Offline Marketing Question - Lawncare

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Ryan Healy

14 years ago

Originally Posted by MichaelHiles

I have a landscaping client that ended up growing so quickly, they acquired another firm because of the online marketing system that I developed for them.

He's now doing about $15K a month in Facebook PPC ads.

Deeeeeetttaiiillllssssssssss!!!!!!

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Ryan Healy

Deeeeeetttaiiillllssssssssss!!!!!!

Local ad targeting of a specific promotional offer that is break-even or even a loss leader. Usually a tree deal or some other enhancement offer. VERY substantial discount based on the understanding of the lifetime value of a customer vs. getting a bang on the front.

Drop the click through traffic to a squeeze page that requires opt-in to get the "redeemable certificate". Grab the name, email address & phone # (for the rep to schedule the install). They have to present the certificate to the rep when he visits to identify the location of the install (and survey the property for upsells).

Then do the install. Follow up with any suggestions for more enhancements as upsells. Ask for referrals. Plant a yard sign. Put them into the marketing system for other regular deal offers.

In one instance, a $150 tree install sold at a 50% discount turned into $60,000 worth of business from the original homeowner, and two neighbors on each side.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by MichaelHiles

Local ad targeting of a specific promotional offer that is break-even or even a loss leader. Usually a tree deal or some other enhancement offer. VERY substantial discount based on the understanding of the lifetime value of a customer vs. getting a bang on the front.

Drop the click through traffic to a squeeze page that requires opt-in to get the "redeemable certificate". Grab the name, email address & phone # (for the rep to schedule the install). They have to present the certificate to the rep when he visits to identify the location of the install (and survey the property for upsells).

Then do the install. Follow up with any suggestions for more enhancements as upsells. Ask for referrals. Plant a yard sign. Put them into the marketing system for other regular deal offers.

In one instance, a $150 tree install sold at a 50% discount turned into $60,000 worth of business from the original homeowner, and two neighbors on each side.

I hate to say it - even with following IM for a while now, I am still not up on the terminology.

You say "click through traffic" and "squeeze page" and "opt-in."

Do I understand that to mean this:

Blog about yard care in my local area, draw traffic to one site, and then, have an subscription/sign up for a special?

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14 years ago

Yeah - what did we do? I don't know if I'd make any money (although, I'd like to) but, I am wanting to see what we can do for him.

We live in a town of about 65K people, I'd say.

Probably in this area, there are about 80K or so.

Thanks for your help!

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Jeremy James

Yeah - what did we do? I don't know if I'd make any money (although, I'd like to) but, I am wanting to see what we can do for him.

We live in a town of about 65K people, I'd say.

Probably in this area, there are about 80K or so.

Thanks for your help!

FYI Jeremy, I moved them completely off of direct mail. They were doing 5K piece mailings to homeowners, getting abysmal returns (they thought it was good... lol)...

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Jimian

14 years ago

Originally Posted by MichaelHiles

I have a landscaping client that ended up growing so quickly, they acquired another firm because of the online marketing system that I developed for them.

He's now doing about $15K a month in Facebook PPC ads.

Great thread! Michael, do you do any Google Ads or all facebook PPC?

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MichaelHiles 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Jimian

Great thread! Michael, do you do any Google Ads or all facebook PPC?

Depends on the client but yes, Adwords are in the repitoire.

ALL forms of marketing are in the mix somewhere - I've even bought banner placements for a business at a local high school for their varsity basketball home games... not because I thought it was all that spectacular of an idea, but that's what the client felt would create some biz. They actually did generate some leads from it, and because they had a system in place, they could correctly identify the source of the business and assess an overall ROI to the spending. If I remember correctly, that was about $10K for the whole season and the client got about 5 leads.

Kind of expensive - but I couldn't convince the owner ahead of time, so I just let the #'s speak for themselves.

All in all though, if I don't directly provide the service as a consultant, and it makes sense in the overall plan to do it, we'll find and secure appropriate vendor relationships to make their model work.

I'm an integrator.
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VegasGreg

14 years ago

Wow, nice info there Mr. Hiles.

