4 Pro-Tips for Digital Marketing for Landscapers

The landscaping industry is competitive. Today’s lawn care companies need to find ways to elevate themselves above their competition.

Establishing a digital marketing strategy for your landscaping company is no longer optional. It is required. Landscape professionals must establish a strong brand. It builds trust and a reliable reputation. 

The first step is to choose the appropriate tech stack. Then, begin to establish your business as a subject-matter expert. 

Continue reading and learn how to build a marketing framework for your landscaping business. 

Why You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Landscaping Business

An integrated marketing plan is key for small and medium-sized lawn care businesses. If you don’t have one, and your competitor does, who will audiences see first?

From a marketing standpoint, a well-crafted digital strategy gets your name in front of more potential customers. It helps build brand recognition and repeat business. Essential business marketing tools now include a website, social media profiles, as well as paid and organic search ads.

From a business standpoint, it garners more leads with less effort. It also gives you the information necessary to make more data-driven business decisions. A good digital strategy can actually help you retain your current customers as well. Through email, analytics, and robust customer relationship management (CRM) software, you can track and improve the customer experience.

Using the data you gather from your customers, you can grow your brand and increase revenue. The latest inbound marketing toolsets and tactics will make it easier.

Building a functional marketing strategy requires research and a thorough understanding of your customers. Here are four vital steps for boosting your digital marketing strategy:

1.         Build a Brand for Your Landscaping Business

Forming a brand for your landscaping company is crucial. It supports the creation of strong relationships with customers. 

Your landscaping brand leans on a clear, authentic, and strong brand image. It should tell your story and act as a visual reminder of what you do and how you do it.

You need to incorporate your branding into all areas of your landscaping marketing. Here are a few elements of a well-developed brand:

Striking Visual Design

Visual branding refers to all the visual elements of your brand. It affects a customer’s first impression and how they see your company. 

This aspect of company identity begins with a brand kit and style guide. These brand “bibles” should include your company’s color palette, fonts, imagery, and logo variations. A style guide should also include your approved messaging, and official heading and subheading styles.

An eye-catching logo is a central component of your brand. Create one with Canva’s logo generator or Adobe Express. Both are free to use. However, there are some features you must pay to access. 

If you don’t want to DIY, hire designers using UpWork or Fiverr. The designer marketplace 99designs allows artists to compete in creating a custom logo. Then, you pick your favorite and customize it.

If you prefer help with all visual aspects of your brand, it might be best to invest in a professional graphic designer. They can help create your style guide, logo, and website in a scalable way.

A Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Website

A great website is now an essential business asset. If you optimize your website for mobile, 61% of users are more likely to contact you for landscaping work.

Suppose your website doesn’t load fast enough or is difficult to navigate in mobile formats. In that case, potential customers may quickly move on. They’ll find the next landscaping company with a more responsive website.

Let’s start with a few basic tips for building your website.

Before you begin creating your website, there are a few things to keep in mind. 

Your landscaping website should include certain pages. Give visitors a place to find your services, company statement, photo gallery, customer testimonials, and a contact form. 

Make a list of pages you want to include and the information you want to appear on each. This will give you a basic map of your website.

Add your working hours, phone number, address, and social media links to every page. That way, customers can reach you without searching for your contact info. 

Next up is finding a host and registering your domain. 

There are many options for hosting. To make comparing them easier, make a list of your values in a website host. 

Expense, storage and email capabilities, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, and customer support availability are all valid concerns to be addressed.

If you’ve already designed your website, you need a host that works with your website builder. Some hosts have their own builders, which can be helpful if you haven’t taken that step yet.

Now, you’re ready to build.

Most online website builders have some degree of mobile flexibility. The main difference is in the ease of use. Some will require extra steps or limited templates and themes. 

These builders are generally good places to start, and they’re all considered mobile-friendly from the start:

Google Sites is very easy to use and good for an initial website. It will also easily integrate with your other Google properties, which can be a bonus if you don’t have a ton of time to invest. 

Many businesses choose Squarespace. It’s easy to use, and it works great for basic sites. The plug-and-play design makes updating easy, and the templates are modern and automatically scale for devices.

WordPress is recommended if you want more control and functionality. It is a great way to build and manage your website. Serving as a content management system (CMS), it’s free and has continual updates.

Again, many hosts provide their own builder, but their user interfaces and responsiveness vary widely. You can always look at the options and then build elsewhere if necessary.

