GopherHaul Lawn Care Marketing Business

http://www.gopherforum.com Here is a really interesting question that was posted on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. One of our friends wrote in and he had this idea for his new lawn care business name. His name is Brian S. and he was asking â??What do you guys think about naming the business B.S. Lawn Care???? They happen to be my initials, do you think this would be a bad name or a good one cause people would remember it????â?? Another lawn care business owner responded by saying â??that is a good questionâ?¦it may be catchy at first. But if you mess up one lawn or upset someone it may backfire and become a joke. Here is a motto for you, B.S. Lawn Care - The only manure is in our Triple Mix!!!â?? Brian then wrote â??The marketing tag lines for B.S. Lawn care would make for a good marketing angle. I was thinking about putting something at the bottom of advertisements,signs and card â??Owned and Operated by Brian S.â?? Maybe they would put the to together and be like Ohhhhhhh.â?? You know self deprecating humor can really be funny. If you went this route I would probably play it up and use it to your advantage because it would catch peopleâ??s eye and get them talking which is so important. You could say maybe B.S. Lawn Care In case you were wondering, The B.S. stands for Brian Smith.Then maybe work this image somewhere on your truck as a joke to make people smile and talk about you. Or maybe even use it on your shirt or in a logo. Oh my gosh that would be a riot. Would this work? Who knows. But I gotta say it certainly would stand out and get people talking. You could go with other mottoâ??s as well like these. Tired of all the bull? Try the company thatâ??s No Bull! or B.S. Lawn Care. (picture) The company that is NO BULL! Brian responded â??That t-shirt is great, I showed it to my wife and she loved it. Iâ??m really thinking of going with that name. I posted the same question on another site to see what people thought. Some thought it was good others thought it would be offensive, I donâ??t think they had a sense of humor. I think I might run with the idea of the no bull S*** sign as a logo. Thanks for the great idea if you or anyone else thinks of anything let me know.â?? My take is most people just donâ??t want to stand out. That is why most simply choose to work at a job. When you want to stand out a little, you might start your own business but it probably wonâ??t be that successful. So then what happens is the majority of businesses are trying to fit into the predefined roles and categories they see others are in.Then ultimately no one stands out. Once in a while you will get a wildman out there who just goes for it and does something different but more often than not people are afraid to stand out and be different. To me this is different. I canâ??t say how the general public will handle this and thatâ??s why it just might work. Remember without risk, there is no reward. It kind makes me think of how Wendyâ??s had created the â??whereâ??s the beefâ?? ad campaign and it really took them from behind a plain jane fast food restaurant to the a whole new level. It got people talking and got people thinking. There was huge buzz about it. There were t-shirts made of the old lady saying â??whereâ??s the beef?â?? I say go for it but keep in mind I like craziness and zaniness. Another member wrote â??At first I thought B.S. In the name would be a bad idea! But the T-Shirt idea is great! The name at the bottom takes all negative aspects away.â?? So with all of this, what do you think? Do you like it or dislike it? Let me know or get on the forum and tell all of us. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com Back in the days when you were starting your lawn care business, did you encounter the â??Why would I hire you if youâ??re so new?â?? dilemma? Iâ??d like to have some way of spinning that question into a positive if and when that should arise. Thatâ??s the question asked to us by Scott, a new lawn care business owner on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Without a doubt some lawn care customers, if they sense you are new, will try and screw with you. They will try and push you around on a lot of things such as price and how much work they want you to do. Just be wary of this. How do you spin it? Well I would say two things off the top of my head. Reliability and affordability. You would be amazed at how many start up lawn care businesses are just not reliable. Show them you are reliable and you will win their trust. Believe in yourself. You can do this. Andy shared that he never had a lawn care customer ask. The key to starting out is to look and act big. If you do this, you will actually believe you are big and everything will fall into place. It does take some cash to get there however it pays off big time to have professional looking shirts & pants as well as lettered vehicles and trailers. If something needs a little paint to look great then personally we do it. All the equipment is washed at the end of the day, no exception, even the mowers, they always look new and clients like that. Keith added I think everyoneâ??s been in that situation. Many newbie lawn care business owners fall into the trap of lowering their prices to attract customers. In my opinion, lowering your price is a big mistake. Your customers will expect your prices to remain low and will resist when you try to raise them. Besides that, youâ??re simply selling yourself short when you should be making good money. Instead, arm yourself with knowledge. Obtain the ability to discuss problems with their yards. Now, youâ??re new and you donâ??t have the experience