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Lawn Marketing Secrets Revealed....

The first year I owned my lawn business I advertised exactly the same way as every other lawn company did. Of course, I ended up fighting over the same clients as all the other lawn companies. The potential client would call all twenty companies advertising in the newspaper to come out and give them an estimate and then choose the lawn company that gave the lowest price.

Trust me, that isn't a fight you want to be a part of. What made it worse was the clients I was fighting over were the worst possible ones. They didn't want to pay what I was worth, yet expected their lawn to look better than the fairway at the country club.

My lawn mentor quickly taught me to change the way I was marketing my business so I no longer had to compete with the other "bottom feeders." I began making minor changes in the way I marketed my company, and experienced immediate results. Not only did the response rate from my ads improve, the quality of my clients greatly improved as well. No longer was I "bottom feeding" for the worst clients.

What is the ultimate goal of your lawn company? To make a profit, right? Profit is the end game of any business, unless you're starting this company for the fun of it. ;-)

What is the key component to profit? A full bank of well paying customers. How can you gather the greatest paying customers? By first having an effective plan to market your goods and services to potential prospects.

The reality is, most successful businesses are really nothing more than small, highly effective marketing companies. Without the ability to attract and maintain a basic customer relationship, your business will not be able to prosper. This creates a BIG problem for most companies.

Most companies don't realize (at least until it's too late) that they are in actuality a marketing company. I don't want this to happen to you or your lawn company. It's essential to understand from the outset that your lawn business is actually a marketing company in disguise.

Your marketing encompasses everything you do to attract and keep your customers. Few lawn companies have the ability to both attract and maintain their customers. Most often, those companies who are best at attracting customers are not so good at keeping them. Or they will be excellent at customer maintenance and lousy at client attraction. Like riding a bicycle, if you lean too far in either direction you're bound to fall. Balance is essential.

My Lawn Business Owner Insider Club will teach you how you can become remarkable at both attracting and keeping customers. The great news is, it does not require any special skill or knowledge on your part. This course provides you with all the tools necessary to build a highly efficient and profitable lawn company.

Lawn Marketing 101

If your marketing and advertising are not resulting in sales, you might as well just toss your money out the window. Every dollar spent on marketing and advertising should generate at least a dollar worth of business. Does your marketing currently generate a positive return on your investment?

Honestly, do you even know if it does? You must have a system in place for tracking all your advertising to know if it is yielding a positive return. It's the only way you can effectively track your marketing efforts.

The simplest way to track your marketing is to ask each person how they found out about your company and record their response. Use the sample LawnSuccess Ad Tracker or create your own. It doesn't matter where or how you record it, but it is essential that you do.

Without recording your results, you have no method for knowing what methods of are giving you the highest return on your investment. Once you determine which are working, it is far easier to repeat them.

The way you nurture your business and how fast you see growth is what will ultimately separate you from everyone else in your market. Keep in mind, you own a marketing company, not a lawn company. You must develop the marketing portion of your Central Nervous System now!

The first step to effective marketing is to forget everything you've ever learned about marketing and advertising. Don't listen to advertising reps, trying to sell you advertising. It won't work! Don't look at all the advertisers on television or in magazines spending thousands of dollars just to get their name out. You can do better!

You don't have thousands of dollars to throw around on inefficient, ineffective marketing. All your advertising must generate measurable results. That means you must have a system in place to measure the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing.

If you are looking for a good example to follow, stay up and watch a few late night infomercials. You know the ones I'm talking about, commercials selling blenders, knives, exercise equipment and all sorts of other products. Another place to see an example of marketing that gets results is to watch QVC or the HSN (Home Shopping Network). Both are excellent examples of marketing that achieves consistently impressive results.

I know you think I'm CRAZY, but they work for a reason! Look at what all the lawn companies in your area are doing, and do the opposite. The reason you hear lawn companies advertising on the radio and in the newspaper is because they are lazy or ignorant to the methods, leaving them without a marketing plan. Don't let that be you. Make sure your marketing is different if you want to experience immediate and measurable results.

Who Is Your Lawn Marketing Targeting?

The most important part of all marketing is understanding who your target (ideal) customer is. Use the questions from the Central Nervous System to help you identify your target customer. You need to learn as much as possible about them so you can understand what they want and how best to communicate.

Once you have a clear understanding of exactly who your customer is, it is simple to develop the most effective message. Without knowing who your target customer is, you will only waste a lot of money advertising to people who won't be a proper fit. By knowing your customer, you can specifically target your advertising to reach only those who fit the profile.

