GopherHaul Lawn Care Marketing Business

haven't started your business yet, what are you waiting for? If you don't start your business this year, you'll be at least one year older when you do so get started today. In today's episode of GOpherHaul I will be talking about, How much do you charge to perform lawn care service? This has got to be one of the most common questions I have seen appear on the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum. It is a very important question too. If you donâ??t know how much the average lawn care business owner is charging for standard services like lawn mowing, gutter cleaning, leaf cleanup, or snow plowing, how will you know if your prices are competitive? How will you know if your lawn care prices are too low? Maybe they are too high and that is why you arenâ??t landing enough bids. One of our forum members wrote â??Hey guys. I was wondering what everyone was charging. Your normal hourly rate and your minimum charge for cutting grass. Also what city and state your located in. I want to start a poll that way we can all compare and help each other out.â?? This got me thinking, hey why not set up a form where everyone can jump in and compare their prices and potentially with others even in your geographic area. So that is what I did. Check this out. Compare your lawn care prices at http://www.gopherforum.com Now it is easier than ever before to compare what you are charging with other lawn care business owners in your area. This is a very powerful GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Web Tool so learn from it and let others know about it as well. Stop trying to compete with low-ballers. Show them they need to raise their prices so everyone makes more money. I set up another new page to allow you to rate your lawn care equipment and see how others rate their lawn care equipment. This should help us all grow, especially when we are looking to upgrade and buy new mowers, trimmers or leaf blowers. Are you happy with your current outdoor power equipment or has it let you down? We want to know! Often on discussions at the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum, we talk about outdoor power equipment. Lawn care business owners are constantly looking to see how they can become more productive and profitable with their lawn care business. As we have seen, increasing your productivity is key to becoming more profitable but just which lawn mower, trimmers or leaf blowers are worth purchasing? You can find all this information out now by using my Rate your lawn care equipment website. Enter your lawn care equipment and tell us what you like or donâ??t like about it and see what others have said about the lawn care equipment they are using. Itâ??s a fantastic way to get real world answers for real world lawn care business questions. 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

If you miss reading the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum for a single day, you could miss out on a lot. This idea is sure to make you a favorite amongst your customers and neighbors. To promote your snow plowing services why not use this marketing idea. Tony wrote us and said â??Here is an example of some decals/stickers I made for a snow plow client we have. He wanted to give out buckets of ice melt to his snow plow customers but wanted his name and company info on them. I also made â??Please keep Coveredâ?? and â??Use Glovesâ?? stickers for the lids. The great thing about this is you can re-use the buckets every year. You can fill the buckets with salt, ice melt, etc.â?? Steve: â??That is just fantastic. There are many things you could do with this. You could buy a bulk amount of buckets and get these stickers printed up, then fill each one. Stop by the homes in your area and drop them off on the front stairs possibly along with a door hanger explaining who you are and that you left this free gift. If the customer would need winter snow plowing services, they could contact you and also, donâ??t forget to promote your lawn care services as well for the spring. The cover of the bucket or the side could have a sticker that says something to the effect when it snows contact Joeâ??s snow removal. You could also include a coupon to help give the homeowner an additional incentive to call you within a certain time frame. Now if you wanted to give these to only your paying customers as a thank you for signing up, you could go with a larger bucket but if you wanted to use them as a marketing tool and distribute them more widely, you could go with a smaller size.â?? Mark: â??Those salt buckets worked extremely well!â?? Thanks Mark for keeping us posted on how using them worked out! 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. Also 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