and knowledge to diagnose a wide range of problems. Instead, pick one or two problem areas that are common to all your prospects. If everyone in your area has shrubbery beds, become a source of information on proper pruning. Learn all you can about proper mulch application. If everyone has clover in their yards, learn proper mowing techniques which will reduce clover production and discuss those solutions with your prospects. Never seek customers from a position of desperation (i.e. - Iâ??m new, please let me cut your lawn). Do the opposite by making them need you more than you need them. If you know more than just how to run a lawn mower over their grass, and you can demonstrate that knowledge to your customers, you will quickly build a roster of profitable customers. Joe shared if you have ever cut the lawns for family and friends, I would suggest you should take pictures of the jobs you have done and made a small photo album, you could show potential lawn care customers the work you have already done and that can take away the tag that you have been a Professional Lawn Care Specialist for a short time. Use it to your advantage when this question comes up. Take some before and after shots. Be BIG and believe in Yourself. Walk the Walk. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com Lawn care business website search engine optimization tip. Did you know you can appear on google�s search engine even if you don�t have a website? And if you have a lawn care website, here is a tip that you really need to take advantage of. The best part about all of this, is that it�s FREE. It�s amazing what you can learn when you read the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Google has a section on their search engine called the �Local Business Center.� Do a quick search on google to find it. Within that section you can add your business to their list and what that will do is bring your business listing to the top of the search engine result page where the map appears. One of our forum members had added his lawn care business to this FREE listing and here is what he said �I just wanted to let you guys know i�m #3 on the first page of google and this is the third day after I filled out the information.� Isn�t that fantastic? Another forum member tried this and wrote Hey everyone I just wanted to let everyone know that I logged onto the google local business center and put in all my info and it has been fantastic. I put in all the services I provide and almost everyone comes up first when you search for the service and my area. I have only been on one week and received three calls for big jobs. I think everyone should try it. Now you might be wondering how do you add your information to this site? Here are some directions a forum member shared with us. * Go to google�s main page and click MAPS at the top. * Next on the left hand side you will see put your business on Google maps. Click * Then create a new account. * Remember to put as many keywords as possible to promote yourself. * It should do the same for you as it has done for me.] Try this out and you should see your lawn care business start to appear at the top of search engines. Lawn care business postcard distribution tips. When you are thinking about marketing your lawn care business, why not consider using postcards? That�s what one of our forum members did and he has been getting great results. He wrote Hey, I just wanted to share with you my new oversized postcards. I am very happy with them and have been getting great responses. The top is the front and back is the bottom. I was really impressed with what he was doing so I asked How have you been distributing them? What made you decide to experiment with lawn care postcards? He replied I have just been walking local neighborhoods and placing them at the doors. A few times I decided to write at the top in a red sharpie �Cut Your Lawn $60.00� or whatever I had decided to charge for the area. I have picked up several lawn with that method. As far as the design, I had my logo already in place�. I talked with with a professional graphics designer and he helped out a lot. I told him what we do and a few of my lines and then he got back to me with some ideas and Bam! This is what we got. I was going to use door hangers, actually I had my heart set on that. BUT BUT BUT I decided to use the lawn care postcards because I can use them at the doors BUT also I can give them directly to people and hand them out at local business and so on. If I had tried to hand people door hangers that wouldn�t of looked that professional. Just this one lawn care postcard has given my company a much more professional look. People really like the high quality printing also. The price wasn�t that bad either�.. So I feel that they were well worth the $$ spent. I am working with the same graphics person again right now designing business cards as well. It is great to have these postcards with me ALL THE TIME. When people ask what I do I just say here, let me give you one of my advertisements and hand them one. Their first words are usually �wow, these look great� �. and then � I will keep you in mind� or let so and so know that you do this work. Fantastic lawn care business marketing advice. