[sandim]

We've stepped up our marketing this year and are taking a more aggressive approach. We're doing a lot on the internet. At first for spring cleanups it worked great, but now for projects, we're getting tons of leads and no jobs. While I realize this is part of marketing, it's very disturbing.

I'm trying to figure out if I should just wait until the end of May and if things don't improve duck out of that, or if I should just wait it out for the year and see if we get that ONE job that will make up for it.

Any suggestions?

[Stonehenge]

What exactly are you doing?

[papercutter]

Sales is about activity- "filling your pipeline" with leads. It's a numbers game. If you're going to close an average of 50% of your leads and you need 100 sales, you obviously need to get in front of 200 prospects.

That said, if you're not getting in front of 200 prospects who would be likely to buy your service, you're wasting your time. If your marketing is getting you prospects who are not likely buyers, you need to re-evaluate and target better. However, if you're willing to cast a wide net in the hopes that raw numbers could lead to more sales, you MUST improve your pre-screening so you stop wasting your time with punters.

Warm leads are great. Cold leads are fine, if you have the skill to warm up the decent ones and filter the garbage ones.

Who is your marketing targeting? Is it homeowners? Homeowners in a geographic area? Homeowners in a geographic area with two working partners and income over $X? You can drill down as deep as you want to go to zero in on those who would buy from you. I was watching something on Fine Living today; I watched the race in Richmond last night. I can tell you that they didn't have many commercials in common.

[jshilan]

Also keep in mind that marketing and advertising are very different animals. Advertising is a more general approach to getting customers. As papercutter pointed out it is like casting a wide net to see what you catch. This is what yellow pages advertising is all about. Getting lots of calls and working every one of them, good, bad, indifferent.

Marketing is recognizing that a certain demographic is your typical client and then targeting those types of people and magazines that fit your demographic. It could be a specific area, a level of household income, a recent home purchaser, etc. This reduces the volume of calls, but the calls that do come in are more likely to be your future clients.

So first determine whether you are marketing or just advertising. Next, try to determine what worked in maintenance that is not working in design build. It could be the demographic of your maintenance customers is not the same as design build, so your ads in the local paper are great for weekly cutting or garden maintenance but this same paper doesn't attract design build. Maybe you need to advertise design build in a glossy magazine (now you are marketing).

Sandi, not knowing the specifics of your compnay, it might be that you guys are more experienced and more comfortable with the maintenance then design build. This will show when you meet clients like fear does to a bear. If you are not confident in your abilities or just inexperienced at something, customers will know and may doubt if you can do the project. You also may have a better sales process with maintenance then you do with design build.

Finally, maintenace is typically a lower price point than construction, so it is easier for someone to say yes to $1000 than it is to say yes to $25K.

Why don't you take Stonehenges suggestion and give some more specifics about what you are doing and what you are trying to do.

[sandim]

Marketing vs. Advertising. That makes a lot of sense.
I guess in a sense, here is where we are: We have feelers out everywhere. Some marketing, some advertising. I read a lot about marketing/advertising and one thing I read is that in today's economy it makes sense to step up your advertising/marketing as many companies are decreasing their advertising. This may get us in front of more clients than our competitors...or so the theory goes.

I'll get to those in a minute, but that being said...our best clients are people that know us and know the scope of our work. It frequently seems to me that they will "test the water". They'll give us a smaller job and then when they see how we do they give us a large job. Looking back this has held true for all of our large installs. We are finally starting to get some referrals. We actually have done some work for a guy that is so extremely fussy we're the only contractor of any sort he trusts to do the work. He had the foundation poured, but the rest of his house is a pre-fab from Sweden. Aparently very high end. He did everything himself and paid the other contractors just to come out and sign off b/c he thinks he does a better job. (He's an aerospace engineer.)
As far as the newbies go who don't know us or come from a referral....maybe you're right, we don't come across as confident enough. Odd as we feel very confident, I know we can give these potential clients landscapes that will knock their socks off. Perhaps we're just over-enthusiastic about what we do b/c we're both very passionate about it.

We are finally at the point where we can look at an area and throw out a rough number. That number gets refined after the design takes place. Our process is to discuss as much of the project over the phone as possible. When we go out to meet them we discuss their project further and if they're interested we take a design fee. That seems to be where we lose them. They all say it's exactly what they want but....then again, these are people who have come from advertisements.

