A Simple 14-Step Landscaping Marketing Plan That Actually Works

An essential part of building a successful landscaping company is having a solid marketing plan. Without a plan, you plan to fail. In this post, you’ll learn a simple 14-step landscaping marketing plan that will help you get more clients and attract more leads for your landscaping company.

1. Determine what makes your landscaping company unique

The first step of your landscaping marketing plan is to determine what makes your landscaping company unique. Think about what factors will make your landscaping business stand out from the competition. In most cases, this is not just a list of the services you offer, unless they are highly specialized.

Landscaping is a competitive industry and most likely you are not the only landscaping company business in your local area. In many cases, you may even be competing against those who want to do their own landscaping as well.

Typically you serve homeowners but you may also serve commercial businesses or some combination of both. Either way, most people in general think of all landscaping services as the same as any other. 

This means that most people won’t understand the key differences that make your landscaping company better than your competitors and highlighting that difference should be an emphasis in your landscaping marketing plan. 

There could be several areas that your landscaping business is the best in your industry. It could be your high level of customer service or your positive review rating. Maybe you offer a service guarantee and your competitors don’t. 

Having a unique difference is a key part of your landscaping company business marketing plan. You’ll use it frequently in your landscaping advertising efforts and throughout your website. Know your key difference in the market as a foundation for your landscaping business marketing plan.

2. Build your ideal customer avatar and determine your target market

Another key element of your landscaping marketing plan is to determine your ideal customer avatar and target market. When you market to everyone you really market to no one. This means your messaging and offers need to match what your ideal customer avatar needs and wants. 

For example, if you are selling recurring landscaping services your target market is probably homeowners who have extra disposable income in nicer neighborhoods that don’t want to spend their spare time on landscaping. 

The first step of this process is building an ideal customer avatar. This means that you create a representation of your customer and what they do, where they live, how they act, etc.

Knowing these things will help make your marketing messaging successful. Without knowing your ideal customer it is hard for your messaging to resonate with the people most likely to be interested in hiring your landscaping business.

Develop a true understanding of your niche and target market and it will help with creating an effective landscaping marketing plan.

3. Make local networking a part of your landscaping marketing plan

Digital marketing as a means of promoting your landscaping company is essential, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect offline marketing. Most landscaping company owners don’t fully utilize the offline marketing strategies available to them.

Your landscaping marketing plan should also include local networking as a part of your marketing strategy. A foundation networking group you should join is your local chamber of commerce.

The mindset you need to be successful in networking groups is that of building relationships first. You also shouldn’t go to these groups in “pitch mode” with the only thing you talk about is selling your landscaping services.

When you build relationships first and the timing is right, your landscaping company business will come up. At that point, it is easy and natural to ask for business or referrals.

The idea behind networking is to participate and to make connections. These new contacts may not immediately turn into sales, but over time they can. Be sure to include networking in your landscaping marketing plan. 

4. Build a landscaping company website

Having a landscaping company website is essential to your overall digital marketing strategy. Without a website, it is hard to have a successful landscaping marketing plan.

Along with having a landscaping website you also need it to be professional and optimized for lead generation. The first step of this is to have a tagline that highlights your core difference. 

Since you have already determined what makes your company different this step should be easy.  As a general rule, you want to highlight who you are and how you help people. 

It could be something simple like, “We take the “work” out of yard work”. Or “We help busy homeowners spend time on what they love and we’ll handle the landscaping.” 

Your tagline is the first thing people see when they get to your site, and it is likely the first reason they will stay on your site. You want it to resonate with your site visitor and create the feeling that people are in the right place and that you are the solution to their problems.

5. Make your marketing messaging benefits-focused vs features-focused

Focusing on the benefits your service provides to your customers and not just features applies to all aspects of your landscaping marketing plan. A common mistake most landscaping business owners make is only highlighting the features and services they offer vs the benefits people will get from those features. 

For example, they say that they provide lawn care, yard cleanup, hedging, dethatching, and other various services. That’s great to know as a potential customer but seeing those list of services is going to look the exact same as another company offering the same services. 

When you look the same to consumers as your competitors then the only way to compete is on price and that is not ideal. 

On top of that, a major reason people buy is the benefits behind the features. You are trying to solve a problem with your services. People are ready to buy the benefits that are a solution to their problems so focus on those in your messaging. When your landscaping business marketing is focused on highlighting benefits and not just features, your conversion rates of new clients will be much higher.

6. Develop a review management strategy for your landscaping business

Another essential aspect of your landscaping marketing plan needs to be a review management strategy. Reviews are important because they speak to the quality of your landscaping services as a 3rd party. It’s easy for you to say that your landscaping business does great work, but it is far more effective to have your customers say it.