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com A landscaping and lawn care debt collection letter that works. Do you have a lawn care customer or customers that are telling you repeatedly that the check is in the mail? Maybe they have even go so far as to tell you they arenâ??t going to pay you. One of our Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum Members had to deal with this issue until she sent out a letter that got her dead beat lawn care customer to pay up. Amy: Thanks for the sample collection letter in the Gopher Forum, because of it I was paid. Thatâ??s one deadbeat down and 1 to go! It was a small victory and a boost to my self esteem. Steve: That is great news! Tell us what you did to get paid. I am sure a lot of new lawn care business owners are reading this, wondering what steps you took to get success. Amy: First, I called the Small Claims Court in my County and gathered information on starting a small court claim. How much to file, how much for the Sheriff to serve papers, etc. Then, I gathered my information regarding my deadbeat client; like the dates we performed lawn & garden maintenance and filled in the blanks. I stressed she had 5 days after the receipt of the letter to settle her bill. If not, then I will file a claim against her for theft of services. I went to the post office and sent the letter registered mail. 3 days later, I received her payment in full. I ran to the bank and deposited the check; hoping she didnâ??t put a stop payment on it! Accompanying her check was a little nasty note stating that she was the one who fired us, but that doesnâ??t excuse her nonpayment. Hereâ??s the lawn care business debt collection letter format that I used. I removed the personal information and others who use it can just fill in the blanks appropriately. Dear deadbeat: You had hired ABC Company on (insert date) to perform garden maintenance at 3 week intervals, starting this day. At the same time, you hired us for lawn maintenance at an agreed price of $$, starting this day. Since then, Iâ??ve performed garden maintenance per our contract on this day and lawn maintenance was performed on the following dates. Payment terms per our contract are due upon completion. Payments for the services listed above are now due immediately. Despite several phone calls to you to collect payment, you have stated on 3 seperate occasions that your payment is in the mail. Since I have not received payment to date, your services were terminated by ABC Company on said date, due to theft of services. As per our contract, I am requesting to be paid $$$ for our servicesâ?¦â?¦ To read the rest of this letter and download it in itâ??s entirety visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum free marketing templates section. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com - Where your phone number should appear in your lawn care website. You would think by the title of this article, the story below would be so simple you didnâ??t even have to read it but that is certainly not the case. Most lawn care business owners donâ??t put much time into where their phone number should appear. Just ask yourself where does your phone number appear? One of our forum members had some great information to share in this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. He said You want your phone number PROMINENTLY displayed. You want to make sure you edit your html meta tag description to include your phone number first so your search engine listing will display your lawn care business like this. http://www.your-lawn-care-business.com - 111-222-3333 Joeâ??s lawn care blah blah blah blah blah lawn care in Your City blah blah blah blah blah â?¦. For those that donâ??t know, I asked him what is the importance of having your phone number in that location? Why is it so important? He responded by saying Letâ??s say you lawn care services in Somewhere, Arkansas. Your would want to make your web TITLE to read Somewhere Arkansas Lawn Care Service Your DESCRIPTION would be (assuming this is your website name): http://www.SomewhereLawnCare.com 111-222-3333 Somewhere Arkansas lawn care? We are the lawn service leaders in Somewhere Arkansas. We specialize in landscaping, lawn care, landscape lighting and sprinkler systems in the Somewhere Arkansas area. The phone number will show up in the link desciption on the search engine (depending on the link.) Meaning they may not even visit your site first, because they found what they want, a phone number. The easier you make it to have people contact you, the more contacts you will get. This is great information and I do hope this gets you thinking on how to alter your lawn care business website to display your phone number and contact information. Marketing your lawn care business only with lawn care business cards? Brandon wrote Well these last few weeks I have been completely covered with work. I have picked up several new yard accounts, plus 6 tree removal jobs at about $700 each (average). I have picked up 3 brush clearing jobs. One at $600, one at $1,900, and another at $4,250. That is great news! Can you give us your advice on how you stay busy? What should other lawn care business owners be doing or thinking about in order to get back on track? Especially if they recently got started? Brandon replied â??Well, Most of my work comes from repeat business and referrals. Most of my new business comes from craigslist. I have never spent any money on advertising, except business cards. I have a theory that once you start paying for advertising, you will need to keep paying to keep the work flow coming, so Iâ??ve tried to avoid it from day one. I would suggest just putting yourself out there, and never turn down an opportunity to talk about work with someone. I have started up conversations with MANY people about what I do, and the next thing I knew I was giving a bid to them, or someone they knew. So I guess, talk, talk, talk, and put yourself out there. Let everyone know what you are doing, and donâ??t be afraid to ask someone if they need something done. A lot of the same things you have been saying on the forum.