What you say to your ideal customer is exceedingly important. You must tell them what they want to hear, not what you want to say. Observe your competitor's ads. What is the first thing you see or hear? It's probably their name, something the customer doesn't care about one single bit!

Why would the customer want to hear your name? They don't! All they want to hear is how you can help them. If you can save them money or time, or make their lawn look better, tell them immediately. You do this by using a compelling headline.

The next thing to remember is to promote only one of your services at a time. Don't list all 15 different services you offer. Your prospect doesn't have time to read about every "great" service in your roster. They only care about the one they need. This is why it's essential to understand your target customer.

There are two other key points to remember in your advertising. First, use time sensitive offers. Next, use testimonials.

Let's look at each of these briefly.

HEADLINES

Which of the following do you think would get a prospects attention more? "Warning! I Found Money in Your Yard!" or "John's Lawn Company." I think we can agree the first will grab attention much quicker.

You have about 3 seconds to capture your prospect's attention, the name of your company won't even come close to grabbing it. Your headline must be used to create curiosity or desire somewhere deep in the prospects mind. It doesn't have to relate to the service you are promoting, but it must capture the prospect's attention.

SINGULAR FOCUS

All your marketing should have a singular focus. The best way to illustrate the power of this is to think about McDonalds. When you go in McDonalds how many possible food combinations do you think you could purchase? Hundreds, if not thousands of food combinations are possible. Yet how many combinations do they list on their menu?

Usually they only offer about a dozen "value meals." Why would a company that offers hundreds or thousands of possible food combinations only offer about a dozen options? There are several reasons, but we'll only discuss one.

McDonalds, and all other successful fast food restaurants, understand the more options they provide their "potential" customers, the longer they will take to make a buying decision. They are a "fast food" restaurant. They don't want people standing in the line for 15 minutes trying to decide.

You must apply the same technique to your lawn company marketing and advertising. The goal of your marketing and advertising shouldn't be to tell your prospects the long list of services you offer, the goal is to get your phone ringing. If you can get the prospect to call, you will be able to pitch your services according to their needs.

TIME SENSITIVE OFFERS

Time sensitive offers are important because people are inherently lazy and afraid of change. By using a time sensitive offer it helps you overcome those two problems. An example: "Due to the rapid rate people are referring friends and family to our company, we only have room for 3 new clients." This example doesn't necessarily give a specific timeframe, but uses a bit of scarcity, which triggers the same emotions from the prospect.

TESTIMONIALS

Next, is the use of testimonials. If you say something good about your company, people won't be as likely to believe you then if a friend told them the exact same thing. This is why testimonials are so effective. You must use them in all your advertising.

Use Lawn Marketing To Build a Loyal Following

What if I told you one secret that would enable you to get new customers simply by making one phone call? That would be awesome! Yet it would do you little good if you unable to keep those customers, right? Actually, it would create more headaches for you. You must learn how to keep your customers, and train them to become loyal evangelists for your company.

Most lawn companies fail miserably at keeping their customers happy, much less getting them to become evangelists. What's even more amazing is the fact that turning customers into evangelists really isn't very hard at all. There are a few things you must do to turn your customers into evangelists for your company.

Exceed Expectations - Why would a customer want to tell their friends and family about your lawn company if you provide only mediocre lawn service? You must exceed expectations every single time! By being terrific, you make them look terrific for passing on the referral.

Build Trust - Even if you exceed their expectations, your customer must trust you. This is why their perceived image of you is so important. You, your employees, and your company must always appear to be trustworthy.

Train Them - You must train your customers to become evangelists for you; they will never do it on their own. Training your customers is far easier than you think.

There's not much I can do to help you exceed expectations, but this course will teach you how to get them to initially trust you and help you learn how to train them.

Let me tell you an analogy my mentor once shared with me to help illustrate the importance of building a loyal following. View your business as if you were a cattle rancher. You are the rancher and your customers are the cattle (no, I don't mean that in a derogatory way). You spend a lot of money and time acquiring new cattle (customers), so you better make sure you have a good fence around your pasture.

Without a good fence, your cattle can easily slip from your pasture into another rancher's. Also, without a proper fence in place, other ranchers and poachers may slip into your pasture and try to steal some of your cattle. If the fence around your pasture is broken or has weak spots, you will most certainly lose some of your cattle.

