603-573-9289THE BEST LANDSCAPER MARKETING STRATEGIES IN A DIGITAL AGE
The Internet should be the largest part of any landscaper’s overall marketing strategy. There are a lot of ways how to market your landscaping business online and some are definitely better than others.
Whether you focus on residential or commercial landscaping, your ideal customers are searching the Internet right now for landscapers like you. Showing up on the front page of Google in as many ways as possible is essential if you want a steady flow of leads coming your way.
The NH Strategic Marketing team has been working on effect lead generation for landscaping companies through effective digital marketing for over 9 years. Our team has worked with landscaping companies of all sizes, from one man shows to multi-million dollar companies and every step in between. We’ve found that most are not using the Internet as effectively as they could be and, as a result, they are not seeing the amount of leads that they have potential to. Let’s dive into some of the main areas that landscaping companies should be focusing on in their digital marketing strategy.
Why Marketing Your Landscaping Business Online Is So Important - Effective Landscaper Marketing Strategies
Almost 46% of all Google searches are people looking for a local service business like a landscaper. As a landscaper, you need to be leveraging online marketing to position your landscaping company for success. Showing up on the front page of Google when these motivated potential customers are looking for you is essential.
Between Google and Facebook almost 80% off ALL internet traffic is referred from these two websites. You are missing out if your landscaping business isn’t showing up on both of them. We have effectively marketed landscaping businesses using a combination of Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
A Landscaping Website That Stands Out In Your Market - The Foundation Of Your Online Marketing Plan
Your landscaping company website is the “home base” of your landscaping business and it’s crucial that it represents your business in the right way. It really should be the foundation of your online marketing efforts for your landscaping business.
When the NH Strategic Marketing team is looking at doing a web design for our clients, we ensure that all of our sites include:
Click To Call Phone Number
Make sure your website has a phone number in the top right hand corner
Easy Contact Form
Easy to find and fill out contact form.
Attractive Home Page
You must have an attractive home page for your landscaping website that helps convey you’re good at what you do, where you are located, and your service area.
Real Photography
Add real authentic images of you, your team, and your work to the homepage and throughout your website.
Secure
Your website MUST be https:// secure in order for Google to view you as a trusted site and show you to potential customers. If it’s not you’re losing customers and Google is penalizing your rankings.You should have an SSL installed by your webmaster to make sure your site is secure.
Fast Loading
Your website needs to be FAST. If it takes too long to load your potential customers are hitting the “back” button and you’re being penalized by Google.
Mobile Friendly
Your website MUST be mobile friendly. We always advise our clients to think about the mobile user experience first, since most users will be visiting your website from their phones. Google has some great free tools that you can use to check your site for mobile friendliness.
Video
Add video elements to your website. Clients like to see your work in action. Take a video of your process, finished projects, and team in action to showcase on your website.
Customer Reviews
Nothing resonates more with your potential customers than hearing the great things that your current customers have to say about you and your work. Use some of your testimonials throughout your site to show your customers that your team does great work.
Live Chat
Consider adding live-chat to your website. It can help drive more leads your way.
Service Pages
Add customized service pages for each of your varied landscaping services. While it may seem like a good idea to put everything on one page, having them each on their own page will increase your customer experience and have a positive effect on your Google rankings.
Call To Actions
Update the Calls To Action (CTA’s) on each page to ensure they speak to your customers and tell them exactly what to do next. Ie. “Call for a Free quote on your landscape design project today!”
Search Engine Optimized
You can’t just have a “pretty” website that doesn’t generate any business for you. Like a car without an engine, a website without good Search Engine Optimization(SEO) “under the hood” won’t help your business grow. Properly optimizing your website for SEO is going to take a lot of work, but over time, it will get you ranking better on Google and showing up more when your potential customers are looking for landscaping companies in your area.
How To Market Your Landscaping Business
Our team of digital marketing experts has worked with landscapers from all over the country to help them grow their bottom line through online marketing. Whether your landscaping company is just starting out or has been around for decades, our marketing system for landscapers can help your company grow.
