From social media to direct mail to search engine optimization to referrals—even your truck branding—every marketing strategy has a different financial barrier to entry, solves a different marketing problem, and can deliver wildly varying results, depending on how it is executed. At GIC, during my session titled “How to Build a Marketing Plan that Grows with Your Lawn Care Business,” we will be covering a number of these strategies and knowing exactly when to employ them on your journey from $100K to $10M+.
But before any talk about marketing tools and no matter your current company size, the best place to start is by always knowing your numbers. If you don’t have a solid grasp on your financials, you can’t possibly make the best, most educated decision in any area of your company—marketing included.
Two fundamental numbers
As a marketer, the two numbers you are most concerned with are your monthly marketing budget and your clients’ average lifetime value. These two fundamental numbers should be the basis for every marketing decision you make.
As the founder of a lawn care and landscape marketing agency, it amazes me how many business owners ask me how much they should spend on marketing. Your marketing budget is not what I or any other marketer says you should spend. And, it’s not a simple percentage of your net or gross. Your marketing budget is a number you choose based on your financials, how aggressively you want to grow, and what you can safely invest each and every month to do so. Only you know this number.
The second critical number to know is how much is a new client worth. How much will that client spend for all of your services over the entire length of time he or she does business with you? On average, most lawn care operators keep their clients for at least three years, many much longer than that. Once you know this number, you can now safely determine how much you are willing to invest to acquire a new client, and how long it will take after you do to start to reap the profits.
Just by knowing these two simple numbers you have put your company ahead of 85 percent of your competitors. Most of them run their businesses “from the gut.” And once you know these two numbers, choosing the best marketing strategy becomes a whole lot easier.
In my session you will learn the “what” and “when” of marketing: What marketing tools you should implement and when you should do so. I will also cover some of the most common marketing misconceptions and mistakes that lawn care companies make.
In the meantime, I have put together a free guide, “10 Absolutely Critical Lawn Care Marketing Mistakes to Avoid,” you can download at https://goo.gl/60FMC that touches on a number of these marketing missteps.
Join us for this session at the Green Industry Conference, on Friday, Oct. 25
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