I was having a great discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum with my friend Jeff and he was sharing with me some of his experiences trying to market his lawn care business. You can read more on this lawn care business discussion here on the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum. Jeff: â??When I worked with the previous lawn care business employer they did a lot of telephone soliciting and door hanger marketing. Here in our part of the state, almost all the towns limit door knocking and require that you go to the town hall or police station, pay for a background check, and wait for a permit until the background check comes back. Therefore, we didnâ??t do much of that. So we would hang door hangers saying things like, â??Check out your neighbors yard. Doesnâ??t it look great? Donâ??t you want your yard to look that good?â?? Then we would get their phone number out of a reverse directory and call them until they threatened to call the police. Now I go out and hang lawn care door hangers marketing my materials. I generally try to do that on weekends hoping that Iâ??ll catch someone working out in there yard. Again, I use the soft sell technique. Generally, something like, â??wouldnâ??t you rather be spending time doing something else right now?â?? If thereâ??s kids around I use that to my advantage. I have kids of my own and I say things like, â??they wonâ??t be this small for long, trust me. Quit spending your weekends working in your yard. I can free up your weekend for $XX.XX, but your son/daughters childhood is priceless.â?? In fact Iâ??m trying to figure out how to put that last statement into a door hanger. Kind of like the Mastercard commercial. Anyone with any ideas would be greatly appreciated.â?? So after playing around with a few ideas I came up with this lawn care business door hanger design. You can download it for free and try it out. Let me know what type of results you get. Remember when you are out working, distribute your door hangers using the clover leaf lawn care marketing technique. Get your door hanger on a few houses to each side of the home you are mowing as well as hang the lawn care door hangers on a few houses across the street. This is the best way to maximize your time and add more lawn care customers to your route. Next up, let's talk about the free lawn care business websiet design. I was contacted by Matt on the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum and we worked out this great deal to give away one free Lawn care business website makeover. I am really excited about this. Let me turn this over to Matt to tell us what he is offering. Complete Lawn Care Business Website Makeover Sponsored by GopherSoftware.com & LCOWebDesign.com Hi, Iâ??m Matt Lucas and I will be providing the following services to a lucky winner. I will work with the winner on producing a stylish website based on the winnerâ??s preferences. During the design stages, the winner will work on providing me with content which we will work on together to try and tweak for search engines and marketing. Once the design and content is finished I will program the site and go live. We will track search engine ranking and traffic stats and base any additional changes off those results. List of Makeover Services: * Custom Web Design * HTML + CSS * Search Engine Optimization * Up to 6 pages - including (Contact form and Photo Gallery) A domain will not be provided but is required. If you do not already own a domain I would recommend buying one from one of the following websites: www.namecheap.com -(I personally use this one) or www.godaddy.com - (I have used this one in the past) The dead line for sign ups is January 17th, and the winner will be chosen by the 19th. We will begin working right away and the goal is to have the site live by the 31st of January. The winner will be asked to write a testimonial for the services provided. * To sign up for a chance at the complete website makeover, go to the GopherHaul Lawn Care Business Forum and tell us you want in! 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. Also 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

How often have you had questions about business insurance but just didnâ??t get around to asking your insurance agent. Itâ??s possible you are just starting out and donâ??t have lawn care business insurance yet. As we have found through our investigation on this topic, no one knows better what your insurance needs are than your local insurance agent. Each companyâ??s needs are as unique as the services they provide. Each state will also have different insurance requirements of you. Since these questions come up quite often, we decided to compile a list of the most common insurance questions asked by lawn care business owners and found a friendly insurance agent to give us answers. 1. Q: How does an LCO determine which liability policy should be purchased? What percentage of LCOâ??s have the following coverage? $500,000.00, $1,000,000.00 or $2,000,000.00 Answer: Most all carry $2,000,000 the difference in premium is minimal between 1 & 2 million worth of coverage. 2. Q: What is a reasonable rate for a $500,000.00 / $1,000,000 / $2,000,000 liability insurance policy? Answer: Rates are based either on number of employees or sales. For an operation with 4 employees an approximate premium would be $2500. 3. Q: How much more on average is a $10 million or $20 million dollar liability policy, what percentage of LCOâ??s have this coverage? Answer: Most lawn care companies donâ??t carry these high limits. 4. Q: What is the average LCO deductible for liability and theft? Answer: I recommend carrying deductibles of $1,000 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. Also 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

Trying to figure out how much to charge for snow plowing can be pretty tough. If you charge too much, you wonâ??t get any jobs. If you charge too little you wonâ??t make any profit. Now it is important to keep in mind what the going rate for snow plowing services is in your area but you must know your operational costs because you might find, you canâ??t even make a profit at the market snow plow rate, if you arenâ??t careful. So how do you go about coming up with a figure to charge per hour for snow plowing? I put together this great snow plowing bid calculator. It asks you a bunch of questions to take into consideration your truck, snowplow, salter, and other overhead costs. Then it takes into account how many snow storms you have on average and how many billable hours you have per storm. After crunching the numbers, it returns a $ figure per hour you must charge to cover your costs and adds a percentage profit for you and your business. Try out the snow plow business calculator and see how it works for you. Play around with the different figures to see how changing them can change how much you should be charging per hour. If you have questions on how to use the snow plowing calculator, visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com and ask away. Donâ??t forget to check out the free snow plowing flyer template here. http://lawnchat.com/?page_id=341 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. Also 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.