GopherHaul 32 - Topsoil & Mulch Calculator and improving your Lawn Care Business Sales Discussion http://www.gopherforum.com - Why is my lawn care business marketing not working? When you are getting your lawn care business started and you dont have many personal contacts, the situation can be rough. Letâ??s take a look at what our friend and fellow Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum member did to go from getting no return calls to many. Scott wrote So my flyers & business cards have been sent out all over, a lot of my cards need to be restocked in stores because they are almost all gone. Yet I have gotten no calls. I only have a few days left, I can only do so much. Iâ??m mass producing flyers again & plan to send them out to the other areas of my starter city. I myself have walked door to door handing out 7000 flyers & Im losing it! I dont wanna be out for weeks with these flyers so Im gonna just start a.s.a.p without stopping until they are all out! Ill give you guys some amateur shots of my flyer & card, you can tell me what the hell Iâ??m doing wrong. Steve: You are doing a fantastic job. What you are doing with your flyers and business cards is good, however, you will find more success selling people to people. Selling to those you know or those that know you. Have you considered picking up the phone and try to sell to people who are existing customers or people you know? The next what you can do is work the neighbors of your customers. Tell them you are services Mr. Jones lawn and you would like to service theirs too. Scott: Alright, so I decided to confront my snow removal customers. They have all received my flyer, but once they knew it was me Scottâ?? its like they insisted on hiring me. I told them, the starting price for lawn service is $420.00, but because your you, & you helped me out during winter, it will only be $400.00 You canâ??t beat that price, but hey, they were my winter customers! I now have tons of appointments next weekâ?¦ I guess I learned something, call people & SELL yourself! Do you find it difficult when looking at a mulch bed to know how much mulch or topsoil you will need to cover the area? Trying to figure out the math for it can be very difficult. Well stop worrying about buying too much mulch / topsoil or not enough and have to go back to the supply store to get more. Use this handy topsoil and mulch calculator. This online lawn care business tool is free to use online. Just click on the calculators link at the top of the Gopher Forum page. You can figure out the amount of mulch or topsoil needed for a rectangle, circular or even a triangle shaped mulch bed. Try this tool out and I bet you are going to love it. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com - Should I go with a signed or verbal lawn care agreement? There are a lot of new lawn care business owners just getting started this year due to many economic factors. Because they are new, they dont know where they can get away with using a verbal agreement when providing lawn care services or when they need to use a signed agreement. I want to use these recent discussion as an example to help you expand your business knowledge base. Dean wrote us and said Here is my situation: I posted an ad on craigslist to perform lawn care for any realtors who have vacant homes that need lawn care. I was contacted by one wanting mowing, seeding, plugging, fertilizing and pine straw put out. This job was for two homes, both on the same street. I came up with a price for labor and got prices for material. I was then contacted and told I could go ahead with job. The problem is I had no address to send the bill to and had not met anyone in person. I called back and asked for an address for which I could send an invoice to and guy said the work was for someone else and he would get back to me with an address. I have not heard from him as of yet. I am looking at spending $400.00 out of my pocket for materials to do this work. I think there should be a meeting and signing of a contract to ensure I am covered in getting paid for this work. Without any meeting or something signed if whoever decides not to pay, I have no recourse in recouping my expenses. I need to know from all of you if I am right and should not do any work until there is something signed to cover me and the lawn care customer so everyone gets what they paid for. All suggestions are welcomed. Eli: You are correct. I think you have plenty of reason to be concerned. I would not perform any work until you have laid eyes on the lawn care customer and, especially in this strange case, until you have a signed contract in hand. I think I would make sure the contract included specifically who is responsible for payment. Then I would make sure that the person signing the contract also prints his name (I would probably have a spot for him to print and another spot for him to sign rather than just having him sign and print his name below the signature.). I think I would start out with drawing up the contract and then calling him to ask for a place to meet him or whoever is authorizing the work. Make it clear to him during your telephone conversation that no materials will be ordered and no work will be done until a contract is signed. Maybe even ask for some money upfront to purchase materials. This would help ensure they are willing to go through with the deal. I suspect someone is trying to pull a fast one on you. I would not lose a lot of sleep over the deal until you have met the customer and have that signed contract in hand. Victor: We have had past problems with realtors and owners who are actively selling/managing foreclosure properties. We only do prepayments with signed agreements for these types of customers now. We either meet with them for signing or mail them an agreement. They can provide guaranteed full payment or a good faith deposit in cash, check or money order or via PayPal. Once payment and agreement is received/cleared then the work will start. And so it goes with ongoing service. With renters, we asked that they provide their drivers license # on an agreement in the event of defaulted payments. These are great responses from people who are in the know. Dont be so desperate to get your business started and do this kind of work only to find out when its completed that you cant find the person to pay you. If you would like to join in on this discussion visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com Which lawn care business logo would you choose? At first glance, you would think choosing a lawn care business logo would be easy. Just pick the one that for whatever reason, stands out to you. Maybe the color, maybe the boldness, maybe the way it looks on your truck. But as we will see in this discussion there is more to choosing a lawn care business logo than just those issues. Lawn guy wrote on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum â??opinions please, there is one lawn care business logo I like the best but I want to get a general opinion on this thanks.