At some point in the lifetime of your landscaping business, you’ll come to a crossroads that will make you think, “Am I happy with what I have, or do I want to grow?” If you want to grow your business, your focus should not only be on bringing in new business; it should also focus on closing more landscaping leads, optimizing the business, and improving your profit margins.According to a Jobber survey of 1,000 U.S. adults:
- 59% of consumers ages 25 to 44 prefer to schedule appointments via an online platform, email, or a mobile app;50% of consumers would stop using a small home service business if their response time is slow;
- 24% of consumers think that small businesses struggle with customer communication.
What does this data tell us? You need to provide what the customers are asking. If you plan to grow your landscaping business, the first question you need to ask yourself is: Is your business currently equipped to provide what your customers are expecting? If not, your chances of survival are bleak, let alone grow.While hundreds of landscaping business growth strategies are likely to exist, the following 9 will take your business to the next level quickly and efficiently.
Tips for Growing a Landscaping Business
1. Increase your online presence
With more than 86% of people turning to the internet to research before making a buying decision, it’s not enough to rely on word-of-mouth marketing. You must have an online presence to scale up your business. The following are some effective online marketing strategies on how to grow a lawn care business:
- Claim your Google My Business Page to drive more traffic to your website.
- Post on social media frequently to boost your word of mouth marketing, build positive brand awareness for your lawn care business, and increase customer retention.
- Build your email list to send informational or promotional emails to your audience that build awareness and drive conversions.
- Build a website to gain your company organic leads and the opportunity for even more business.
- Have a profile on online review sites to develop a good online reputation for your landscaping business.
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2. Automate Your Operations
Automation is the catalyst for any business growth. When you add more customers to scale up your business, you must automate your operations to free up your time so you can focus on the revenue-generating aspects of your business. Moreover, automation saves time and money and helps you provide an exceptional customer experience. Here is a list of things you can automate:
Invoicing
By automating your invoicing process, you don’t need to worry about forgetting to send an invoice for your landscape services or wondering if the payment is made.Bonus Tip:Zuper’s invoice automation software can give your customers the convenience of making payments at the click of a button. It can also help you:
- Create custom invoice templates
- Set up automatic invoice reminders
- Easily track your customer’s payments
Scheduling
The scheduling automation system provides a seamless, error-free resource allocation in real-time with minimal or no human intervention.Bonus Tip:Zuper’s automation scheduling system helps you allocate the right person for the right job in real-time across multiple locations.Integrating your business processes with intelligent landscaping field service management software can automate and streamline a lot of your business operations, including work order management, dispatching, estimates, timesheet management, etc.
3. Become the local expert in your field
You don’t have to do much to become a locally recognized expert in your field. All you have to do is answer people’s questions on a regular basis and put out useful information for them to read, online and offline.When you are putting yourself out as an expert, you are pre-selling yourself and your company. Pre-sold customers are familiar with you, trust you, and are willing to buy your services, regardless of the price.
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4. Diversify your client base
If you have been servicing only residential clients, you can consider opening yourself up to commercial clients. However, this transition is likely to be daunting as you’ll need to have contracts made, increase the insurance coverage, possibly upgrade your equipment and add more employees.
5. Cultivate referrals
Referrals are the fastest way to increase the number of your customers. If you want to speed up the word of mouth process, incentivize your clients and create a win-win situation for your company and its clients.For example, you can give a complimentary mowing, aeration, or hedge trim service to a customer who refers you to others.
6. Expand your service area
If it’s commercially viable, consider covering more ground and expanding your services to the surrounding areas. This will open up new business opportunities for you. This expansion will require you to conduct market research. Consider conducting surveys via email or phone or gathering quick opinions on social media.
7. Develop off-season service
Diversification can help you grow your business, even in off-season months. Winter months are not landscaping-friendly. So when snow sets, clients don’t have traditional landscaping needs. But your business must keep generating revenue all year round. So, you can introduce seasonal services to compensate for lost revenue. Some potential off-season services include snow removal, outdoor holiday decoration, etc.
8. Partner with other lawn mowing companies
Partner with other lawn mowing companies and ask them if they are willing to send their extra work to you. Pay them a commission for the lawn mowing jobs they send to you.
9. Look after your people
When you look after your employees, they look after you and your business. Pay them what they deserve, give them opportunities to progress in their careers, reward them for their high performance and take care of their training and development needs. When people love the companies for which they work, they’re more likely to put in the hard work to make your business a success.Let’s face it. Scaling your business is hard. Like anything else in life or in business, you have to put in the time and effort if you’re looking to reap the benefits. You probably won’t experience growth right away, but you will see progress if you continue to implement the above growth strategies systematically and consistently.For your automation needs, try Zuper for free today. You’ll see for yourself how well our field management software works and how it can help grow your business.