Before you spend a dime on any landscaping or lawn care marketing make sure you play with the figures before you enact your plan. Use this new Lawn Care Marketing Return On Investment calculator to see how much money your marketing campaign will bring you, before you go through with it. You never know, you may find your initial lawn care marketing planned to be quite flawed or you might find yourself to be pleasantly surprised. Simply plug in your figures and then hit the calculate button to see what type of return on your investment you can hope to achieve. The calculator can be found at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com and also at my Lawn Care Business Blog at http://www.lawnchat.com. 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. Also 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.

With the economy taking a down turn, there are going to be many new opportunities for entrepreneurs to get started with their own business. A lot of times people will think about starting their own business but if they have a full time job, the job will most likely take priority over starting a business. But if you get laid off, you then can jump on the opportunity to finally start the business you wanted. Here is a great question and a great example of an entrepreneur taking advantage of his resources and his knowledge to get his new business off the ground. In the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum he wrote �Hi I am totally new to all of this. I mowed lawns while I was younger and through high school in my neighborhood and can do just about anything there is. I was just recently laid off at a excavating business because people are not wanting to build new houses or buildings right now. Right now as I am just starting it is frustrating trying to get new accounts. Beyond lawn care, I also am doing snow removal. I am not too good at this whole internet deal but I managed to start up my own website as well. I am trying to make a flyer right now with my plan to make around 1,000 flyers and just start going door to door. I do not know any other way to just get my name out there. What are the best ways to go out there and get customers? Are there any suggestions out there to make my company look better than the others? I just want my company to stand out more than others so we look like we have been in business and so people would come to me more than other lawn care businesses Thanks to everyone that helps!� I think first off you should jump on promoting services you can offer now that can make you money now. If your new business doesn�t start making money quickly, you may lose interest in it or others around you may push you to consider other alternatives. There is nothing like making a profit to show the nay sayers they were wrong and you were right. So how do you do this? Get on the Gopher Forum and download some of the winter snow plowing templates. I have a bunch of them for snow plowing and holiday light decorations. Edit the flyers as you need to and start handing them out to family members and friends. Get business cards made up and hand them out to everyone you know. In fact, give them a couple each. Tell them you are just getting started and you would appreciate any work you can get. Review the concentric circle marketing chart I posted in the forum and on my blog. It gives you a graphical representation of what you should be doing. Market to your inner core first. That would be friends and family. Have them become spokespeople for your business and have them help get the word out about your business too by telling their friends, co-workers and community organization members. Hang up flyers where ever you can, such as in local stores. Go door to door and hand out flyers that promote your winter services. The more people you meet, the better your chances are of landing a new customer. If you need a business logo, remember I have hundreds of free lawn care business logo templates you can download and use from the Gopher Forum. Thirdly answer your phone and always be friendly and approachable, this should help you win many people over. Lastly if you have time, you should consider doing something that is both a good deed for your community and a publicity stunt of sorts to attract media attention. Since you will be offering snow plowing, why not consider starting a volunteer group that clears walkways and driveways of elder members of your community. Contact the local paper and tell them you are looking to form this group and you will be heading it. Have interested volunteers contact you at your business number or contact you through your website and ask for those senors in need of free service to contact you as well. Possibly offer it on a scale of the neediest first. This could be a great way to get your picture in the local paper and get the word out about your new snow plowing service. It will also build up goodwill within your community and free publicity. One simple article could really get your business launched. So try these ideas out and let us know how they all work. You can join in on this discussion further at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. http://www.gopherforum.com 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. Also 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.

Once you are contacted by a potential client and meet with them to bid on their property, you arenâ??t done yet. Remember to always follow up. This applies to both commercial and residential lawn care customers. Kim asked â??I was just wondering after someone calls you for a lawn care estimate and you go out meet with them, and then submit a bid, do most of them let you know if you didnâ??t get the job or just kinda blow you off.â?? Tom answered â??A few things will probably happen: 1. They will say something like â??Geez, that is higher than I thought it would be.â?? At this point you can either haggle with the price or tell them, â??sorry, that is the price,â?? and stick to your guns. 2. They will say something like â??when can you start.â?? They agree to the price and want you to do it. 3. Or they say â??I will have to talk it over with my husband/wife.â?? Nine times out of ten when someone says that, you probably will not get the bid. Now they will either call you back and tell you yes or no, or will not bother calling at all. I recommend that after a few days to give them a call up and ask them if they had any questions in regarding the bid. It helps get the ball rolling again.â?? Kim then asked â??Okay how about commercial accounts, when they are excepting bids and say were not deciding until the middle of March. Should I call them back then or just hope to hear from them and if I didnâ??t get it will they call and tell me. Or just let it go?â?? Tom said â??If you havenâ??t heard anything after a while, then I would follow up with a phone call and even perhaps a letter.â?? Steve followed up by saying â??Iâ??m with Tom, follow up. Sometimes they want to see how interested you are and that just might make the deal for you.â?? Following up with clients is a great way to improve your chances of landing the lawn care bid. Use your call as an opportunity to go over any questions they might have or any sticking points and close the sale. You can join in on this discussion further at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. http://www.gopherforum.com 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. Also 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.