â?? Tom wrote â??I like the smiley face logo one the best. The smiling face says Iâ??m confident and want to be a friend of the customer. You will be as happy with the results as I am producing them.â?? Lawn guy responded â??I like that one also. I live in a very rural country area were everyone is kind of scared/shy of big businesses so I think it kinda shows a home town feel too. I am not exactly sure why, but its just different. Itâ??s more personal and associated rather than an industrial or high tech style logo. Does that make any sense?â?? Tom: â??It does to me! Seek friendship and indicate your desire to help solve their problems.â?? I like the idea as well. I do feel it conveys friendliness and fun. It makes me think the owner would be approachable and easy to work with. You could have business cards that say Steve â??The Lawn Guy.â?? And then you could become known in your area as the lawn guy. You could make promotional videos that teach viewers about lawns and lawn care. The more you become the go to guy for lawns the more you will be able to sell your lawn care services! Great points everyone and I am very glad to see how much thought goes into choosing the best lawn care business logo for your area. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit the post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Top voted lawn care equipment. Spring is in the air and many lawn care businesses are looking to buy new lawn care equipment. But before you go out and buy it, check the Gopher Forum equipment review section. There you can review what equipment other lawn care business owners are using. What they recommend and what they wonâ??t buy again. You can also see a listing of deals on new and used lawn mowers, line trimmers, leaf blowers plus many other categories. Letâ??s take a look at a pie chart that shows the voting for lawn mowers. As you can see, the top three lawn mowers voted by the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum are the Exmark Lazer Z, the Walker Model MT and Toroâ??s model 74901. Consider these mowers when you are looking to equip your lawn care business. Next up is the most voted for line trimmers. The top models chosen are the Echo SRM 2305, the Stihl FS90R, and the Tanaka TBC 225. Make sure you get on the Gopher Forum to submit your vote and product reviews of your favorite lawn care equipment. Last but not least is the most voted for back pack leaf blowers. The most voted for leaf blower is the Husqvarna 150BT. That model is followed up by the Stihl BR 550. Lastly the Troy Bilt 269580 blower wraps up the top 3 list. Many reasons can effect why a leaf blower, line trimmer or mower make the top of the list. It could be price, durability or functionality. Each one of these products seem to have just what the members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum were looking for to help keep their lawn care businesses running at full speed. Remember your vote counts, so get on the Gopher Forum today and tell us which equipment you liked and which you didnt! If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com We had a great conversation on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum that I wanted to share with you. Feel free to jump on it and offer your views as well. Luna joined up on the forum and wrote Ã?Â?Hello! Just joined here and was looking to get opinions on a couple of truck magnets I designed for my significant others lawn care business. I pretty much handle his marketing/advertising and recently noticed some local business putting out specials/adverts using the down economy angle. My boyfriend is currently/interchangeably displaying one on the back of his tailgate above his website address and opposite his regular business magnet. He just started the business in May 2008 after a layoff and is 30 accounts strong right now just by himself. Weve babystepped everything, pretty much in a methodical/grassroots/DIY level from the beginning. I have attached the magnet layouts. Both can also be seen on the websites Main and Promo/Specials page. IÂ?d love to hear what you think. Steve: Â?I can totally understand his point but you know, to me thats what marketing is all about. Its all about being different. If it can be controversial, even better. You want people to be talking about your marketing and if it isnt different, if it doesnt stand out, then you arenÃ?Â?Ã?Â?t going to get attention. One of the things that I have been amazed with is that it takes soooo much energy to get a business started and running and you have to really be different from the average person to even attempt it. But why do the same people who are the adventurers, the crazy ones, those with enough energy to start a business then decide they have to keep things tame in their marketing? Why do they not want to stand out? What makes people so afraid to stand out? To be different? To gain attention? Especially when that attention can get you more work? Take for instance, Richard Branson, owner of the Virgin empire, such as Virgin airways. Here he is promoting his airline dressed in drag. Guess what. He got media attention and here we are talking about it. If you dont do something different, you can only at best expect the same results everyone else gets. So for all this, I applaud you for being creative! Luna: Thanks for your comments! Regarding the Obama marketing