Marketing your landscaping business

It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. As a small business you might not think you have the resources to advertise your business, and if you don't advertise your business you will never big enough, etc...

Although I have a tendency to over simplify things, let's consider the basics. Most owner operators never have enough time for truly marketing their business. You might plan to tackle it during the winter, but you really need the income generated by snow removal... but how do you get that business without letting people know about it. The answer is to either clone yourself, or to develop a system for generating leads and closing sales.

In retail there is the three legged stool - a coordinated approach of direct mail, in-store signage and a company website. Is it really that much different in marketing your landscape business?

You prospect for customers, filter the leads through your website, provide brochures and close the sale with qualified customers. At the job site you utilize yard signs to provide neighbors with phone numbers and your website address.

Like anything else, it is a numbers game. The typical response to direct mail with a purchased list is anywhere from .5% to 3 or 4%. You can improve the odds with a good list, a good offer and the proper timing. You measure the response with either website traffic or phone calls to the office.

As the saying goes, you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Or is it, kiss a few frogs? Either way, you can calculate how many mailers to send out by determining your goals for new business. Perhaps you can only handle a dozen or so new jobs, or maybe you need hundreds of responses. It is still comes down to simple math.

Let's say you send out 2500 mailers to a select neighborhood or zip code area. With a 3% response you would generate 75 leads. In sales there is the rule of nine - if you can create up to nine points of contact without incurring a no, you have a great shot at closing the sale.

So here goes... 1- the mailer, 2- a visit to the website, 3- an email from the website, 4- a brochure goes out, 5- a phone call and 6- a sales call.

With this process the prospect has been able to see your work (on the website), get a sense of your business (through the professionalism of the mailer and website), and feel more confident through your screening process. By the time you schedule a sales call they should be sold on you and your business.

Easy right? The trick is to use the technology and marketing tools to do most of the work for you. An email from a website can generate an auto responses. A phone call call push the customer to a website or produce a brochure mailed to the customer. All one to many strategies. While many small businesses opt for a website with the goal of attracting new business, you might consider it a tool for processing prospects.

Want to take a closer look? Visit our website for our new Landscape Marketing Kit and let me know what you think.

Martha speaks.....

Are you ready? The March 2008 Special Gardening Issue from Martha Stewart Living has hit the mail boxes. Subtitled the return of classic style this issue has several feature items that should be of interest to gardeners, and more importantly, garden center owners. The fact of the matter is that when Martha speaks people listen; and when it comes to Martha the 'I's have it - information, inspiration and influence. A quick check of the magazine will reveal three major areas for retailers to concentrate on:

1) Seed Starting - while in and of itself not a big deal, but when you combine it with consumer's increasing appetite for fresh, safe fruit and vegetable alternatives to store bought, it could be an opportunity.

2) Safer Solutions for Rose Care - again, not that you are beaten over the head with it, but the article concentrates on "how to control them (pests and diseases) using as few chemicals as possible." Four whole pages on pest and disease identification and solutions featuring Neem, pyrethrums and beneficial insects such as ladybugs, lacewings and praying mantis to name a few.

3) Container Gardens - Get ready for the triple play. Another version of the "tall and spikey, round and full, and cascading". Martha covers a fundamental rule of garden design: plant in odd numbers (she concentrates on threes). There are many plants shown in examples. Here are a few to watch for:

3a) Oxalis vulcanicola 'Zinfandel'
3b) Begonia 'bonfire'
3c) Euphorbia hypericifolia 'Diamond Frost'

So there you have it, three major trends for retail garden centers in 2008. The big three are: the environment, container gardens, food safety (or premium veggies).

Make sure you check out the following programs from Sunrise Marketing:

1) 'Perfect Patios & Dream Decks - container gardens designed & delivered'

2) 'Grow Green' - a complete marketing and merchandising kit with options for direct mail, signage and web support.
3) Novalis mailers and signage solutions - particularly the 'Knockout Rose'

That's all for now. Your thoughts?

Welcome to my blog...

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Welcome to my blog.. I have officially moved from not knowing how to spell blog (is it one g, or two?), to making a couple of posts. I hope to use this forum to share ideas on marketing, our green industry (my company, Sunrise Marketing, concentrates on marketing for the horticultural industry), and the future of independent garden centers.

Sunrise Marketing sends out the "Idea Book" around four to five times a year. It is a bit like painting the golden gate bridge - as soon as you finish, you have start over again. By the time our catalogs are in the mail, I usually have about three to four new marketing ideas that come to fruition. So, as you can imagine, it is hard to keep up. That is where this blog comes in. As I compose this entry I have just finished the winter trade show season. Beginning with the MANTS show in Baltimore, moving through Columbus for the CENTS show and ending this past week in Boston at the New England Grows. In that four and half weeks I have launched more than one new idea!

1.) Grow Green - a marketing kit for retailers. In this age of environmental awareness it is important to remind customers that we were the first 'green guys'. This signage package allows retailers to get in front of the issue and position their garden center as a source for solutions to the problem.

2.) Perfect Patios & Dream Decks: Container Gardens Designed and Delivered by XYZ Garden Center. I went up to the New England Grows show on setup Tuesday and working with our art director Hector Soto (inside joke) we set up the complete potting station and signage system. It went well. Click here for the photo. In fact, the program was selected as a Retailer Choice Award winner. Woooo Hooo!

3.) Landscaper Marketing Kit - We recently completed a package of direct mail pieces, yard signs, referral cards, brochures and companion website. Watch our site for more details.

Anyway, I think you get the idea of why subscribing to my blog is a good idea. I love this industry and I love marketing. I look forward to your feedback!

New Ideas for GWAA Members

It was an eventful Friday at the New England Grows trade show in Boston. While preparing for a 2:00 pm talk to retailers I was approached by Maree Gaetani from Garden Writers of America (GWA). Maree found out around 7:00 am that her speaker for the 1:00 lunch presentation was sick in the hospital with food poisoning. It was fortunate for both of us that she spotted the Sunrise Marketing sign and stopped by to talk. Long story short I had a great time sharing ideas with the group.

Often there are circumstances where opportunities pop up where you least expect them. Somewhere between 10:00 am and the 1:00 pm talk I was racking my brain to come up with something helpful. How could I help writers market themselves?

Although you might not think of writing as a business, it is; and in any business you have a product, a buyer and a seller. The key is to know what you are selling and who you are selling to. In the case of garden writers, like other writers for that matter, the product is content. Whether you are hired to give a talk, write an article or take a photo, that is the sum of the transaction. As a writer you have experience that is manifested in words.

The next challenge for the GWA group is to find an audience. This is where it gets exciting. Traditionally you are left to struggle to connect with garden clubs, magazines and publishers. In the course of the talk it became clear there were other options. In my experience one of the challenges that many of our garden center clients face in populating their websites is the lack of content. Light bulb! Writers have content - retailers need it. At that point a marketing representative from Spring Meadow, a wholesale grower, offered that she needed content as well.

The long and the short of it is there are opportunities out there. They not be where you would normally look for them, but in this day and age, you might have to consider different avenues. It is ironic that this is my first complete post with a blog using blogger.com. It was one of the ideas raised in the GWA talk. The other was using Constant Contact for e-mail marketing. I am hoping that I can continue the dialog with the GWA members. It was a fun group of around 30 interested people.

By the way the 2:00 pm talk to 3 people was great too!