Landscaping is a service that is always in need of professionals to carry it out. As long as people have gardens and grounds around their buildings, they’re going to look to professionals to help both maintain and transform them to enhance their lifestyle or increase their property’s value. If you have already been landscaping professionally, but want to take it to the next level, then here are a few ways to grow it into a flourishing business.
Get your online marketing set up
One of the most crucial steps you can help to grow your business is to make sure that it presents itself as a business, instead of looking like a freelancer on the hunt for some work. To that end, you should look at, first of all, setting up your own landscaping website that lays out your services, how you can benefit your clients, and how best to get in touch with you. From there, you should look at getting into social media so that you can quickly respond to client interest, as well as share content that you might post on your blog, such as helping people with their general gardening questions.
Streamline your operations with the right help
Running a full-time business requires a lot of work, and not all of that work is going to be in the performance of the landscaping duties that you might be thinking of. Instead, you might have a lot more admin, scheduling, and otherwise to take care of that can build up to the point that they become overwhelming, even to the detriment of the work that actually makes you money. However, you don’t have to go it all alone, with the help of services like a horticulture consultant that can help you streamline your services and make sure that you’re taking care of all the duties of running a green business. When in doubt, outsourcing can help you take a lot of stress off of your plate and allows you to focus on the work that matters most to you.
Look at how to expand your service area
If you’re worried that you’re not able to source enough work to make your business a true full-time endeavor, then you might have to look at ways to take on more work. This can include physically expanding your services into another area (which might mean getting used to travelling a little more) but it can also include working on your skills to incorporate more services into your landscaping businesses. Finding niches, such as working on commercial properties as well as residential or in providing very specific services that not all general landscapers will, such as xeriscaping, can allow you can potentially reach a lot more clients and, as a result, bring in more consistent revenue. The more specialized your services, the more you can charge, too.
Client retention is vital, too
Aside from working to reach more clients, you should be making more of an effort to keep the clients that you already have, as well. One of the best ways to keep the clients that you have already won is to, of course, provide great services. However, you can also do things like asking them to sign up to a mailing list with the help of email marketing software. This way, after you’ve helped them transform their garden, they might later receive an email offering them a slight discount on general garden maintenance services. You can upsell them on your other services after you have already secured their custom in one, thus increasing their lifetime value as a customer.
Make use of word-of-mouth
Marketing is effective when done well. However, having your happy clients market for you might be even more powerful, still. Word of mouth is so reliable because people are much more likely to trust their peers (other consumers) rather than the businesses that have a vested interest in trying to convince them of the benefits of their services. There are plenty of ways to help spread word of mouth, either by simply asking your clients to write testimonials and reviews of your services, to using referral campaigns that can reward existing clients with things like discounts if they’re willing to share the word and they get their friends to sign up to your services.
Alongside the tips above, providing quality landscaping, great service, accurate quotes, and in general making your services easy to use are going to be the keys to your success.
