The Landscaper’s Marketing Plan for 2023
Need a marketing plan for your landscaping business in 2023? This quick guide will show you the best marketing strategies for landscapers and lawn care owners.
No matter what size your business, you need a plan to market in the smartest possible way—you want low effort and high reward. By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly where to put your marketing efforts for the maximum return on your investment in 2023.
1.Determine your Marketing Budget
Good marketing is not free. There’s no way around it. However, good marketing does not have to be expensive, either. This guide will show you how to get the most out of every marketing dollar you spend in 2023…
…but first, you need to know how much you should spend. Finding your marketing budget is easy:
Find your average client value (e.g., $1500/year per client)
Determine your growth goal for the year (e.g., you want to grow $30,000 in revenue this year)
Determine how much it costs you to acquire a new client (e.g., $200 to acquire a new client)
Divide your goal by your average cost to acquire new clients, and then you’ll have a solid estimate for your marketing budget. Check the link above for a more in-depth guide!
2. Get a Great Website
For 99% of owners, your website will be your most powerful passive marketing tool. It’s your main storefront, and it can sell for you 24/7. And with today’s website building tools, it’s surprisingly easy to get a professional-looking website. We recommend Squarespace.com, but you can use Wix.com, Weebly, or any other website builder you like.
Your website must include:
Your business’ name and service area
The services you provide
An easy-to-access form for a free estimate (this is critical)
You might also want to build specific landing pages for each service or special offer. A landing page is a part of your website that users can only take one action on: sign up now. These landing pages will be your main sales page for most of your marketing efforts.
3. Set Up Your Facebook for Business
It’s also called Meta for Business: Marketing on Facebook. You’ll need this tool in the next step.
Your Facebook Business account acts sort of like a website, except it creates a sense of “social proof” for your company. When clients scope out your business on Facebook, they’re looking for positive reviews and proof that you are legitimate and trustworthy. Get a few positive reviews, and they will be far more likely to buy from you.
To set it up: go to https://business.facebook.com/create and select Create an Account. Then, you can fill out your business page with:
Pictures of your work
A call-to-action button to your home or landing page
A picture of you or your team so clients know they’re buying from real people
You should update your Facebook business page at least once a month with new content to show potential clients that you’re still in full operation. It also puts you on top of their minds.
4. Start Running Ads that Overperform
In 2023, more than 90% of people in the US use the internet. Many use it every day. If you’re not leveraging digital ads in 2023, you have no idea what you’re missing.
Facebook Ads are some of the most powerful marketing tools for local businesses, including yours.
Google Ads help you saturate a city with your branding.
Indeed Ads are amazing for finding new talent, especially for office staff.
In short, digital ads will make a huge difference for your bottom line. If you’re in a route-based business, you can target “hyper-locally” with digital ads to rapidly build out your route density. Set your ads up the right way, or work with a good landscape marketing agency, and you’ll be able to pick up find new leads at ridiculously competitive rates while boosting your business’ profitability.
If you want to grow big this year, digital ads must absolutely be a part of your marketing plan.
5. Build Density with 9 Arounds
This is one of the oldest, most tried-and-true methods for growing your efficiency.
Start performing 9-arounds: at every property you visit, have your crew put up a flyer on the 9 closest houses.
If you have to, incentivize your team to put out the flyers themselves.
Aside from word of mouth, this is one of the best low-tech marketing methods out there. These 9 neighbors already see your truck, they’re already familiar with your work—of course they want to hire you. Double this up with a hyper-local ad strategy, and you’ll see remarkable results.
6. Run an Upsell Campaign
You know who loves you?
Your existing clients.
They love your work, and if you can sell them something they truly want (or want to get done), they will happily pay you.
Every landscaping company will benefit from creating an upsell campaign this year.
If you’ve run a campaign before, try automating it this year. If you’ve never done this before, start with a simple upsell campaign:
Choose a service you want to offer, like Fertilization
Set a good window of time to announce this service, like Spring.
Create a batch of emails (3 - 5 will do), and send them on a schedule to your clients, letting them know about your Fertilization package and its pricing
This strategy works well because people will be thinking about getting their grass to grow in the spring. You’re helping them by getting this big project crossed off the list. So when you send out that email, some clients will happily sign up.
7. Build Your Own Client Referral “Engine”
This is one of the trickier tactics. Not because it’s complicated, but just because it requires careful follow-up. If you delegate it, a client referral engine can generate tons of high quality leads and some very loyal clients.
What is a client referral engine? Everybody knows someone. Your best clients know other people … who would also make excellent clients. They know their neighbors, their friends at the gym, people at church, you name it.
To build an engine, simply incentivize your clients to refer other clients to you. You can offer a discount or a reward to clients who refer you 10 leads, or 3 clients who buy at least 1 month of mowing, or anything you can think of.
Like I said, the hardest part will be the follow-up. When someone refers a client to you, you should follow up with both the new client, and the referrer, for every single client earned this way. However, word of mouth might be the most influential tool in marketing your business, and if you can build an automatic engine that sends referrals your way, you’ll make your growth so much faster.
The good news is that any landscaping business at any size can get this referral program up and running.
Are You Ready to Start Marketing Your Lawn Care in 2023?
You must put your brand where people are looking to attract new clients. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the sea of distraction and competition. People will forget to hire you. Or worse, they’ll see one of your competitors’ ads instead.
The good news, with a few carefully planned campaigns and some mental effort, you can make a massive impact on your growth this year.
And if you’re looking for expert marketing help, check out Lightspeed Social Agency.
We’re a marketing agency that specializes in hyper-local targeting for route-based businesses—that means yours. We use the modern digital approach to helping lawn care and landscaping owners find more clients and build truly impressive companies.