Going back to what are we doing...
1. Ad in small local phone book. Worked extremely well for the past 2 years so we continued it this year.
2. Postcards to target market group
3. Letters to new home owners targeted based on price and town home is located in.
4. Letters to clients requesting referrals.
5. Service Magic (I read all the posts regarding this and am going to give it a couple months and see if it is worth the $ and hassle...probably not but I like to beat things until I'm sure they're long dead)
6. Signage at installs
7. Going to send out a letter to neighborhoods where a new install is going to be done
8. Considering door hangers (have a bunch of freebies from Techo bloc but also thinking of doing one for softscaping
9. Revamping our website so it's a better indication of our portfolio
10. Placing an ad in a garden tour guide book

I think that's it for now but I'm sure I'll come up with more ideas.

Postcards have worked well and our local phone book ad has worked well so we're continuing those. Will try a few more of those ideas above and see what works and what doesn't. We do keep track. My biggest thing I'm on the fence about is how many times to contact the client after the initial visit. I've heard from 3 to 5 to one person saying they contact the client until they are asked to stop calling. I'm thinking the last is not our particular style. We definitely want more work but luckily we're not hard up yet. I think maybe a phone call, then an email then a letter. After that I think we're done, but I'm up for suggestions.

Long-winded, but thanks for reading!! Being new is so hard...but we have grit so we'll make it. (Lord knows the past 6 weeks would be enough to make anyone quit!)

[agla]

You mentioned post cards to a target market group. This is the thing that I always wonder about when it comes to marketing landscape contracting. It seems to me that the target market group has one twist to it that makes it hard to generate a mailing list from. That is timing because landscape contracting is not a service that is bought because someone is rich, or Catholic, is married with children, is living in the northwest suburb of the city, owns a Porche, etc, ...

Sure their are better demographics that will be more likely to buy from you, but unless they are building, or remodelling, or having septic work done, or a pool installed, or have decided to revamp a tired landscape they have no need of you.

The best target is one that is getting ready to have such work done. Are you getting to them? Are you getting to them at the right time?

[sandim]

Agla,
How right you are (obviously that goes without saying) We saw a client the other day that saw our work elsewhere and must have hung onto our card for the better part of a year. Recently he sold some real estate and called us, but driving by his house I'd have never figured. So goes the old saying...never judge a book by it's cover.

Any suggestions for getting to that market other than advertising?

[agla]

Most landscapers look to get the major part of the install that comes late in the process of designing and building a house project or commercial project. That makes sense because that is where most of the money is. A lot of guys realize that if they do an install, they get a much better shot at getting the maintenance (should they do that). A lot of design/build guys figure out that if they sell a design, they have a better than average chance of landing the job even when the client is free to bid it out. The pattern is that if you get in, it is easier to stay in.

One area that I think is under exploited is the preconstruction work. Not every job has much opportunity in this and not every community is as regulated as others which tends to drive this opportunity, but it can be a really good opportunity to get in very early. Wetlands are highly regulated in southern New England. If they are in your area, there is some opportunity there.

A lot of times native plantings are required to be on a plan that a conservation commission has to approve before a building permit can be issued. These are often done in Land Surveyor's offices because they are usually fairly simple and they are drawing the site plan and locating the wetlands, so it might not be easy to get jobs doing plans for these. But, sometimes the planting needs to be done prior to construction. If you go to conservation commission hearings regularly, you might be able to introduce yourself to the people involved after the hearings and let them know that you are interested. If you go often enough, you'll get a feel for what these commissions approve and dissapprove of and the surveyors, engineers, and environmental consultants that frequent these meetings might recommend you for installs.

Water front property usually has wetlands permitting involved AND they tend to be higher dollar homes. That is not the worst place to be getting in early.

A lot of commercial work requires landscape plans prior to permitting as well. These are not usually the most glamourous jobs because the developers are usually trying to do the minimum in order to get the permit. They would rather pay less to a contractor for a design than an LA or surveyor or architect. Even if they don't hire you to do the install, it gets you seen by others going through the permit process who may approach you to do something better.

While planning boards and conservation commissions are not supposed to "recommend" anybody, they tend to keep lists of people who have been in front of them regularly that they will give to the public without recommending anyone in particular. And let's not forget that these people are human and are likely to recommend people "off of the record".

The advantage is simply that people will be dealing with you before others even know that there is a project coming up which takes us back to the first paragraph of this post. That is that it is easier to keep the job than to get the job.

You could watch house sales and building permits as well to catch people early, but there are more people doing that than getting involved with the permit process. Some communities broadcast these hearings on local cable. You could watch for opportunities there as well. If someone in a nice neighborhood is adding on, you might approach them with a good price to transplant their plants and heal them in until the construction is done rather than waiting to go after the planting when everyone else sees the addition going on.

Look for ways of getting involved early even if it is not the part of the job that pays big.