What's the moral of the story? Don't neglect your fence! You must first insure you have a fence in place. Only then can you check it for any weak spots. Finally, you must constantly inspect your fence.

Build a Fence With Your Lawn Marketing

Hopefully, you see the importance of building a fence! It's crucial to your long-term success. Fortunately, joining my Lawn Business Owner Insider Club will basically build your fence for you. The basics of fence building are simply to get to know your customers, and have them get to know you in return. The more your customer believes you are their friend, the less likely they will be to visit another pasture.

Your fence building begins with your very first interaction with your customer, back when they were only a prospect. Your first interaction should create a sense that your lawn company is distinct from the others.

The following section was taken from "LawnSuccess Business Secrets":

The first step in marketing to your potential clients is to effectively present your estimate. Most companies let the prospect know the estimate and then that's the end of their communication. If you plan to operate a normal, "average" lawn company, then that's the approach you should take. However, if you plan on being one of the best, you must be different from everyone else.

There are four steps to providing an exceptional estimate.

STEP ONE

The first step is providing the initial verbal estimate to your potential client. For example, let's assume your prospect's name is John Doe, and you provide him with a verbal quote on a Monday. It is important to portray your company as industry experts, but without rambling. Precision is key. You must learn to communicate in terms of your customers' needs and wants.

STEP TWO

The next step is to follow up with your lead by using a professionally written estimate. This affords you a second opportunity to place your company name in front of your prospect. Keep in mind every form of communication and image portrayed to your prospect is another chance to close the deal.

STEP THREE

The final step is to follow up with the prospect approximately one week after your initial verbal contact. Here is a sample of how the phone call should sound:

When the prospect answers the phone you should say, "Hey John, it's Wayne from LawnSuccess, how are you doing today?" After they respond, first acknowledge their response and then immediately say, "I was calling to let you know we will be working in your neighborhood/area on Thursday and we'll be glad to make your lawn beautiful while we're there."

Allow the prospect to respond. If he responds favorably, Great! If not, say in a joking manner, "you sure John, it's getting hot outside and I'm sure you'd rather be golfing (or whatever other hobby you suspect they are into) than out sweating in your lawn." Remain silent and allow him to respond.

If his answer is still no, say, "I completely understand. I appreciate your time and hope you have great day. If you ever need some help with your lawn don't hesitate to give me a call."

At this point you will have made three attempts at gaining the account, most of your competitors stop after the first. Assuming they become a client you can add them to your follow-up list (included in this course). If they don't, you can still add them to your prospect follow-up list. Either way, you have started the long process of building a fruitful relationship.

Each of the pre-written follow-up letters will help you build and mend your fence around your customer. The letters are proven not only to build a relationship, but to train your customers to become evangelists for you. With each of the follow-up letters you should include a copy of your monthly newsletter. Let's briefly look at the importance of a monthly newsletter.

Newsletter Marketing

The follow-up letters are designed to show appreciation and to train your customers, but your newsletters will naturally build trust and position you as an expert as well. Your newsletter will allow you to brag a bit about your company and show off a bit of your expertise.

Your newsletter should be designed in such a way that it works as a salesperson for your lawn company. You should send your newsletter once a month via regular snail-mail. No Email! I understand it costs more to send and print using snail-mail, but the rewards are far greater than using email. Contrary to popular belief, people actually enjoy getting regular mail when it's from a trusted source.

There are several things your newsletter should do for your lawn business. First, you should have a brief about us section allowing you to brag a bit about your company. Next, a testimonial from a current customer to help reinforce how great you are, in addition to a section highlighting a customer of the month and building credibility by showing others who use your company. Also, there needs to be a section encouraging people to call you with their questions, therefore encouraging interaction with your company. Finally, place a coupon offering some form of coupon off a service you are promoting.

Your newsletter should be sent to customers of course, but also to prospects and referrals. It helps them to begin feeling like they are a part of your "family," which is an unbelievably powerful sales tool.

I used newsletters for the last two years I owned my lawn company. This was the period of time my business grew from $25,000.00 in annual sales to $200,000.00. Needless to say, I'm a huge believer in using newsletters as a tool for rapid growth. In my opinion, and in the opinion of other successful business owners, newsletters are the most powerful community building tool you can use.

Outside The Box

Publicity is something that can be extremely beneficial to your company. Getting good publicity typically requires you to be extremely knowledgeable concerning lawn care. You can check with local magazines and newspapers about having an article you have written published in their publication. You can also make charitable donations that create publicity for your company.

