You operate in the same neighborhoods all the time, sometimes weekly, and that makes them the best place to market your lawn care business locally.
That’s a ton of time your crews spend in a specific area, making impressions on neighbors and customers alike. If you can attract more customers within or close to the routes you already run, you can be more efficient.
The work your company does is top-notch, and your customer’s neighbors notice.
5 Ways To Market Your Lawn Care Business Locally
1. Understand that Referrals are Gold
Sometimes getting new customers is as easy as asking your current ones if they could recommend you to your neighbors. Some companies offer an incentive like $10 off your next lawn mowing. Others may offer a gift card to a local coffee shop for a local referral. It never hurts to ask for a reference. If the customer says no, maybe they’ll tell you why your service isn’t good enough for a referral and what you can do to get better.
2. Flyers and Direct Mail are Still Powerful Marketing Tools
For some companies, this means canvassing the neighborhoods they work in at the start of every season. Be sure to not put flyers in or on a mailbox, or you could get a hefty fine. We have our employees post door hangers on the neighbor’s doors throughout the season. As they mow yards (2-4 flyers left on the immediate neighbor’s doors when they mow), it’s easy enough to leave on the stoop.
When you know the neighborhoods you mow in, you could even have flyers offering $20 first cut and estimate (then you still get paid for the estimate and know precisely how long it will take next time) and leave an estimate accordingly for if they want to keep your service.
You can also send a postcard or letter to a specific mail route. Creating the mailers can sometimes come with a large price tag. You have to consider both the mailer and postage, but they give you about a 1% return typically and can work wonders.
3. Utilize Lawn Signs
There’s no better way to advertise the great work you do than to stick a lawn sign in the yard of your clients. It offers perfect visibility to potential customers, and if they see several in their neighborhood, they’ll pick up on the great work you do. If you have satisfied customers, this is an easy win.
4. Market your business with a Google My Business Listing
Google is one of the most underutilized tools for your lawn care business, and you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not using all its tools. Google My Business is a service that allows you to customize how your business looks when someone finds you via a Google search. You can set your hours, add links, even create posts.
Make sure that your business is listed on Google My Business so that you can be on the Google search, and people can find out easily about your business. No matter if you’re a mom and pop operation or you’re pulling in a couple million a year, this can help you succeed with your business both online and offline, but you need to have a fully complete page for that.
5. Charity Work… Works
Do you mow near a community center or neighborhood garden? Some companies maintain a local center in exchange to post a sign with their company’s information on it. The sign could read something like, “This garden is courtesy of CLIP Lawn Care LLC, call us at 321-456-7891 to learn more”.
Keeping your routes close is the key to a profitable business, so do everything possible to have your customers close!