I was just going to suggest that although the amount of local searches seem low (especially to the IM crowd), nearly all those searchers are ready to go BUYERS.

50 searches a month of people in need of a lawn service are usually buyers in need with cash in hand looking for a place to spend it.

Getting them opted in to a list is key (as mentioned above).

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Nic Lynn

14 years ago

Michael has essentially nailed it for you.

This isn't about individual offline and online tactics, it's about creating a complete sales process and funnel for your client (that happens to use great offline and online marketing tactics). That's the real trick that most people miss... they just want to come up with a list of a thousand things that they can do with no real plan of how that all gels together to generate incremental customers and revenue.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Nic Lynn

Michael has essentially nailed it for you.

This isn't about individual offline and online tactics, it's about creating a complete sales process and funnel for your client (that happens to use great offline and online marketing tactics). That's the real trick that most people miss... they just want to come up with a list of a thousand things that they can do with no real plan of how that all gels together to generate incremental customers and revenue.

This is what I do and I am beginning to teach others to do as well.

Strategic marketing process development.

A launch is forthcoming.

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Nic Lynn 14 years ago

Originally Posted by MichaelHiles

This is what I do and I am beginning to teach others to do as well.

Strategic marketing process development.

A launch is forthcoming.

Glad I could help you plug it!
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14 years ago

What is a good keyword search tool? Google's is not letting me search specific for my area. It's either giving me lawncare, or the name of my town plus hotels/restaurants.

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-Jericho-

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Jeremy James

What is a good keyword search tool? Google's is not letting me search specific for my area. It's either giving me lawncare, or the name of my town plus hotels/restaurants.

You can use the keyword tool and do searches like:

city lawn care
city lawncare
lawncare city
lawn care city

Don't just use lawn care but other words people will search for. Don't waste your time trying to rank a website but you should still have one that is targeting the keywords.

Local business sites are easy to rank any ways but the map box will get almost all the clicks. I setup a site for an auto body shop a week and a half ago and I already have it on the first page at number 8 for 2 sets of keywords.

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-Jericho-

14 years ago

The key is Google Map Box. You get a top listing in there and your phone will be ringing off the hook. First you would need to find out which keywords to target for it but I guarantee you that is one of the best spots to be for a local business.

What's even better is you don't have to pay for it. It just takes some time to rank there and you need to know how to do it. The listing needs to be fully optimized and you'll need more reviews and citations then the competition.

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jennypitts

14 years ago

Jeremy, you seem to have most of the offline nailed and Michael has given you pretty much the low down when it comes to online marketing. I think for your clients the money is going to be in the list they build. This will allow them to replace direct mail marketing with email marketing. If your client seems to be experiencing a slow growth then use both offline and online tactics initially. Now, because lawn care is an actual physical service he may never be able to completely replace offline marketing. Regardless of what others say, I think a Lawn Care company will still benefit from both.

I also think he should try referrals. If he does not want to create a referral program he can simply print out referral discount cards. These can be filled out by the first customer and given to the referral. Once the referral redeems the discount the first customer will be emailed or mailed a discount for making the referral. So, in practice it is a referral program, yet people are NOT required to continue referring. It can be a one time thing. Make certain that the cards provide space for people to submit an email address.

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14 years ago

Jenny, great advice. I think we're going to start with a Direct Mail list, and once I find a good, solid Keyword set - up, I am going to try to see if I can buy some articles to draw soem traffic. At this level, I will probably charge him something for my time (or swap out for yard work.) I am really excited to see how we could grow his business.

Jeremy

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sirtom 14 years ago

Hey guys,

Awesome ideas in this post!!!

I've been doing online marketing for a few local businesses and here's what I found:

1. Generating customers, traffic and sales for your client is more involved than simply ranking them for keywords with SEO.

Example: I ranked my painting contractor client for "City + painting", which gets a decent number of searches each month. He's actually on the front page for similar keywords as well, such as "City + Painter" and "City + Painters", but in all honesty, these keywords aren't performing well. What's worse is that I initially told him that he'd get about X searches (as indicated by the Google Keyword Tool), which would hopefully translate to at least X calls.

