Do you ever find yourself driving around town meeting with unqualified prospects who don't have a budget for what you do or maybe you're struggling to attract the right employees? Well, it could be that you're making one or more of these three heinous marketing mistakes that landscaping companies make. Watch today's interview with New Jersey landscape contractor association, executive director, Gail Woolcott, where I share what those three mistakes are, plus how to fix them.
There are three mistakes that I see a lot of landscape contractors make and the first one I'd say is they don't really have an ideal customer clarified, meaning they're taking on a lot of work, maybe they do drainage, they do irrigation, they do patios, maybe some hardscaping, some softscaping. What you really need to do in order to generate the most profit and attract the customers you want is get clear on who are they, what kind of services are they going to buy from you? Where are they specifically? Which neighborhoods?
This brings me to the second mistake that I see is a lot of contractors make. They don't mention the geography on their website. Every contractor has a limited service area where they're going to go and do jobs and there's a certain radius where, when you started adding in too much drive time, it becomes unprofitable. So you want to make sure you list the neighborhoods and the cities and the suburbs, those actual words throughout your website. Because people often Google things like “landscape design Secaucus, New Jersey.” And if you don't mention that geography on your website, you're not going to show up when people are Googling.
The third mistake I see is that they're not doing marketing because they're feeling the shortage of labor. What many contractors don't realize is that people are looking for jobs, landscapers, people who are going to work at landscape companies are Googling on their smartphone for things like “landscaping jobs near me.”
The searches for that on smartphones have doubled year over year for the last five years. If your website isn't totally optimized for mobile and you don't look like a great contractor through your reviews and your website and your photos, why would somebody come and apply for your company? Right? You've got to position yourself as the best company that can afford the equipment and shirts that their employees need. Employees want that sense of security that they're working at a thriving company. If you don't look like one online, they might not come and apply to your job.
Something that people can do right away is claim your Google listing. You can do this for free, I promise. It's really easy. Go to google.com/business. You want to make sure that you claim your listing, Google will send you a postcard in the mail to verify that you're actually there and you can list your website. It's really important that you upload quality photos, photos of the projects that you actually want. Not any old photos of projects that you did 10 years ago. You're always getting better at the work that you're capable of doing and you want to put your best images forward and start getting reviews on that Google listing. The reason why this is my number one do it yourself, free tip is because, well, one, it's free, but two, it has a big impact for contractors because even referrals, will Google you, right?
Thanks,
Jack Jostes
CEO
Ramblin Jackson
P.S. Check out a recording of a webinar I recently gave at ramblinjackson.com/replay where I'll go into great detail about the exact steps that we use to help our contractors Get FOUND Online.