When a 3rd party customer says you are a great landscaping company it builds a lot of credibility for your business. One of the first places people will go when they are researching your company and seeing if they should do business with you is your reviews.

If you have a negative review score, or even just mediocre reviews the likelihood of a new potential customer hiring you goes way down. On top of that it can be a ranking factor for how your page is shown on a Google Business Profile. 

As you have also probably already heard, Facts tell, and stories sell. This means that your customer’s reviews are a story of why they chose your company. New potential customers are likely to resonate with those same problems of past customers and can encourage them to buy. 

Highlight your positive reviews on your landscaping website and in your advertising to increase conversions. 

7. Build an email list and use email marketing in your landscaping marketing plan

Now you may be wondering why email marketing is an essential part of a successful landscaping marketing plan. The main goal of an email marketing strategy is to convert new landscaping leads into hot leads that are ready to buy. 

Most landscaping business owners make the mistake of thinking that every visitor to their website is ready to hire them. They think to more places they can pitch their offer on their site that it will naturally lead to more landscaping clients. 

Unfortunately, most people who visit your landscaping website for the first time are in research mode. This means that you need to capture their information and continue to warm them up and build value in your landscaping services before they will buy. 

Because of this, you need to have an email marketing strategy to capture those leads to your email list so you can continue to remarket to them. The goal is to build an email series that further educates these landscaping leads and that builds credibility, authority, and trust with them. 

When you do this it can help warm up those leads and when the timing is right they often decide to hire your landscaping company vs the competition. Use an email marketing strategy in your landscaping marketing plan

8. Develop a content marketing strategy for your landscaping business

Now if you have been following along with this landscape marketing plan you might be wondering what kind of emails should you send to your list. This is where your content marketing strategy comes into play.

Not only can you use content marketing to attract new landscaping customers to your website, but it can also be used as a part of your email marketing strategy. The focus of your content marketing strategy should be to educate potential customers on the value of landscaping, answer common questions, and help them solve their problems related to landscaping.

For example, you might give landscaping examples, tips, or how-to content. Maybe you cover the best landscaping supplies to use, what the differences are between different types of landscaping techniques, and what could work best for potential customers. 

There are lots of options, but in conjunction with this concept make sure you are building content related to search terms that your ideal customers are actually using. This is part of an SEO optimization strategy and is another method of driving traffic to your landscaping website.  

Content marketing can build trust, credibility, and authority for your landscaping business so make sure it is a part of your landscaping marketing plan. 

9. Optimize your landscaping website for local SEO

A landscaping business is most often a local service business. Now you may have a landscaping company that does business nationally, but you can still capitalize on a local SEO strategy either way. 

When your website is optimized for local SEO it can attract new customers within a specific city. Another strategy to optimize your landscaping business locally is with a Google Business Page. 

On your website, the first step of optimizing for local SEO is to create location pages for each major city that is in your service area. When you do this it can attract targeted traffic from people using search terms like “landscaping company near me”, “lawn care near me” or landscaping service in a specific city, and more.

With an optimized Google Business Page, you can start to generate local landscaping leads from searches on Google Maps. Part of the optimization process is fully filling out your profile, uploading photos regularly, and increasing the quantity and quality of your review rating. Your review management strategy can help with this.

An optimized local SEO strategy can generate a lot of free traffic to your website and generate quality local landscaping leads which is essential to your landscaping marketing plan. 

10. Offer high-quality customer service

Offering high-quality customer service might sound obvious but when clients and potential customers have a good experience with your customer service it can increase your revenue in a number of ways. 

The first reason this can help you get landscaping clients is that people want to do business with companies they like and trust. For many people, the first interaction they have with your company will be with your customer service team. 

When people have a good experience they are likely to hire your company. If they have a bad one they will look elsewhere. For example, if your company doesn’t answer the phone when someone calls customer service with a question most people will just go to the next company they find.

As customers continue to have great experiences with your company they are more likely to refer business and leave positive reviews. This can improve your local SEO further and increase your customer base. 

11. Develop a referral program

Now that you have set the foundations of exceptional customer service and are getting reviews from happy customers, your next step is turning that into new landscaping clients. Setting up a referral rewards program should be the next step in your landscaping marketing plan.

Happy customers are naturally your best “salespeople”. Most people who get landscaping done probably know other people in their circle of friends that may also be interested in landscaping. When landscaping comes up in conversation they will probably mention your company and the work you have done if they are a happy customer. 