Not so, I've found. First of all, I went with the "broad" search numbers, as opposed to "exact", which I'd be ranking him for (which is also significantly lower in search volume). Second, it's actually been a challenge to get him higher than #5 since his site is built on a template builder and I can't fully optimize it. Third, the majority of calls to the competitors are coming to those in the Google Map Box, as Jericho mentioned in the last 2 posts. Definitely a huge thing, since from a customer's perspective, those often appear to be the most relevant.

2. You need to implement systems, instead of just marketing/advertising.

This is where I found the real golden nugget from this post. @MichaelHiles- amazing stuff, man. If you come out with that product you mentioned, or if it's already out, can you link it up or DM me the URL to it? I've found that's the way to go, and am in the process of implementing my own, but I'm always down for modeling successful people. Mentors=faster success, period.

3. The combination of online AND offline marketing/advertising is key.

You need both to make it explode.

What I've found to be a killer thus far is people that think offline consulting/making money for local business owners is simple. Don't get me wrong, in some cases it definitely can be. But, you need to implement a system for that business to experience long-term, sustainable growth in revenue.

That's what Michael was referring to, and I think I'm going to rock it out because of that little response he made a few replies up.

Good times, all. I'll be reporting back how it's working out too.

-Tom
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14 years ago

See that's the key in ALL offline marketing. A business is dealing with live customers, real people. This whole pure online thing where people don't actually want to deal with icky clients in person and all might be great for pure info products and clickbank ebook hustles, but in the MUCH bigger world of business, people still buy from people - particularly local services.

This means that you can drive all the traffic in the world to a crappy website and it won't do any good.

You can drive lots of traffic to a fantastically converting website, and if the business doesn't have the process set up inside to deal with the rest of the stages, it won't do any good.

You can have a sales rep that grabs the contact form leads off of a website and call the person back or make contact, but if the prospects aren't qualified or sufficiently along the path of a decision process, it won't do any good.

You can have a killer contact management and lead nurturing program in place, but if you aren't able to close the deals because you put too many hurdles in front of the customer to buy from you (everything from onerous financial terms, not being willing to service them a certain way, etc...) it won't do any good.

It just keeps going into the service delivery side too.

The point is that a business is what it does. A website and SEO doesn't "do" anything. It's just a front-end tool. It's a tactic to fit into a certain part of the overall buying process.

I've said this before... IF THE INTERNET DISAPPEARED TOMORROW, MOST OF MY CLIENTS WOULD BE FINE. That's because we have systems in place and can simply go back to direct mail and/or other forms of media.

How many "offliners" can say that their own business wouldn't skip a beat if the entire technology platform changed or disappeared?

Because guess what? It's going to. It has before and it will again.

Learn business systems and it won't matter.

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reynoldscorb

14 years ago

I actually have a buddy of mine who is the main summer landscaping care service for his area. I helped him put up and website about a month ago and he is now so busy, he doesn't even have time to play golf with me on the weekends

.

A website might not be the best way to market your lawn care service, but it is a great way for your clients to advertise for you.

"I just use ---- Lawn Care Service. Their website is at -----." You have no idea how effective a website can be.

So using IM methods might not be the best way to think about it, but the fact that you place a website up will help attract new clients.

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Steve Ranger

14 years ago

Awesome thread.

I'm just trying to work out how you would target people on Facebook that require garden services? Do you target middle aged people that have there interests set as 'gardening', or something like that?

Also, I want to set my brother up with a lawn care business in the UK so this thread has given me some ideas.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Steve Ranger

Awesome thread.

I'm just trying to work out how you would target people on Facebook that require garden services? Do you target middle aged people that have there interests set as 'gardening', or something like that?

Also, I want to set my brother up with a lawn care business in the UK so this thread has given me some ideas.

No we just target ages 25-64 in a geographic locale and run PPC as opposed to CPM. They'll self-qualify. People who live in apartments don't click on landscaping facebook ads.

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