Whichever website builder you choose, your website should be responsive, mobile-friendly, and fast. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to track your site’s performance, accessibility, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Expanded Social Media Presence

Your landscaping business needs strong social media profiles that are regularly updated.

Facebook is still the most popular social platform. It has over 2 billion active users. Instagram is second. 

Implement a mix of social media platforms for your landscaping business to reach a wider audience. Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and YouTube each have their own strengths. 

Once your profiles are created, add your logo, business hours, and a short business description. Post photos of your team and your work for added visibility.

Every landscaping business should have a LinkedIn business page as well as individual profiles for company owners. 

Lastly, Nextdoor, Angie’s List, Bing Places, Yelp, and Houzz are all homeowner-centric options with their own target audiences. 

Pro Tip: Use LastPass to help manage your usernames and passwords.

Facebook (Meta) Business Manager

Particularly with Meta properties, it’s a good idea to have a business account vs. a personal one. Your insights and automated options will be much more beneficial for the next step—customer analysis. 

First, you’ll need to create a Meta Business account using your business email. Add business assets and confirm domain ownership. 

Next, create your Facebook and Instagram pages. Add a Meta Ads account for any future advertising. You will need to link your assets together within Meta Business Suite. Complete the Business Info section.

Under Meta’s Events Manager, create and connect Meta Pixel to your website or WooCommerce and HubSpot.

2.         Explore the Power of Customer Analysis

Starting with competitive analysis, your landscaping business can create benchmarks to measure against. With a clear vision of your loyal customers and their qualities, you can build a content strategy.

Customers now expect content that’s individually crafted for them. According to Hubspot, 70% of consumers will buy from companies that prove they understand their needs as a customer. The only real way to tailor content is by analyzing your current and future customer base.

Conducting customer behavior analysis can help you better understand your landscaping clients. Use qualitative and quantitative observations about how customers interact with your business. 

Customer behavior analysis considers three key areas: 

1. Personality traits
2. Social trends
3. Psychology

Start segmenting your customers. Use shared interests to group them into buyer personas. Then, identify where each segment is in their customer journey and in the buying process.

Steps for a strong customer behavior analysis:

• Segment customers.
• Identify the key benefits to each group.
• Assign quantitative data.
• Compare quantitative and qualitative.
• Create campaigns.
• Analyze the results.

Top platforms for customer behavior analytics include HubSpot, Trifacta, and Vertica.

Here are three ways to strengthen your customer analysis:

Implement Audience Segmentation and Lead Scoring

As previously mentioned, segmentation means dividing your customers into groups according to selected criteria. You can do this by adding tags to clients and leads. Assign tags using criteria such as their location or the service they use.

Each lead gets “scored” depending on factors you deem valuable. For example, a specific zip code has many high-value lawn care customers. Score these leads and then start to provide marketing resources to them. 

Create “lookalike” audiences in Meta Pixel. These ideal audiences are given specific characteristics, behaviors, and demographics. Once you’ve defined your desired audience, create lookalikes from your current customer list. The more data you provide Meta Pixel, the better it can help you find new landscaping customers.

Analyzing your customer base can help generate more marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) for your landscaping business. This is crucial for growth.

Get more MQLs by:

• Using buyer personas. 
• Predicting a customer’s true value and brand loyalty.
• Conducting content optimization and targeting each segment via their preferred medium.
• Increasing retention and avoiding churn by documenting good and bad customer traits.

Consider conducting a recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis. RFM helps predict how likely a customer is to buy from you again. 

Google Trends helps analyze trending keywords. It can identify what customers are looking for in your area so you can better understand what they need.

You can now begin to establish measurable outcomes for your landscaping business using people-centric data for lead intelligence.

Invest in Meta Ads 

Meta Ads are very powerful. They are an integral part of any inbound marketing strategy for landscaping companies.

The first step is creating an audience to target. Narrow your ad audience by location, zip code, age, gender, interests, and even device.

Create a contact or email capture form on your website. Track new email subscribers resulting from your ads. 

With the Meta Pixel code on your site, Facebook can see all user activity between your website and Meta properties. Even without a customer’s email, Facebook and HubSpot can track user activity.

Once your Pixel has enough information, your audience behavior will start to inform your ad targeting and who they are served to. 

Pro Tip: Use Meta’s Creator Studio to create, publish and analyze content.

Utilize Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Your website is your best marketing asset. Its value extends into customer analytics as well. Google offers free tools to monitor website activity.

Visit Google Analytics (GA) and create a new property. From there, Google provides tutorials to walk you through almost every aspect of using the tool. 

