Money Worries
By DeeAnn Schuttish, Designer and Owner, Green Life Studios
Considered a luxury, and possibly a liability, landscapes are less the focus of the typical landscape customer’s budget these days. There is probably no landscape professional who has not felt the economy’s impact, even as a measure of time spent in the field. Only a couple of years ago, few landscapers needed to worry about marketing beyond who could best design a distinctive logo and sign for their truck. Now, if you don’t have a web site, you may feel the need to worry. These times will pass. For now, keeping yourself and your employees gainfully employed can be, in many ways, both a social service and a noble cause. To market yourself as a landscape professional, you need to:
- Stay in front of the customer
- Focus on customers needs, not wants
- Find inexpensive ways of advertising
- Develop a web site and a mission statement if you don’t already have either
- Educate yourself, your employees and your customers about important landscape practices
Here are the details.
Stay in Front of the Customer. Out of sight is out of mind. Visit your customers, or call them if you can’t, just to remind them that you are there. Don’t email. Most of us have so much email it’s depressing, customers included. If your customers have questions or are contemplating landscape changes in the future, you want to be the first to know about them. When you visit, bring with you a few conversation starters, such as a soil moisture meter, maybe a downspout rain diverter, samples of in-line drip, and brochures or copies of magazine articles describing your preferred weather-based irrigation controllers or a beautiful, colored concrete technique. For a single family homeowner, pull a TreeGator out of your back pocket and talk about rainwater collectors if they give you the time. Be ready when they ask where they can buy your soil moisture meter, by keeping a supply of new ones in your truck.
Sprinkler Repair
Focus on Customer Needs, Not Wants. You may be surprised by what some customers “want”. Many landscape customers have money, but with the uncertainty about our economy so thick you may almost feel it in the air, customers may be reluctant to spend their money on landscapes and other supposed luxuries. Not all landscape services are alike, however. Some, like maintenance, are necessary, and others have moved higher on people’s to-do list as a result of their economizing on travel, or a new-found abundance of free time. Furthermore, not all landscape customers are alike. Landscape professionals who recognize these customers, and focus on unique and developing needs will be the first to land new business.
Your knowledge and experience as a landscape professional will be indispensable to customers who want to save water, protect the portion of their home value attributable to landscape, to prepare for the increased risk of fire that comes with drought, to reduce their lawn because their kids no longer need it, or to lower their maintenance obligation because extended vacations risk plant loss, or because their physical abilities are waning. Meanwhile, multi-family residential property managers and owners are racing to renovate their landscapes as part of a strategy to keep property values from slipping (crucial to loan financing), and particularly to retain quality tenants or attract new ones in what has become a very competitive rental market. Smaller hotels, restaurants and businesses may be ready to jump on that track too.
Customers with the most money are less concerned with saving money on water. If they care about the consequences of water shortage, fire or the impacts of their urban runoff, chances are they have already done something about it. What these customers value are learning, aesthetics, self actualization and transcendence. Almost all appreciate living or working in an aesthetic environment, which explains why many think nothing of renovating their already magazine-quality landscapes. Many are attracted to actions by which they can create a legacy, as long as vivid meaning and discernible value can be attached to it. In other words, well-off customers desire to enhance the world’s condition — to “make a difference”– in which case nothing less than an inspiring idea like sustainability will do.
As landscape professionals, we have the ability to inspire. Aesthetic gardens in place of water-guzzling lawns, firescaping that serves as a model to others and protects neighbors from fire, landscaping practices that dramatically reduce contribution to stream erosion and other consequences of urban runoff – these are the landscaping services with potential to inspire. Landscape professionals who demonstrate knowledge and enthusiasm for such goals are likely to help customers understand that spending money on landscape services may be an act of good will.
Guerilla Marketing Book
Find Less Expensive Ways of Advertising. Word of mouth is the best advertising there is and has been the mainstay of landscape professionals’ marketing since probably the Renaissance. Word of mouth still works, but will not trump the effects of a shrinking economy. Mail marketing is feeling ever more expensive and resource wasteful. Your word is now your best marketing tool. Write articles, volunteer for speaking engagements, make phone calls, create a how-to video (make sure it is edited before you distribute it – any college kid with a Mac computer will probably do).
Consider your target customers’ other activities when you decide where and what marketing to do. You might aid a church congregation in planning a small garden project, educate them a little in the process, then supervise their work and loan tools to create interaction and good will, as well as a long-lasting impression of trustworthiness to potential customers. Offer your landscape services in the form of a gift certificate auctioned at a private school fundraiser. Arrange a visit to a third-grade elementary school class and colorfully tell a story which describes the work you do. Lastly, meet the owners of local pool maintenance companies and mobile dry cleaning services for a cup of coffee to brainstorm what marketing opportunities you might collaborate on.
Web Site
Develop a Web Site and Mission Statement. This is kind of like posting a profile with an online dating service. A web site forces you to think about who you really are, what you’ve accomplished, how your customers see you, how they might see you, and to be creative about it. Without fail, ask your customers, family and friends to review your web site, how they would be inclined to describe you, and what comes first to their mind when people ask about you. Then highlight these qualities with high impact verbs and colorful photos on your web page. Your friends can critique your choice of a domain name too, and who knows, maybe one idea will be worth a switch. You are likely to be surprised what other people come up with; they don’t have the curse of self-familiarity that prevents you from seeing yourself the way they do.
Don’t forego the full head shot photo. (No shadows and baseball caps, please!) People judge who they can trust by what they see in a face. In that vein, make sure your picture is one your grandmother would approve of. And don’t be intimidated if you know nothing about planning a web site. Visit elance.com or search your LinkedIn contacts to find qualified developers and graphic designers, often for a fraction of what you expect for a price. Just a few pages, or even only one, can be all it takes to assert a web presence.
CLCA's Water Management Class
Educate Yourself, Employees and Customers. Certainly, you’ve already thought about this. You know more than your employees and customers; you are an expert. Possibilities range far: from something as serious as training to obtain CLCA’s Water Management Certificate, to something as practical as watching an arborist/tree contractor snuff out someone’s tired lawn with the sheet mulching process, or even something as fun as helping your kids stage experiments on neighbors’ lawns, to determine how well corn gluten meal performs as a non-toxic, pet-safe, child-safe weed preventer, of course. Before summer is over, crack open a community college course catalog and peruse the drawing or drafting courses or perhaps find a book at the library or bookstore to read more about marketing and to come up with some marketing ideas of your own.
In Closing… Be a comfort, bring a surprise, be a blessing that’s not in disguise to get your customers thinking with their right brain again. Even with just one of these marketing tools, you are bound to succeed in establishing or renewing relationships with customers that will pay off in the form of new business for you, and a fresh respect for all landscape professionals.
June 2009
“Make no little plans — they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”
- Daniel Burnham