With winter on its way, many new lawn care business owners are looking to add snow plowing to their list of winter services. Trying to come up with an idea on how to charge can be challenging, especially for new businesses. A Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum member asked such a question regarding snow plow services. I have clients asking to have one payment for snow plowing their driveways for the winter season. Is there anywhere that one can get some sort of idea as to the expected snow for the season this year? I have searched everywhere, but found nothing. Realizing that predicting snowfall for any given year is about impossible, I am just wondering if anyone here has come up with an idea to supply this type of service. I did some last year, but lost each of them this year because we only had enough snow to plow 2 times, but they felt they paid a lot for just the 2 snow plows. Pete: I charge by the hour sometimes. My minimum for snow plowing small driveways is $35 under 6 inches of snow. Over 6 inches of snow I will charge 40% more. My hourly rate is $125/hr per truck. Salting or sanding the driveway or lot is 40% more. It is hard to price a job when you first get into snow removal. The actual removal is easy. If you have the right equipment you could make good money. I leave a invoice in their mailbox if they are not home, but I knock when Im done with the job to see if they have cash or a check for me. If not then they have 10 days to send me the money or they will get charge a late fee. Tim: Here is how we charge for snow plowing: $50 min for residential driveways every 2inches of snow fall. So if there is before we can get to them it would be $50 x 3 salt is $2.75 per pound spread. $$$ per push on commercial every 2 in. of snow fall $3.00 per pound of salt spread. For ex. we have a commercial customer that has 4 miles of street and 4 mail stations. We charge them $175 per push every 2inches of snow fall this includes 2 passes (1 down & 1 back) clearing cul-de-sacs and clearing mail stations, $3.00 per pound of salt used. Approx 1,000 lbs per application if we do all. We also stated in the contract we are not responsible to clear in front of or behind any cars/trucks street parked. Basically the contract states if the cars/truck get plowed in, we are not responsible to digging them Ken: Heres how we charge up here in the north east. The worst winter Ive had is 9 storms, the best, 27. We average 12-15 winter storms. So heres what I offer: * Per push - each time we come, we charge full time. I do my best to NOT allow any inch-limits (i.e. then we come out, or push every two inches, etc.) because truthfully, everyone has a different idea of what 2inches is and its just one more place for conflict. If I have a commercial acct, and they INSIST on that verbiage, I accept and hope for the best, but I would NOT accept any cut in pay if I missed the 2inches mark. We charge full price each push, $15 minimum - most of mine are $20-$25 per push. I charge $5-$10 to cleanup the end of the driveway if needed after the storm. * (NOTE: I do not offer per storm. If someone insisted on it, Id just charge 2-2.5 times my per push rate and hope for the best) * Per season - with insurance. I dont offer a blanket per season charge because there is WAY too much variance in the amount of snow we get. It would be like saying Ill build you a house for $125,000 and then hoping you decide on a 900 sf ranch and not a 2,000 sf colonial. What I do is figure 15 storms, 2 visits per storm. Lets say its $25 per push, their contract would be $25 x 2 x 15 or $750. This amount would cover them from a minimum of 11 storms to a maximum of 18 storms. If we had less than 11, they get some refund, if more than 18, they get a bill. THIS gives them a 90% probability, give or take, of meeting their budgeted amount, but also covers us from extremes. Join in on the discussion at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this post at 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. Also 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. Try Gopher Lawn Care Business Software http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com and my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com How to charge for snow plowing. http://gopherforum.com/showthread.php?t=6409 http://lawnchat.com/?p=320