A great way to ensure this happens is by developing a referral program for your landscaping company. There are many ways to do this. You could offer gift cards for referrals, offer a discount on their next lawn care service, or offer a percentage off of their next landscaping project.

As long as it makes sense financially the opportunities are virtually endless. Plus, the only marketing expense this referral program will incur is only after you have already made a sale, so it pays for itself! When you add a referral program to your landscaping marketing plan you can quickly turn your existing customer into a customer-generating machine. 

12. Use Door-to-Door Sales to market your landscaping business

One great part of the work you do as a landscaping business is that your service is something that people can actually see! When you improve the look of a yard or outdoor space it’s hard for neighbors not to notice. This creates a great opportunity to expand your business with door-to-door sales. 

Most people do door-to-door sales wrong and don’t have a natural lead-in to sell their services. This makes it awkward and pushy when you approach people in the neighborhood. 

However, when you are already servicing a home in the area, and neighbors can see your team working it can naturally raise some curiosity. This is a great lead-in for your door-to-door sales approach. 

To start you can say something like you since your team is already in the neighborhood it’s much easier to go work with neighbors since your team and equipment are already here. It’s more cost-effective for your business to work with neighbors vs driving all across town and because of that you are giving a special discount to neighbors of your existing client.

Another great benefit of using a door-to-door sales strategy in your landscaping marketing plan is you only increase expenses in the commission to sales reps once a sale has already been made. This strategy can lead to lots of new clients at almost no expense upfront.

 If you like the idea of this strategy I recommend picking up a copy of the book Door-To-Door Millionaire by Lenny Gray.

13. Develop a video marketing strategy

Video marketing is another powerful strategy that you can use to attract new landscape clients and it should be a focus of your landscape marketing plan. These days there are a few aspects of video marketing you can benefit from. Long-form video and short-form video. 

Long-form videos can work great on platforms like YouTube and short-form can work great for YouTube Shorts and TikTok videos, as well as for paid advertising. An extra benefit of creating long-form content on YouTube is that it can generate traffic from SEO. 

YouTube can work similarly to blogging where you can create a piece of content once and then it can generate traffic virtually forever. This is considered evergreen content which can generate leads on a continual basis for your landscaping company. 

As your YouTube channel and TikTok following grow, you can even reach monetization status. This can allow you to get paid when people watch your videos. Basically, you get paid to advertise your landscaping company!  It’s also a great way to funnel that money back into your advertising strategy to scale faster. 

The style of content that can work well are things like timelapse videos, before and after, and even general tips on landscaping. This is a great way to showcase your quality work in an entertaining fashion plus it can help you attract new leads and clients.  

14. Use Paid Advertising to Scale Your Landscaping Business

Organic and offline marketing strategies are a great way to build a foundation of landscaping leads and clients, and paid advertising is how you can grow your business quickly and scale. 

Running paid advertising like Facebook ads is a great way to generate leads quickly for your landscaping business. Organic strategies can work extremely well, but they often take time to generate results. With paid advertising, you can target your ideal customers immediately with high-converting ads.

Unfortunately, most people think that advertising is going to fix all of their marketing issues overnight. Certainly, advertising can generate leads quickly, however, understand that paid advertising still has an optimization process. 

Also, understand that there are several other factors that can enhance or hinder your advertising effectiveness. For example, if you don’t have a website or your follow-up and sales process is weak, or you lack quality customer service, all of these factors can lead people to not convert from your advertising. 

Plus, paid advertising has its own learning curve, and if you don’t know what you are doing you can lose a lot of money in trial and error. It’s often best to outsource your paid advertising strategy to a landscaping marketing agency so you don’t waste money on advertising that doesn’t convert. If you’d like to learn more about our agency running your advertising campaigns fill out this quick survey about your business.

Conclusion

Overall, there are many strategies that can be a practical part of your landscaping marketing plan. When you follow all of the steps above in this 14-step landscaping marketing plan they work synergistically together to maximize results.

As an example, if your messaging isn’t benefits-focused and crafted for your ideal customers, most people won’t buy.  If your landscaping website isn’t optimized for SEO and it lacks content, you’ll have a hard time getting any traffic or leads from it. 

Without a review management strategy, your conversion rates will be lower and it can be hard to generate traffic and leads from your Google Business Page. And on and on it goes with all the marketing strategies from our landscape marketing plan.

Even if you can see some quick results from advertising your landscaping company business,  without the other steps it won’t be as effective. 

By following this 14-step landscaping marketing plan your company can be a huge success! If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you set up this landscaping marketing plan, schedule a digital marketing audit with our team.