Google Search Console (GSC) gives you a deeper look at site performance, total clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), errors, and your sitemap. Google provides tutorials and information to get you started. 

Most DIY websites allow you to link to GSC using your GA Tracking ID.

3.         Make Your Landscaping Business Easy to Find

Finding new landscaping customers can happen in different ways. When people search for your company online, what will they discover?

Search results on the first page receive 92% of clicks by users. Therefore, reaching the top of local search results is valuable for your landscaping business. There are two very important factors to boost your online visibility:

Google My Business

To begin with, every landscaping company needs a Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Set up your website and email beforehand. This helps with quicker verification. Then, claim your GMB listing by first verifying ownership. Finally, confirm ownership of your domain from within Google Analytics.

Add your logo, hours, location, and services. Consistency is also important. Your name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be the same across all digital properties. 

Google’s “photo first” search results now put even more emphasis on photos. Share a photo or video on GMB twice a month and give them a title such as “landscape renovation.” 

Businesses with photos on their GMB profile receive 35% more website visits. Photos also encourage 42% more requests for directions in Google Maps.

To increase your ranking even further, add FAQs to offer instant answers to your customers’ common questions. 

Reviews are Critical for GMB Success

Authentic customer reviews are very important. They contribute to your GMB rating. This rating greatly influences customer sentiment and buying decisions. You can share your profile URL and ask current or past customers to give you a review. 

When requesting a review from a customer, ask them to clearly mention the type of work you did for them. Reviews mentioning the city or area you cover are also very impactful. 

The more feedback, the better. Invite customers to give their honest opinions via Google My Business as well as Facebook, Yelp, and LinkedIn. 

Local SEO

Never underestimate the importance of local SEO. It increases your visibility and search engine results page (SERP) ranking through the use of certain keywords. GMB is a great place to start, but your website, reviews, and other online mentions also factor in.  

The main difference between local SEO and traditional SEO is the emphasis on local scope and connections. When you want your main audience to be local customers, you want to use geographic location keywords and link to other local businesses. You also want to localize your website and blog content. Ensure your correct NAP information is listed with local online directories.

There are also a few keyword finders that can help you:

• Moz Keyword Explorer —simple free SEO keyword research tool, great for beginners
• Google Keyword Planner —for researching paid keywords
• Ahrefs—for simple SEO tools
• Semrush—a more robust tool geared toward those with SEO experience.

4.         Incorporate Automation in Your Digital Marketing

Implementing a digital marketing campaign is critical to your success as a landscaping company. It’s also a lot of work. Automating some of the more tedious tasks can ease that load. 

Here are two tools to help you automate some of your systems:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

CRM software can help take on some of the more time-consuming items on your marketing to-do list.

Choosing the right customer relationship management (CRM) software) is an important decision.

Your CRM links all your marketing efforts together. We talked about creating segments of your users. CRM helps you do that with accuracy and speed. You can then use these segments to build target audience profiles. 

Once you’ve developed profiles, send each one content curated specifically for them. The data you collect in your CRM will foster major business growth as you learn from what you capture.

CRM software marketing features monitor user activity. It then uses data from that activity to apply specific marketing campaigns to selected segments. 

For example, when a user clicks a Facebook ad and visits your website, they then receive a follow-up ad. The ad prompts them to contact you for landscaping services. 

If they leave their email address, it triggers your CRM software to start sending them a new drip campaign.

CRM software can also send follow-up emails after a job is completed. It allows employees to access customer information, making the customer experience seamless.

Automated Email Campaigns

Email is direct. It’s personal. Users have opted into receiving what you have to say. It also gives you specific data like how many people open it, click-through rates (CTR), and user location.

Your email client can act as its own CRM. It keeps track of many pieces of data about users. 

Popular automated email marketing clients include MailChimp, Drip, Constant Contact, Salesforce, ConvertKit, and Brevo. 

Many users prefer email over other digital communications. Automation can help deliver the best email campaign results. MailChimp, for example, is free, easy to use, and offers many pre-built campaign templates. 

Find the right formula. Mix and match lead capture forms, a landing page, and email campaigns. Combining automation techniques can nurture leads until they become loyal customers. 

Marketing platforms like HubSpot can integrate with Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and other business tools. 

HubSpot can run retargeting campaigns. Retargeting allows you to market to landscaping leads who interacted with your business in the past. It takes ads, social media posts, videos, emails, your website, or a combination of these into account.