Get Free Landscaping Leads From Google By Optimizing Your Google My Business Listing
This is a vitally-important piece of your landscaper online marketing and it’s completely free to claim and optimize. We’re always amazed to see how many landscaping companies we talk to who are not properly utilizing this fantastic (and free) digital marketing tool.
Google local results appear for people who search for businesses and places near their location such as: “Landscaping company near me.” They're shown in a number of places across Google Maps and Google Search.
Your Google My Business listing can help you get on the front page of Google and allow you to own even more real estate on the coveted first page of Google. A properly optimized GMB page, plus great Google Adwords Management will help you own the most real estate you can on Google, getting your business in front of the right people at the right time.
Here Are Just Some Of The Items That Need To Be Optimized For Your Landscaping Google My Business Listing:
- Add your EXACT business name
- Add your phone number
- Maximize categories
- Add your list of services
- Add lots of great photos of your work, your team, your facility if you have one, your equipment, etc.
- Add a thorough business description
- Add your hours
- Add your business location
- Create your ‘Shortname’
- Fill out the Google business list to 100%
On an ongoing basis you should be adding new photos to show off some of the projects you’ve completed. Additionally there’s a “Posts” feature so you can highlight specific services, promote specific offers, and more.
Google Business Page Optimization Tip: Get Reviews
One final tip, ask your customers for reviews. Not only does Google look at the reviews (and keywords in reviews) when deciding where to rank your business, but your potential customers will look at the reviews when deciding if they want to do business with you. In the back office of your Google Business page you can copy a short link that you can give out to customers to have them leave a review for you.
Manage The Online Reputation For Your Landscaping Business - It’s The New Word Of Mouth Marketing...
Your online reputation matters and prospective customers for your landscaping business want to know if others have done business with you and how it went. More reviews can help you improve your organic rankings, increase your conversion rate, and help you attract more new customers. Online reviews are the new digital version of “word of mouth marketing.” Asking happy customers to leave you a review can be greatly helpful to improving your online reputation.
Here are some statistics on why your online reputation is important:
trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business
say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
say that the star rating of a business is most important
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Important tip regarding online reviews: Ask happy customers for reviews and professionally respond to poor reviews. Many landscaping business owners have a love/hate relationship with online reviews. Some simple strategies on your part will protect your online reputation and keep good customers coming your way.
Remember- best defense against bad reviews (even fake reviews) is a large collection of good reviews from your happy landscaping clients.
One tip to get more Google reviews: when you’re doing the walk through with your customer after a job and the customers say they love it say something like, “that’s great to hear Mr. Customer, would you mind if I email you a link to my Google business page later today to share that same review online? It would help me out a lot.”
Encourage your happy clients to leave you reviews on your Google business page, your Facebook page, or other local business listing sites that accept reviews.
Respond to poor reviews with a professional, calm tone.
Hint: your response is really written for OTHER potential customers who may eventually read the bad review and your response. We recommend that you offer to “make right” legitimate complaints and do your best to take care of your customers. Sometimes you, or your team, make mistakes in business. It’s natural. Just try your best to ‘make it right.’ Many people will be impressed by how you value their opinion and will give you a second chance. Once again, the best possible defense against a bad review is a steady stream of reviews from happy landscaping customers. You should be working on this every single week and every customer interaction is a chance for you to improve your online reputation.
Getting Your Landscaping Business To The Top Of Google - How To Run An Effective Google Ads Campaign For Landscapers
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is Google's online advertising program that allows you to create online ads to reach audiences that are interested in the products and services you offer. Google ads is one of the most powerful tools we use in an overall landscaper digital marketing strategy. Google Ads, when done properly, allows your landscaping business to be on the front page of Google WHEN and WHERE your ideal customers are searching for you.
Getting Your Landscaping Business To The Top Of Google - How To Run An Effective Google Ads Campaign For Landscapers
Google Ads can be very simple to run if properly managed and maintained. Here’s the process in simple terms:
Get Found – having your landscaping page show up prominently on the front page of Google.
- Right Keywords (Micro Campaigns & Negative Keywords)
- Right Geographic Targeting
- Right Positioning
- Right Bidding
Get Clicks – well written ads with full use of all the Google ad extensions helps people not only see your Google Ad but to also get the click.
