Did you know that you should be marketing for your commercial lawn service now? Or even starting back in January and February?
Spring is here, and the snow is melting. As soon as the ground dries up, it’s time to put down pre-emergent weed control and start lawn fertilization services for your commercial properties.
6 Tips for Getting More Commercial Landscape Accounts
While you can’t go back in time to start marketing for spring cleanup jobs right after Christmas, you can still promote your commercial lawn care business. Here are six tips for picking up more landscape maintenance contracts:
Make sure you have enough equipment to handle more commercial properties. For example, do you need to buy more mowers or hire more crews to take the extra jobs that come in?
It’s a good idea to stick to either residential or commercial clients because it takes a different set of selling, marketing, and contracting with property managers and HOA boards compared to individual homeowners.
Do you know the different property types that make up commercial properties? You can choose to serve government, educational, office, HOAs, manufacturing, and medical properties.
Does your sales department—or salesperson—know how to sell lawn service maintenance packages to the different types of commercial properties?
You want to know who makes the final decision to work with you. Is it the HOA board, a property owner, asset manager, or facility owner?
Know your competitors because they’re marketing to the same properties as you. You may be competing with lawn service franchises, commercial landscape management companies, or a lawn maintenance business in the same city.
Your sales prospects have plenty of choices when it comes to commercial lawn maintenance companies. What makes you different from your competition? That difference becomes your unique selling proposition (USP). Use it to land more landscaping contracts.
Read more: How to Hire Employees for Your Commercial Lawn Business
6 Tips for Marketing Your Lawn Maintenance Business to Property Managers, HOAs, Facility Managers, and Others
Remember, selling to commercial properties is different than selling your lawn maintenance services to homeowners. Know your clients’ pain points and how you’ll solve their property problems professionally and on time.
Where you market your commercial lawn maintenance business also determines your success at landing more contracts. Your number one job is to educate your clients on the value of outsourcing their lawn and landscape needs to a professional.
Here’s how to teach prospective and current clients the importance of regular lawn maintenance:
Go where your potential clients are. For example, you’ll find the bulk of your commercial clients on LinkedIn or Twitter rather than on Facebook, which is the opposite for a landscape company marketing to residential customers.
Provide value for your sales prospects. What do your prospects need to know about the benefits and features of lawn and landscape services? You can “teach” these benefits and features through blogs, website content, videos, and Zoom meetings.
Remember, you’re planting seeds. While you may get some bites right away, some of your future sales prospects may follow you for years before they fill out your website’s contact form.
Be yourself when you share your knowledge. You want to act and speak like a professional, but share your passion and knowledge about sound landscape practices.
Connect and build relationships on social media sites, such as LinkedIn. Again, remember building relationships takes time—it doesn’t happen overnight. Plan on becoming a thought leader that takes many years to develop rather than only at the start of each new season.
Go in person and get involved in real estate and community groups. While there are many different ways to network with various groups, don’t forget to lend a helping hand in your community or region.
While you don’t want to help for the sake of finding new clients, realize you’re providing goodwill and free publicity for your company—even if it’s providing the county’s youth baseball teams with uniforms.
Don’t forget about the local Chamber of Commerce. It’s a great way to network, develop your leadership skills, and volunteer with different committees.
Read more: Everything You Need to Know about Lawn Mower Blade Sharpening
Other Business Tips to Get You Ahead of Your Competition for Commercial Property Contracts
Your website’s your virtual office space. Folks will check out your website before they call you.
Make sure your website loads quickly on all mobile devices, use local SEO, and post regular blog and video content with educational value to your sales prospects. Register your business with Google, so your sales prospects can find you with a quick search.
Since you only use the best lawn and landscape equipment, don’t forget to stop at MowMore for all of your equipment replacement parts. Contact our customer service by calling 1-800-866-9667 or by visiting our customer service.
Sources:
LawnandLandscape.com, “5 Marketing Mistakes Most Landscape Contractors Get Wrong.”
LandscapeLeadership.com, “How to Get Commercial Lawn Accounts and Landscaping Contracts.”
Ibid, “Tip Sheet: Marketing and Selling Commercial Landscaping Services.”