Any time you want to grow your business, all you have to is get the word out around town. You must become a master at promoting your business. Never leave your home or office without business cards. The more cards you are handing out, the more business you will get in return. By using each of the methods mentioned above, my businesses sales tripled each year. You and only you will determine how much growth your business will experience.

Check with your local newspaper or magazine publications and try to work out a free advertising agreement. I managed to get over $7,000 worth of advertising for about $1000. Here's how I did it: our local newspaper was trying to get people to sign up for their easy pay (which is when they debit your bank account each month for your subscription.) I called them and said that I would be willing to offer one of their subscribers a free $1,500 landscape makeover, just for signing up for easy pay. The paper held a contest and ran full page, full color ads for about a month to get people to register to win. In the end we did a $1,500 landscape makeover for the winner, which the newspaper did a feature story on (more free publicity). The makeover cost me about $400 in material plus 1 day worth of labor from my landscape crew.

We ended up with 2 additional landscaping jobs just from the free advertising in the paper. There are numerous similar opportunities available to you; you just have to be willing to search for them. Web-Site: www.prweb.com

Are You Leaving Money On The Table

The majority of lawn companies are leaving vast amounts of money on the table. Are you one of them? How much is your average customer worth to you over the entire time they are your client? Do you know? If you can't answer either of these questions, you don't know your business well enough.

The clients who are a part of my LawnSuccess Inner Circle typically find they are losing over $300.00 each year from each of their current clients. This is money their clients were more than willing to simply hand over if the had only asked. How much are you leaving on the table? You will never know unless you start asking.

The money I'm referring to is money for services you clients want or need, yet haven't been asked for. Let me give you an example that recently happened to me. I called a new lawn company to come out and maintain my lawn. They did an awesome job, my lawn looked great when they were finished, but they haven't followed up with me and have never attempted to sell me any other service. For example, when they came to maintain my lawn, my azaleas were badly overgrown, but they never asked if they could shape them up for me. This was easily an additional $50.00 they could have made at the same time with little extra labor and no transportation on their part.

There were several other services my lawn needed, but they never offered any of them. Honestly, I would have been happy to pay them to trim my azaleas, but they didn't ask. My lawn also needed dethaching, aerating and both the lawn and shrubs needed fertilizing. They easily left over $300.00 on the table.

The problem is they haven't developed the habit of asking, "would you like fries with that?" Have you ever developed the habit of asking if you customers would like fries with their order? Developing this one habit can easily add over 25% to your profit margin.

The awesome thing is, it doesn't require you to find new customers, it simply requires asking a single question. The good news is, by learning to ask your customers about additional services, you will position your company as an expert in the minds of your clients.

The first objection most lawn company owners have is, "won't my customers think I'm only interested in their money?" The answer is absolutely NOT! I guess if you constantly try and pressure your clients to allow you to perform additional services, they may start thinking your only money hungry. However, if your clients trust you and believe you are concerned with their best interests, you will have nothing to worry about. Using newsletters will help establish trust and position you as an expert they can trust.

Keep Your Lawn Marketing Simple

The point of this course isn't to try and introduce you to some complex formula that's going to take you an extra 10 hours a week to implement. The Systematic Secret Code is based on the actual market system my mentor and I developed for my lawn company, the same system that enabled my lawn company to go from $25,000.00 per year to $200,000.00 within two years.

Door Hangers & Direct Mail

Following are some of the most effective door hangers and direct mail letters both my clients and I have used. We have a had a higher response rate from the door hangers than the direct mail letters, but the direct mail pieces require less work to distribute.

Once you have a good idea of exactly what your "ideal" customer looks like you can go to www.infousa.com and purchase a mailing list of people in your area who match the profile of your "ideal" customer.

To identify your "ideal" customer complete the marketing portion of the Central Nervous System in the Secrets Revealed handbook.

Not Sure If You Should Start a Lawn Business

If you are still unsure if you should start a lawn business you should learn more about the lawn industry.

Want More Help?

I'm sure your head is packed with questions. I endeavored to answer as much as possible throughout the previous pages, but do realize everyone has different circumstances and therefore may have additional questions. If you have reviewed all the materials and still have queries, feel free to email me at wayne@whystartalawnbusiness.com.

If you require one on one assistance, I am also able to help people find fast results through individual consultation. If you think this will help you, send me an email and I would be happy to schedule some time with you.