magnet angle, my boyfriend was uncomfortable with it on his truck and removed it about a week ago. I kept the picture of it on the website, however, but with the lead-in tag line above it that says: We currently have about 6-7 solid prepaid accounts. It was a bit hard to do prepays in the beginning due to it not generating regular cash flow. However, the couple of ones that we had in the beginning did help to fund some start-up equipment purchases. Once we established over 20 accounts (and we hit 35 officially this week!), prepays have been a nice chunk of change when the payments comes due. A prepayment on a new account today just helped us purchase a new Echo backpack blower! Anyhow, when my boyfriend goes out on an estimate call and meets with customers he often tells me about the positive feedback he gets regarding our doorhangers and website, most especially. We offer a lot on our promotions and specials page, all things we will honor in a heartbeat, but not as many people take advantage as youd think (so we Ã?Â?Ã?Â?re not losing our butts per se). The general consensus seems to be people do NOTICE our marketing attempts/specials and do respond positively without being prompted. My speculation is that they feel that they seem to be getting more with BladeMaster Mowing versus with the general competition and consider us a more value-added option, if only Ã?Â?Ã?Â?psychologically. Again, thank you so much for your comments! I love this website! Ill keep posting on successes and misses. Steve: Why not prompt them though? For instance, why not come up with a special say spring flowers planted in your yard for $X9.95, but hurry and contact us by XX/XX/XX date. We need to get your order into our supplier to be able to offer you that discounted price. Then a week before the date, send one last reminder email maybe upping the ante. Offer some additional option if they call you by that date. The world goes by pretty fast and I like getting updates on sales when its something I am interested in. I think others do as well. Do you? Luna: I like, and can see, your point about using more direct and active Ã?Â?Ã?Â?prompting with the way you presented that Spring flower special example. I just may try something like that and perhaps show a sample before and after picture pre/post-flowers, tree trimming or mulching via email or postcard to add a nice visual. Thanks for opening me up to the possibilities! So keep all this in mind when you are experimenting with your lawn care business marketing and join in on the discussions at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

http://www.gopherforum.com Welcome to the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business School. This FREE course the "Class 1 - Lawn Care Business Operator's Certificate" is designed to give the new lawn care business owner a knowledge base to draw from and build a successful lawn care business. To sign up and enroll, visit the Gopher Forum. There are a total of 69 lessons to this course with 193 multiple choice questions. Each lesson has on average 3 multiple choice questions for you to answer after reading. The total time to complete this course depends on how much you read per sitting. I would suggest pacing yourself and reading 3 lessons per sitting, which would take you 23 days to complete. I do feel if you spend the time to focus and learn the content within this class, you will have a competitive advantage over other start up lawn care business owners. Don't re-create the wheel when you don't have too. The lessons in here pull from years of discussions with thousands of lawn care business owners on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Now take an important step in the growth of your business and start your education today. When you are finished, please click the apply for graduation button and if you pass the course requirements, you will receive a certificate to prove you have indeed graduated. I do look forwards to your feedback on this class. Lecture Title #1: Getting started. Don't make it a big deal. How do you get started? Just by starting. Keep it simple. Get some business cards made or make them on your computer and start handing them out to your friends, neighbors and family. Let everyone know you are in business. Knock on your neighbors' doors and offer them your lawn care business services. Do they need lawn cutting, yard cleanup, gutter cleaning or any other services? Ask them how you can help out and then do it. You don't need any fancy equipment. A simple mower, trimmer and blower will probably do wonders for you. Don't go into debt to get started. Most new business owners I have talked to usually experiment with trying to find some business and cut some lawns before they go and register a business. A big problem most people face when looking to start a business is they put everything else in front of actually doing the simple things like cutting a lawn and making money. By worrying about everything else you can make a simple concept so complex that you get nothing done. So remember keep it simple. Start very simply. Take small steps and grow. Now review these test questions and take the test at http://www.gopherforum.com and click on the school link at top. Test Question: What is the best way to get your lawn care business started? - Go out and buy your dream lawn mower. - Use your current lawn mower. - Buy a brand new truck. - Get an enclosed trailer. - I don't know. Test Question: Who should you let know you are starting your lawn care business? - Friends. - Family members. - Neighbors. - Everyone I know and even those I don't. - I don't know. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com Hello everyone and welcome to Gopherhaul. If you haven't started your lawn care business yet, what are you waiting? If you don't start your lawn car business this year, you'll be at least a year older when you do so get started today. In today's discussion I want to talk about a couple of topics. First off, if you haven't seen all the new lawn care marketing design options on the Gopher Forum, you have to visit the site. When you get to the forum click on the link at the top that says "Design It Yourself." You will see you can design lawn care logos, animated banner ads and now lawn care flyer and lawn care door hangers. This is just fantastic! You don't need to be artistic. You don't even need a graphics program. Just choose the background you want to use. Maybe the aeration flyer? Or the de-thatching door hanger? Then type in your lawn care company contact information, the services you offer and a few eye catching headlines and the online designer will create a pdf file for you. You can print that file out or save it or take it to a printer and have them print it out. With all these online designers, your lawn care business is going to look like a million bucks! Try them out today. Next up is how to create a lawn care customer welcoming kit. Are you giving all of your new lawn care customers a Welcoming Kit? If you arenâ??t you should start doing it. This is something that can really help keep your customers from leaving you. You can join this discussion further at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Things to include in your Lawn Care Customer Welcoming Kit folder. * Welcoming Letter. * Newsletter. * Business Card. * Mission statement. * A list of your Frequently Asked Questionâ??s. * List all the services you offer. * A brochure on each major program you offer, like plant health care and bug barricade. * Information on the supplementals you are currently promoting. * A referral card to pass on to friends or family. Bob wrote on the forum, â??I started these welcome kits to help the new lawn care customers understand who we are and what we have to offer. When researching our cancellation history I found that most of the canceled lawn care accounts had been canceled within the first 3-4 months. If they had been more informed from the beginning, maybe we could have saved the sale.â?? If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com If you are looking to submit some bids this season to clean leaves out of your customers gutters make sure you read this article first. John got on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and asked his gutter cleaning question. He wrote â??I have been asked by a neighbor to do a gutter cleanup. She has gutter shields in place but wants to make sure everything is cleaned out and down spouts are good. Her house is 2200sq. and about half of the home has gutters. I do not think this job will take over 1.5 hours but have no idea what to charge her. I have never done this for money just on my own and folks house. Any help would be appreciated.â?? One of our forum members responded by saying â??I charge $1.00 per foot for a single story and $2.00 per foot on a 2 story. For people I have lawn contracts with I do it free Spring and Fall. I found that a 2 liter soda bottle (cut down) works well for cleaning the gutters. Itâ??s pliable enough to get down into the gutter. Take a bucket with you to but the debris in. If you just dump it on the ground, the mess is harder to clean up than the gutters are.â?? I have been doing a national survey with those who provide gutter cleaning services and the charge of $1 to $2 per linear ft seems to be standard across the country. You would charge more for gutters that are higher up or more difficult to get to than lower ones. Here are some common beginner pitfalls lawn care business owners find when offering gutter cleaning. * â??On my first job, I just emptied the gutters onto the ground. It took me about 25 minutes to clean the gutters and over an hour to clean the mess from dumping the debris. It was on the walls, the ground, the windows, etc. Since then I have taken a bucket to empty the debris in.â?? * I used to charge by the hour for gutter cleaning, now I charge around $1 per linear foot. * If the gutters are easy to reach I charge $1.00 per foot. If the gutters have trees growing out of them, then its $2.00 per foot. * The first time I ever cleaned gutters, I brought a power washer and blew them all cleanâ?¦.When I went down the ladder, it was a mess, lawn, house windows, screens, everything!!! Lets just say that those people got a free home power-washing!!! Learn from mistakes, right? Remember to review the job site before you create your estimate. Are the gutters on the first floor or the second? Do they have weeds growing out of them? Are you going to be able to reach them? Use a scoop to clean the gutters and empty the scoop into a bucket. Minimize your cleanup time. Charge between $1 and $2 a ft for gutter cleaning and you should be alright. To join in on this discussion further, visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com In general I don't think lawn care business owners utilize press releases as much as they should. The media, especially the local media, is always looking for a news story. Why not give them one? What does it cost to offer them a news idea? Nothing more than a little time to write up a press release and send it out to the local press. Now I know that can be a little difficult and perhaps daunting of a challenge so I thought it would be a great experiment to put together a sample press release article idea that you could use and change the names in it and then send out to your local press. Then any lawn care business owner who used this idea and got an article written about them, could make a response to this post and tell us about how it happened and their experience. Plus they could tell us what kind of results came from being spotlighted in the local media. Title: Local resident offers his own economic stimulus plan. With our economy in a downward spiral and the federal government offering up what seems to be a new economic recovery plan every week, local resident John Smith, has an answer on how to fix this mess we are in. In one word, he summed up his plan. "Jobs. We need to create jobs." We can no longer rely on our current employer to protect us in an economic downturn. Businesses are going belly up all over the place. It's our duty to harness our energy and creativity and create jobs." John Smith is the owner of Smith's Lawn Care which has operated in town for the past X years. "If we each take a moment and think about what our skill set is, we could create a business and create jobs, today! Right now! We