We have been talking about how to start up different kinds of businesses on here lately and it got me thinking. What if you or your gf/wife always wanted to start a bakery kind of business but wanted to start small at first. Maybe you wanted to start with cookies. You could create a website and then promote it on the cookies somewhere. I bet you could also sell this holiday customer cookie idea to other small businesses in the area if you had extra time and things were slowing down. I bet it could be a great money maker. What if you started baking holiday cookies that you gave as a gift to your lawn care customers to help build a better bond with them and increase your customer retention rates? You could get a bunch of holiday tins that could hold the cookies. Maybe you could get different sizes. Small tins for lawn care smaller customers and larger tins for lawn care customers who pay you a lot more than average. Possibly your commercial account customers could get a larger tin and maybe even a gift card in it for a local restaurant. Especially with your bigger clients, you really want to keep these people happy. Inside the tins at the bottom, you could include a holiday card and maybe 2 â??friends and familyâ?? referral coupons for a free lawn cut for new lawn care customers only. This would be a great gift your current customers could give to their friends and neighbors. Another benefit of putting the card at the bottom would be if the customer re-gifted the cookie tin to someone else, you would still be reaching out to a new customer who could use the coupons themselves. If you are giving a large tin to a commercial client, you might want to individually wrap each cookie and place a sticker at the bottom of each one that could promote 1 free lawn mowing. For use by residents within your town and a yard no bigger than X sq ft. Cannot be combined and valid through a certain date. These could then be placed at the front desk of the facility for the employees or visitors to take. Maybe you could even give a commercial facility two cookie tins. A smaller one for your contact there and a larger one for the front desk. Join in on the discussion at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Try Gopher Lawn Care Business Software http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com

Search engine optimization 101 for lawn care businesses. You can put together a great looking site but people need to find it when they are searching for lawn service. How do you get your site to appear when a potential customer is looking for lawn care service? You need to know what they are looking for and you need to give them what they want. The keyword here, is â??keywords!â?? What are your keywords? Well say for instance you lived in Denver, Co and offered lawn care. A potential customer is most likely going to be looking for Denver Lawn Care or Denver lawn maintenance. If you are unsure of what your keywords should be, ask your friends or family, what words they would search for to find a local lawn care business online and go with the words you hear most often in response. I would think you would want to keep the keyword count to a minimum, maybe 4 or so. Your ideal keyword count should be between 10% and 20% of the total word count of your site, so ask yourself, where are you ranking? To figure this out do the following. * Right click on your websites main page and then left click on select all. * Open up your word processor and then paste the text into a new document. * Use the word count feature of your word processor to show you the total word count of your webpage. * Then do a search and see how many times each of your keywords appear. * (total word count) divided by (keyword count) will give you the percentage. Try this out and see how you are doing. Now letâ??s see how it is put to use. A new forum member posted an introduction and asked a great question â??I used a Gopher lawn care business web template from this site to create my lawn care company website and just got it on the net earlier this morning. How can I attract potential customers to my website?â?? You are not going to believe this example I am about to show you but itâ??s real. Matt has done such a great job with key words and having other sites link to his lawn care website that he appears in 7 out of the top 10 search results. Thatâ??s right! You heard right! In fact, if you were competing with him in his area, the chances of a new customer finding you are next to nothing because most people will not go beyond the first 10 results to their search. Matt: â??When people to a search for lawn service or lawn care in my area I am usually have all 7 slots out of 10 or sometimes 8 slots out of 10 on the search engine. Do a search for lawn care in dothan on google and you will see. You will see a bunch of J & M Lawn Care links. Also I am located in the local business directory.â?? This is just so outstanding! If you are going to have any chance at all attracting customers on the internet, you need to visit these sites that are linking to Mattâ??s site and then fill in your business information to have them direct to you in your area. Also review your key words and let us know how all this works out for you. Join in on the discussion at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum here. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Try Gopher Lawn Care Business Software http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com

When most landscapers start up their business, they tend to start with a truck only. Then later they may add an open trailer. At a certain point you may be asking yourself whatâ??s better to have, an open or enclosed trailer and why? Thatâ??s the question one of our new forum members asked and he quite a few responses I think will help you make up your mind as well. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Try Gopher Lawn Care Business Software http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com

When you are looking to gain new landscaping or lawn care customers, consider reaching out to your local garden centers. Purchase your supplies from them and see if you can get a business card display at their registers. Then ask the staff who sell lawn and garden supplies to refer your lawn care business for any install projects. One of my friends in the past had hooked up with a garden center and gave the store employees 10% cash of the job total when they referred a customer to him to do a job with material that were purchased at the garden center. Visit Gopher Lawn Care Business Software for a free 30 day trial version of our software. http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit my Lawn care marketing blog at http://www.lawnchat.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com

