existing Customers
Not all landscaping businesses have a website, and even if they do it's always helpful to promote your Facebook page as well. Reach out to existing clients via email and invite them to like your Facebook page - I'd recommend adding this to existing email campaigns you might have for on-boarding new clients.
Let them know that you'll post relevant info - such as rain delays, so that there's a value-add for them.
A lot of landscaping business owners get friends and family to like their page, but our friends and family aren't always the best indicator to Facebook of who our ideal customer is - it's much more important to get current customers to like the page!
(4) Cross-Pollinate with Other Local Businesses
Work to put together posts with other local businesses (not direct competitors) - maybe a local garden supply or a residential maid service. Talk to business owners you know in the area and see if you can each post, tagging the other. Maybe you share a client and your landscaping trucks could be there at the same time as the maid's car.
(5) Paying for Facebook Ads (Finally!)
Paying for Facebook ads is tricky and it's easy to get frustrated. The best way to go about this is a one-to-one relationship - meaning you only pay when there's an interested party! This means targeting people who live in the neighborhoods you want to work in - finding the exact right people who can be ideal customers for your landscaping business.
We do this by targeting neighborhood-by-neighborhood with Facebook inclusion and exclusion zones. Whittle down the audience to exactly who you want to be in front of.
(6) Use Facebook's Dynamic Creative Options
One of the coolest features on Facebook is the ability to use Dynamic Creative Options. What this means in landscaping marketing terms is that you can have different ads assembled for each person who sees your ad!
It's really important when landscapers want to grow their business with Facebook advertising to optimize ads for your audience. Traditionally, marketers use things like A-B testing to refine ads, but with small audience sizes like you're working with, it can be difficult to produce relevant results in a timely manner.
Facebook helps us bypass this option by supplying multiple options for it to use in each creative field (images/video, headlines, post copy, etc.) - then Facebook assembles the ad it believes has the most likelihood to convert for each individual who sees the ad. The next time they see it, it will tweak it slightly, trying harder and harder to get the click.
(7) Retarget to Get in Range of 8-10 Sales Touches
Right now, you're viewing your ads as a landscaping business would and working to drive more traffic. Retargeting is how we use the audience that's come into contact with our ad in order to create urgency about purchasing landscaping services.
You want to make sure that every person who engages with your business online - through your website, your Facebook page, or your ads is being retargeted through Facebook ads.
Get potential customers as close to a buying decision as possible BEFORE you have any direct contact with them.
Conclusion - Landscaping Businesses should start aggressively marketing potential customers in order to drive more sales.
The landscaping business market is getting tighter, as small companies are going out of business and bigger landscaping businesses are driving prices up. You may be feeling left behind or like you're on the edge of success- but Facebook marketing can help.
Don't spin your wheels! Use these tips to accelerate your landscaping business's growth on Facebook.