Advertising your lawn care business is essential, from lead generation to customer referral programs
Many lawn care companies strive to stand out from the local competition, stay busy through the slow season, and generate leads. To help you overcome these common challenges, we’ve put together a list of effective ideas to market your lawn care services. Lead-generating lawn care advertising starts with knowing the right channels to use.
There are a variety of lawn care advertising channels you can experiment with. To help you choose, we’ve ranked each idea below based on the experience level required (beginner, intermediate, or advanced) and the general cost you’ll incur from $—$$$.
Keep in mind that every business is unique. Not all of these lawn care advertising examples will suit your specific needs, and there’s no pressure to try them all. Start by picking a few (or even just one) of the options below and building your advertising strategy from there.
Experience level: Beginner
General cost: $–$$
Qualified leads are critical to the success of any lawn care business. One way to connect with the people in your local area who may be interested in gardening, mowing, and weed control is through a lead generation service. These services leverage technology and massive reach to help you precisely target the potential clients you’re looking for.
For example, Angi connects people with local businesses, allowing them to read reviews and request quotes directly. Lawn care service providers receive detailed information about projects and a way to contact these leads.
Some best practices for using a lead generation service include:
Responding promptly to requests in a day or less to get a jump on the competition.
Asking detailed questions to demonstrate your knowledge and provide accurate quotes.
Proofreading written quotes and responses to maintain a professional appearance. Free tools like Grammarly can help with this.
Automating lead generation saves you time and frees you up to focus on existing lawn care projects and customers.
A lead generation service like Angi provides a convenient way to manage leads, provide quotes, respond to reviews, and track growth all in one spot.
You may need to quickly scale your business and your team to deal with the increased volume of leads you may receive.
Experience level: Advanced
General cost: $$–$$$
PPC advertising refers to paid campaigns you can run on search engines such as Google or Bing. These ads appear at the top of the search results, meaning prospects will see you first when searching for the lawn care-related terms you target with your campaigns. Your ads will rank based on how much you pay relative to the competition.
Be sure to direct your ads to a matching landing page on your website where prospects can take action. Showcase your strengths along with a special offer.
Show up in top search positions for lawn care searches in your local area
Maintain full control over your budget and only pay if someone clicks your ad
Target specific market segments with different keywords and website pages
Requires lots of time and trial-and-error before ads become effective
Best left to digital marketing experts from an agency or in-house marketing department
Experience level: Beginner
General cost: $
Printed advertisements for your landscaping business, such as flyers, are simple for anyone to create in a word processor like Microsoft Word. You can also use a free design tool like Canva or PicMonkey that will have templates. You can print flyers at home to keep costs low or at a print shop.
Place flyers on bulletin boards in local stores or distribute them door to door in target neighborhoods.
Best practices for creating flyers for your landscaping company include:
Make them easy to read with white space, bulleted lists, and only one or two fonts.
Staple a business card to each flyer for people to save and reference later.
Highlight reliability, professionalism, and the beauty of your mowing work.
No need to state prices. Use terms like “competitive rates.”
Provide contact information.
One variation on the door-to-door flyer is a door hanger, typically printed on weather-proof paper and designed to fit any doorknob. These can be slightly more expensive due to their quality, but they are more eye-catching. You’ll find templates for these when you search online or inquire at your local print shop.
Easy DIY advertising method
Print hundreds or thousands of flyers at low cost
Catch homeowners or office owners right where they live with door-to-door distribution
Recipients can easily discard them
Experience level: Intermediate
General cost: $
Digital marketing is effective, but there’s something to be said for the power of traditional lead generation channels. Spread awareness about your lawn care company by becoming active in your local community. Volunteer your time at community gardens and town cleanup events wearing a shirt with your company’s logo, and always have business cards on hand.
Another lawn care advertising idea is establishing partnerships to share referrals with other professionals in your service area. Handypeople, house painters, plumbers, and pavers all work with homeowners and businesses who could make ideal clients for your lawn care service. Be sure to provide the value you want to receive. Take the initiative to send the first referrals before you expect any in return.
Little to no cost is required
Referral customers who trust your partners are likely to trust you
You can’t control the quality or amount of leads you receive
Your business may eventually outgrow those of your partners
Experience level: Intermediate
General cost: $$
Word of mouth is one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise your landscaping business. Clients who are thrilled with their lawn or garden will often be eager to share their joy with friends, family, and neighbors. In turn, those friends, family, and neighbors are more likely to trust the quality of your work and reach out to you for similar service.
But pure word of mouth can be an unreliable advertising method for lawn care professionals. That’s where a referral reward program comes in. Encourage clients to “Refer a Friend” and offer a referral bonus in exchange for spreading the word about your business. It could be a small cash reward or a 10% discount on a service you already provide to them.
Rewards can set you apart from similarly-priced competitors
Referral programs can’t stand alone and must be backed by exceptional service
Every lawn care service provider is familiar with the slow season. Leads for lawn care, gardening, and seeding naturally slow down in the fall and winter as temperatures drop and maintenance needs diminish. You shouldn’t maintain the same advertising strategy year-round, and you likely can’t afford to. However, that doesn’t mean you should pause advertising for your landscaping company completely.
Instead, switch your efforts to focus on services exclusive to the slow season. Lawn care businesses can provide fall yard cleanup and leaf removal, winter snow removal, and gutter cleaning in the early spring.
Adjust your advertising accordingly with new offers for these landscaping services. You can also keep your business top of mind for existing customers with discounts or other incentives. For example, offer a discount if they schedule spring lawn care services a few months early. Locking them in before the regular season reduces the chance that they’ll sign on with a competitor.
Take care to fully prepare before you start spending your resources on a new advertising strategy for your lawn care business. Before you get started with marketing or advertising for your lawn care business, make sure you have the following items in order:
You can put as much or as little time as you want into advertising your lawn care services. You’ll likely see more results as you scale your efforts, but you also may need to hire a team member, marketing department, or agency to take over the work so you can focus on running your business.
Once you start advertising your company, people searching for a lawn care service provider are bound to come across your website, reviews, and more. Take the time to design a clean, professional website with detailed contact information and content about your business history, credentials, and full selection of services.
You can also encourage your clients to leave positive reviews. Make it easy for people to leave feedback online by encouraging them to leave positive reviews on specific profiles, such as Angi or Facebook.
Especially if you’ve never advertised before, it can be tough to know how much to budget. Turf Magazine notes that experts recommend budgeting 2% to 3% of your gross (not net) annual revenue if you’re a small business. You can scale up from there as you get a sense of how effective your investment is.
No advertising solution is one-size-fits-all, and you may need to test out multiple different ideas before you find the best fit for your lawn care business.
As you begin to explore marketing your small business, sign up for Angi Ads so you can get more leads in your area.
