Organic Content Matters to Your Landscaping Business, Here’s Why:

What’s the percentage of lawn care and landscaping companies with an online presence - not including paid ads?

It’s less than 10%.

You might be thinking, “no one wants to see pictures of fresh cut lawns and fall cleanups,” but it’s not about being a top tier content creator. A majority of lawn and landscape companies have absolutely nothing on their social media accounts - maybe their logo and a couple stock images that make your eyes glaze over. Obviously, it’s at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Hardly anyone is doing it, which is why YOU should.

It’s an EXTREMELY Cost Effective Landscape Growth Strategy

It’s free… isn’t that a strong enough reason to start?

It takes 5 minutes a day to get a post out the door, and it’s even easier now with connected accounts. There’s no reason to not be active on both Facebook and Instagram, which gives you the opportunity to tap into different markets.

Have a crew member take before and after photos of each project. You can even get out in the field and do a quick video showcasing the work your team accomplished. These photos and videos put a face to your company, and reflects attention to detail. People will notice your activity, and you’ll gradually build a connection without ever meeting them (until they hire you as a service provider).

It’s Not Too Late to Start!

Creating a social media account and seeing ‘0 Followers’ for your landscaping business can make you feel like a small fish in a big pond, but it’s not about the followers to start with. They’ll find you, even if they don’t follow you.

Someone may see your work truck in the field (make sure it’s branded), and decide to Google your company. Usually, your Facebook account will be one of the top results. What do they really want to see? They want to see an amazing lawn or landscape that they can envision at their home.

Most likely, they won’t want to look through your ‘Projects’ tab on your website, that’s too much work. That’s not to disregard websites or showcasing your work on your site, because having a professional website is part of building trust in your brand.

It’s easier if they can jump to your Instagram or Facebook account, and see proof of your work. If they can see smiling faces, even better! Congrats, you’ve just created a form of engagement. This is part of their journey to becoming loyal customers, and you didn’t spend a dime.

It Builds Your Landscaping Business’ Audience - For Better Paid Ads

Every time someone interacts with your account, whether it’s a like, comment, share, or landing on your website - Facebook will log their activity, as creepy as that may seem. This is important when you build actual paid ads, because you can market to all of those people who Facebook has logged. It’s called “Retargeting”. These people have interacted with your account in the past, and they WILL see your ads again.

Want to build serious retargeting campaigns?

The more interactions you can build through organic free content, the farther your ad spend will go. This is one of the most important things to understand in the digital ad world.

Here’s a real world example. We started doing consistent organic posting for this lawn care company a couple months ago. Here are the results for the last 28 days:

That A LOT of engagement, and that’s incredibly valuable.

A well implemented retargeting campaign will direct ads to all those people who engaged with and liked this account. Just a couple months ago this was a stale business account. If you hadn’t checked their website, you might’ve been unsure if they were even operating. This is the result of posting 3-5 times a week.

Hop on Board (it’s here to stay)

So many lawn and landscape companies want their ads to work right away, unfortunately it doesn’t always work that way for small businesses. You have to build an audience and some engagement, so that platforms know what kind of people care about your content, before your ads can start performing. Without having an organic audience, it’s going to take some initial time before your ads will show results, because you’re starting from scratch.

Having an organically-built audience and using paid ads is the equivalent of pouring gas on a fire - it’s ridiculous in a good way. We’ve seen it work with companies who’ve built their brand through consistent online customer interaction.

Start now. It’s all positive returns from here on out.