- Relevant Keyword
- Customized Ads
- A/B Tested Ads (Across ALL our Campaigns/Cities)
Get Calls – a properly-designed landing page is far more effective than driving straight to your website. The landing page is designed simply to get the calls for your business.
- High Converting Landing Pages
- High Converting Offer
- Call Tracking
“We Ran Google Ads For Our Landscaping Business But It Didn’t Work Well.”
We’ve heard this before from landscapers running their own Google Ads campaigns or having some other digital marketing agency run them. Nine times out of ten it’s because the way they ran the campaign wasn’t ideal.
(It would be similar to us trying to install our own paver patio…it wouldn't be a pretty picture.)
There are a handful of key factors that go into running an effective Google ads campaign for a landscaping business. We’ve evaluated countless ad campaigns for landscapers and see some common mistakes being repeated, which results in lackluster results. If you want your Ads campaign to be effective you must structure it properly, manage it constantly, use a customized landing page, and track everything.
Vital Components That Our Marketing Agency Has Found To Be Important In A Google Ads Campaign For Landscapers:
- Dedicated Google Ads Certified Account Rep
- Customized High-Converting Landing Page
- Click To Call Phone Tracking
- Lead Generation Form Tracking
- Ad Split Testing
- 100 Day Post-Launch Optimization Process
- 15-Point Weekly Campaign Optimization Process
- Monthly Check In Meetings With NHSM Team
- Scale It – Maximize Google, Bing, Facebook
Get Your Business To Rank High On The Front Page Of Google With Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (known as SEO) is the process of optimizing your landscaping company website. There are three critical factors that go into “Good SEO’ and those include:
- Technical On Site SEO
- Content
- Backlinks
To increase organic traffic from search engines like Google and Bing you’ll need to check all three boxes. The end result will be higher organic rankings and more inbound leads for your landscaping business.
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Factors That Help Your Landscaping Website SEO And How To Get Them Done Properly
A Properly Built Landscaping Website
A well-built landscaping website is critical if you want to rank in Google. Do it yourself websites don’t rank well. Even if the website is “pretty” it often is not created properly to get your landscaping business showing up on page 1. We recommend using WordPress to build your website. You’ll want to build or re-design your website so that it provides a good experience for the end user.
A good website designed by a professional team of web design experts will have “baked in” technical SEO and will help improve your organic rankings. Once built, you should monitor your website often to ensure that you’re always up to date on the latest trends and have everything on your site that Google is looking for.
When our team builds a website we also connect your website with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. By doing this, it helps Google “crawl” your site to better understand who you are, what you do, and who to connect with you when they type in certain keywords in Google. Not to mention, it also gives you valuable reporting metrics to track your progress.
Good Technical / On-Site SEO
A lot goes “under the hood” of a well-built landscaper or lawn care website. Having properly built out service pages, good page titles, good meta descriptions, image names (also known as alt text), image descriptions, and good on-page web copy to optimize for specific keywords you’re trying to rank for all go into how well your site is optimized for search engines.
Ongoing Content Creation / Blogging
Many landscapers have zero interest in writing blog posts BUT adding new content to your site will absolutely help you in your efforts to rank for more keywords relevant to your business. Adding 2-4 new blog posts every month, about relevant topics that are focussed around keyword phrases you’re trying to rank for, will help you grow your organic rankings.
Off-Site Backlinking Strategies To Improve Rankings
Create a complete Google My Business (GMB) profile as mentioned above. This is one of the most important off-site directory listings to create. In addition to this though, you should claim other online directory listings such as Localeze, Acxiom, Yelp, Superpages, BBB, etc. You want to make sure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) matches across the Internet. When there is conflicting information this can negatively affect your rankings.
Get Online Reviews
One reason to get online reviews is that it can help improve your SEO. Create a strategy to ask happy clients to write online reviews (preferably first on your Google Business listing), consistently over time.
Share Your Site Content On Social Media
Publish blog articles, photos of your work linking back to specific service pages, and other useful website content to social media channels like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn to get “social signals” that will help boost rankings further.