shouldn't be looking to the government to hand us out an unemployment check. We need to create jobs and hand out a paycheck. We need to make our township, county, state and country the best it can be by creating. Each one of us can do something another person needs. Can you babysit? Can you cook? Can you cut lawns? Can you paint a house? Can you build a website. Figure out what you can do and do it. Then hire someone to help." With this Spring just around the corner, John plans on hiring local residents to help perform lawn care and landscaping services. "If we each do a little, together we can do a lot." President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address concluded with this famous line. "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Now more than ever we need to do for our country. We need to fix this economic situation. We have the power to fix this situation and we will fix it if each one of us stands up, takes a step forward and reaches out to others to help them. Create jobs! Now you can either send this to your local paper as a press release to get them to call you and interview you or you can send this in as a letter to the editor. Take the text, change it around to fit your specific situation and send it in! It's free advertising and it's a positive message that will reflect positively on you and your business. Try it out and let me know how it works. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

Have you ever wanted to make your own animated banner ad to promote your lawn care or snow plowing services and found it difficult if not impossible to do so? Well here is a simple online service that allows you to enter your lawn care business contact information and creates an animated banner quickly, easily and the best part for FREE! Try out the lawn care business banner ad designer at http://www.gopherforum.com . The online lawn care banner ad creator allows you to choose a font, font color and position of your lawn care business contact information as you want it to appear within your animated banner ad. You can also choose other types of banner ads to create. Such as a snow plow animated banner ad, a grub control banner, winterizing your lawn and landscape lighting. Having a tough time designing a logo for your lawn care business? Try this new lawn care logo designer program. Itâ??s FREE to use! Coming up with a logo design for your lawn care business can be a daunting challenge. Not everyone is artistically inclined or has the time to spend trying to create a logo. Well this new lawn care designer program is here to help. What do you need to do to create your new lawn care business logo? Simply load up the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Logo Designer you can find it at my blog http://www.lawnchat.com or the Gopher Forum at http://www.gopherforum.com then choose from hundreds of premade lawn care business logo background designs. Add your business name, choose the size, position and font. Then add your tag line and your phone number. Once you have your logo looking just the way you want it to, save the image to your computer and you are finished! Congratulations you have just created your own lawn care business logo without having to be artistic! We all know the importance of having a logo and branding our business and this new web site allows you to harness that power. I have included a few lawn care logo examples I created using this tool from the GopherHaul lawn care business forum to help get you started with some ideas. I hope you like it and I hope it inspires you to create your own. If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com

http://www.gopherforum.com - Are you finding it difficult to collect on your overdue lawn care business accounts? Are your lawn care customers holding off on paying? This article should help you with some tips and tricks on how to collect payments. Gary got on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and asked â?? last year was my first year running my lawn care business. I made it through the whole season with only one lawn care client failing to pay. Now that the end of the season is here, I have several (previously prompt paying) customers who have failed to pay their final bill. Is this something out of the ordinary or is it common around the holiday season?â?? Frank: â??This happens to me all the time. Last season I had a property manager owe me $1,500.00 and it took him until Feb to finally pay. And as of now I still have some past due accounts but it is just normal and I know that after a few mailings or a phone call it will finally trickle in. The holidays, the economy and peoples ignorance are most likely the causes. Just remember it and either donâ??t work for them next season or just accept the fact they are late payers and you definitely have to keep on them!â?? Steve: â??What kinds of things should a lawn care business owner do to get those bills paid that are lagging from last season and how long should they wait before they take further steps?â?? Frank: â??Well this is what I do. First send the lawn care customer a copy of your invoice with â??Past Dueâ?? stamped on it. If you hear nothing after a few weeks then you go to a letter and remember to include you â??Past Dueâ?? invoice (that â??Past Dueâ?? really scares people its very powerful so always remember to make that stamp BOLD). If this doesnâ??t work you go to a phone call or stop by the house. Be persistent, thatâ??s the key people will get so sick of seeing your face of seeing invoices in the mail that they will pay to get it over with. People are either forgetful or ignorant, sometimes the original gets lost in the mail and they pay by the second notice sometimes they donâ??t have the money and are embarrassed but eventually do get you the money. Read more about this discussion at my lawn care business blog at http://lawnchat.com/?p=396 or visit the GopherHaul Forum http://www.gopherforum.com/showthread.php?t=7991 We have the largest collection of FREE lawn care marketing material. Free logos, flyers, door hangers, web templates and contracts. Also download a free 30 day trial of GopherLawn Care Business Software from http://www.gophersoftware.com