If there is one group of local business people I find are constantly hammering me with direct mail marketing material, itâ??s realtors. They really seem to have their act together when it comes to promoting their name and face out to the local community. So lucky me and lucky us when a new Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum member joined up to say hi to everyone and shared with us his story on how he got started with his lawn care business and some marketing secrets he learned as a realtor. Jim: â??Hello Everyone, I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. Iâ??m just starting my lawn care service and to be honest I am a little nervous. I got here on accident, after being a real estate agent for several years my business was killed with the housing crunch, so I went back to driving truck. I drove truck most of my life, I did network marketing, and then was offered a business cleaning up bank owned homes. Well after you clean them up you also have to provide lawn service. The banks want two cuts a month for $100.00. Right now I have 17 homes, so I decided to expand it to regular homes. I have allot to learn but we are excited and ready to roll.â?? Steve: â??You have a great history. What kinds of things do you feel you are able to bring to your lawn care business from your previous real estate and network marketing business? I am sure you learned a lot of great marketing concepts.â?? Jim: â??Thanks! I learned a lot about marketing in real estate, but the most important thing is you canâ??t beat a referrals from a happy customer!!! When my wife and I started out in real estate we had no budget, so we made up a flyerâ??s that we dropped off on door steps. We picked a good geographic area with 200 homes. We made the flyer with cool and interesting facts. We also included a recipe of the month and what the housing market was doing. People loved it, but you have to know that you must hit a person 6 to 9 times to be noticed and you have to stand out. The fridge magnet is great marketing tool. One of the best fridge magnets I have used is a fridge calender for clients, so your name is always on their mind. Constant contact is key, and follow up with this line: OH BY THE WAYâ?¦ Iâ??m never too busy for your referrals!! Talk to You soonâ?? Great advice from someone who knows what works. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Try Gopher Lawn Care Business Software http://www.gophersoftware.com Visit the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum http://www.gopherforum.com

Real estate agents are the first people to really make contact with new home owners in your area. The agent has already built up a bond with the new home owner and is in a great position to refer your services to them. Why not team up with one or many real estate agents in your area. Help them create a welcome to the neighborhood kit and give yourself a head start jump on your competitors. Rob wrote us on how he got involved with a real estate agent to cross market his lawn care business to new home owners. Rob: â??While I was working yesterday a real estate agent stopped to talk to me. He has built a great referral program and a service package that he gives home buyers when they buy a house. He told me he wanted to put me on his â??preferredâ?? service providers list that goes in these packages. Right away he gave me a coffee cup with his all his information on it and a Thanksgiving card and small candle for my wife. The candle had all of his information on it as well. What a great idea! He told me he would help me make a flyer like the one he gave me which was very professional and nice. Also told me he could help me grow my business. Based off of referrals. I only talked to him for about 10 min cuz it was getting dark and I had to load up and leave. On the front there was a picture of a family around a thanksgiving table that says â??Happy Thanksgiving Thanks for making me part of your life.â?? On the inside is a recipe for pumpkin pie dip. It says his name and real estate office then â??A referal is sending someone you care about to someone you trust. Thank you for trusting me.â?? I think its a great idea with the recipe and all. It also came in a bag with the candle. I thought the card with the recipe inside and the candle with info was pretty cool. Iâ??m going to do something like this with my Christmas cards. He seemed to be doing good with it.â?? Steve: â??I really like the idea. He positions himself to be the go to person in the community as he creates this network of contractors in the area with his referral group. This not only helps him build good will with the new home owner but he also builds awareness of his services through his contractor contacts. Both sides benefit.â?? Rob: â??He called me last night and gave me a customer to contact for some work. Iâ??m going to there house tomorrow for a bid. I was surprised. I have talked to a lot of agents and usually donâ??t here back from them. He said to let him know when I want to meet with him so he can help me make up some literature. He can probably give me some great ideas on a referral program since hes been so successful with his.â?? Steve: â??Does he want a referral fee for this? Or how does this work?â?? Rob: â??No fee, he just expects the same in return. I run into people about twice an month that are selling there houses so I will refer him. He had a very good presentation for his service package and referral program. A notebook full of colorful, laminated pages that he has spent some time on. Not just something he threw together.â?? Steve: â??That is fantastic. You should contact other real estate agents to do this with and get a hold of more contractors as well to work together on welcome packages.â?? Rob: â??I went out and gave them a bid and got a $650 job this weekend!â?? This is a great example of how networking with others in your area can really help you reach out to more potential customers with a minimal expense on your part. As we all know, keeping your expenses to a minimum is very important, especially when you are just starting out. Join this discussion further at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. http://www.gopherforum.com http://www.gophersoftware.com