Link Building
Getting other prominent websites to link back to your website can help rankings. Link building is a controversial topic in the field of SEO. We always recommend attracting natural opportunities for inbound links. As an example, having a well-written and helpful blog post that other sites want to link to can be helpful. Further, being featured on local news sites, writing guest blog posts on news sites, industry sites and publications, set-up local profiles can all help get valuable backlinks.
Improving SEO For Your Landscaper Website
To outrank your competitors in your local market, proper SEO can go a long way. Constantly working to improve your organic rankings can help you get you more inbound leads. The combination of a well-built website, good technical SEO “under the hood” of your site, ongoing content creation, and getting new inbound links will help you reach the top of the rankings in your local market. Just like ongoing property maintenance for one of your landscaping clients, your online SEO presence requires ongoing care and maintenance.
Facebook Marketing For Your Landscaping Business
Almost 80% off all traffic comes from 2 websites – Google and Facebook. Posting on your Facebook page is a recommended action and it can lead to a homeowner potentially seeing pictures of your work. If they like what they see they may reach out to you.
If you really want results from Facebook you need to invest in paid Facebook advertising.
Facebook Ads offers some of the most targeted advertising options in digital marketing which leads to great lead generation tools for landscaping companies. There are some simple Facebook paid advertising strategies we’ve seen work and would recommend:
Facebook Ads
with over 2.8 billion active users on Facebook, getting your business showing prominently in front of your potential customers is one of the most effective and easily accessible marketing tools for your landscaping business. When you craft a well-rounded Facebook Ad campaign targeted to the right potential customers, you’re getting more potential customers looking at your business for their landscaping needs. When you pair that with a strong remarketing campaign, those customers are more likely to call you when they’re ready to book their next project.
Remarketing Ads
One of the ads we love using for our Landscaping clients is a series of simple remarketing ads. Very simple but ultra-effective. Here's how they work: Someone does a search for a landscaping company and lands on your website. When you have the Facebook pixel set up, Facebook is alerted that they visited your site and, if you’re running remarketing ads, will show that user your ads as they’re casually scrolling Facebook. This allows you to stay top of mind for your potential customers who have already expressed interest in your landscaping services. This is also a great place to use video advertising to show off some of the great work that your team has done.
Develop A Promotional Video For Your Landscaping Business
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Video can be a great marketing tool to help differentiate you from all of the other landscapers in your area. It can also be used in multiple ways. On your website home page, for YouTube Video ads, Facebook Video and Video Remarketing ads.
You don't need a long video, just a short video saying who you are, why you’re different, and showcasing your work. A good local videographer can help you create a short video perfect for these purposes. You can convey your main value offering, slip in a customer testimonial, and show a moving gallery of your best work. End the video with a simple and clear call to action. It will work perfectly to get you inbound landscaping leads.
Did You Know That We offer Videography And Photography Services?
If you are looking for help capturing your brand through imagery, take a look at how we can help.
Shared Lead Services vs. Exclusive Lead Generation Services
Most landscaping companies we’ve spoken to are sick of sharing leads and looking for exclusive lead generation services for landscaping companies. Shared lead services make a lot of money by generating a lead that they resell to you and 4-5 of your competitors. Then, you have to fight to win each quote by lowering your costs to beat out your competitors and it’s just a lose, lose situation for everyone involved.
When you run an effective online marketing campaign, or higher a great local digital marketing agency to run your marketing campaigns for you, you generate exclusive leads. Getting your business showing prominently on Google, running great Google Ad and Facebook Ad campaigns, and having a properly created and managed website are all great steps to generate quality landscaping leads for your business
Landscaping Online Marketing - Closing Thoughts
The Internet is a powerful marketing tool for any landscaper. Having a good website, a good online marketing plan to attract leads, and a good online reputation are vital. There are a lot of ways to market your landscaping business online and some definitely work better than others.
Time To Meet With Kyle Battis
Kyle Battis has been involved in advertising and marketing since 1999. He has a background in Website Design, Direct Marketing, Online Media Buying commanding $150,000 per Month Ad budgets, Live Presentations, and he has extensive experience designing Marketing Campaigns that make money for small businesses.
603-573-9289
