[tfld]

Starting out, is a quarter page yellow pages ad worth the money??

I called yesterday to get some prices, about $500/month for a 1/4 page black and white ad. On top of it, theres only about 7 thousand landscapers in it already. And I couldn't get my ad in until October, the next issue.

I'm thinking I'll stck with door hangers and maybe upgrade my ad in the local newspaper first.

I was also checking out direct mail, not cheap either. A 1000 names of new homeowners in my area would cost me around $150 plus postage and company literature. I figure I'd probably be looking at around $$600-700 to get them out the door, and I'd still only be expecting a 1-2% callback percentage.

If you've used mailing lists, what is the most effective demographic to use for filtering, ie age, income, new homeowner, occupation, etc??

I'm all ears...

Nick

[VoodooChile]

Nick,
It's too bad Spiderlilly is on vacation cause she knows a ton about successfully growing a business with next to nothing, but while she is away I will try to pass on a few of the things I've learned from her about marketing.

1) You don't have to reinvent the wheel; there are some great resources available for marketing on the cheap, probably the all-time classic being Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing.

2) I'm betting Spiderlilly would tell you to not put the cart before the horse, that is, get clear about what services you will provide, what will distinguish you from the others in the area who provide those services, and how you will convey what makes your service unique, before committing to expensive advertising. The first part of this is really called DEVELOPING A BUSINESS PLAN, the second part, MARKETING. You can't do the latter effectively, without getting clear about the former.

3) The yellow pages are expensive, and it seems like there are six different versions of the same thing now, but each with its own bill. Still, in some markets having a yellow page's presence is essential. We have always bit the bullet, and done it, knowing that as our reputation grew we could scale back later. We do get plenty of leads from it, and land many of those. I suspect that our success from the Yellow Pages has a lot to do though with distinguishing ourselves in our market, or NICHE MARKETING. Most of our clients seem to have similar backgrounds, and definitely desire a natural look, and that is a testament to Spiderlilly's talent and dedication to getting our logo and look right.

4) Getting the logo and look right is what you should focus on once the plan is in place, because once you start spending on advertising, you will want to be consistent. Supposedly, a prospective lead/client has to see you name seven times in a legitimate forum before they will call/commit to a contract. If you are all over the place in you advertising, changing colors, slogans, offers, services, and even names, clients won't have a chance to associate you with legitimate businesses.

5) Direct mailing is expensive too, but with good filters you can be hitting the jackpot. Spiderlilly has bought lists in the past, and some of the filters included occupations (Doctors, Dentists) or Net Wealth.

I'm guessing more will come to me as the evening progresses...

Oh yeah, when we started out mid-Summer always proved slow. Don't despair, soon you be so far behind with work that you'll long for the days of filling in the gaps with roofing and chimney sweeping, like I did!

[Stonehenge]

I'd listen to Voodoo on the reading material - Guerilla Marketing is invaluable. That book is what put me on the path to where I am now, writing regular articles for the local paper, and having features once or twice a year.

With YP ads, I think there's a thing as too little, and too much. I think your ad needs to be large enough to appear credible. In our market there are a few large companies that have nothing more than a $30 ad in the landscape section. But they are big enough, and pursue enough other avenues of marketing, that they don't need it. There are others that buy a half or full page ad, and also buy smaller ads in other parts of the book.

I was on the road to overspending in the YP. Last year I was paying $845/mo for a quarter page color ad, a 1/8 page color ad, and couple listings here and there. I can tell you the $10,000 I spent on those ads did yield anywhere near the results I would have liked to see. For my door hangers, I pay around $0.30 apiece, plus the cost of paying guys to go around and hang them. Hung in the right neighborhoods, I'll get 6-10 calls for every 100 hangers. Of those I'll land work for 2/3 of them, with an avg project size of 5-6K. So for $60-70, I'll get about 20-30% of the business I'll get from the YP ad. It becomes pretty clear that YP are not an effective way to penetrate the market. So I cut way back this year.

But I do think you need to at least have a presence there.

Oh - and I would also avoid the SmartPages.com advertising. The year I used it our website got 12 hits, and 3-4 of them were me. This is out of 20,000 total visitors to the site in that year. $600 for 12 hits (and only 75% were 'real').

[tfld]

wow, this site is invaluable.

I'm going to check out that book tomorrow.

As far as writing a biz plan goes, I've certainly been thinking about it for a while, but I dont think I could honestly sit down right now and write a well educated plan. I think just going for it this season will give me alot of ideas and experiences to reflect on in the off season.

What both of you said about finding my nich is exactly what I've been feeling lately. There is SO MUCH competition here its ridiculous. I need to find a way to separate myself from the pack.

But of all the various companies here I think there may be 8 or 10 really good ones. That is who I WANT my competition to be.

These companies for the most part are working in a whold different sector. Theyre working up in the foothills and larger residences installing beautiful, creative work.

I just wish some of the people here in town were more appreciative of a well designed and installed landscape.

Another thing is that I've had so many designs ripped off lately. I stopped doing scale drawings for free for people because of this. I figured out a pretty cool way to do "sketches" with limited labeling or scale so as to convey my ideas without investing too much time or making them specific enough for people to take to El Cheapo.

Unfortunately, driving around today I saw that some of these people were apparently using my sketches to have El Cheapos install them.

One project was right in the middle stages of completion, but I could tell it was my design. It looked like such a frickin mess, and the guys originally told me he was going to do it himself.

I may just shoot him a "friendly" email tonight... "Hows the project coming?? Need any help??"...

haha

Anyhoo, thanks so much for all the great advice.

Nick

[Pelican]

You will find word of mouth to be your best advertising. Get out there and do a few quality jobs and word will circulate and come back to you.

I only recently began running a yellow page ad, and only with Verizon, the major vendor in this area. I went fairly conservative, taking only a large column ad with one extra color. This was more to legitimize my business than to generate it, I've been working beyond capacity since shortly after starting my business.

Another thing to consider is some of the customers you will find that "shop" the yellow pages. Many are only concerned with finding the lowest price over anything else. I insist on a field visit for estimates to look for variables and market my service, my personal visits have a lot to do with landing my jobs. Many of the yellow page shoppers turn out to be tire kickers and an investment of time with no return.

[chesie]

For about $500 a month we are running a color ad in a local magazine that caters to upper middle class. We are getting a fair number of calls out. The nice part is that we change the add monthly to update with more recent job pics. It is a working progress.

We don't mess with YP other than the standard 1 liner.

A display area that we have set up at our supplier has been a great source of leads. We have put alot of work and $ into it but it has generated the most number of quality leads- in fact I closed a job check in hand today from one of those leads. The display includes pond, waterfall, stream, plantings, stone walls, large boulders andpaver patio. It is basically an ideal backyard setting.

K

[Bill Schwab]

Yellow page ads were completely ineffective for us in 2 states. So ineffective, we filed suit to get the bill reduced and won. For $14,000 I spent one season, we recieved 8, that's right, 8 telephone calls. there are too many factors that are stopping the once effective yellow pages. First and foremost, people are lazy by nature. they look at the first, and the last pages, never the middle where we were crammed into.
Second, too many brands of yellow pages now where once there was only one book.
Third, internet yellow pages are taking over.
Fourth, people who call from yellow pages are tire kicking price shoopers. We will never be the lowest company on the block, and I do not wish to even begin to compete in that market. We make alot of money fixing work by unlicensed or underpriced contractors because people get exactly what they pay for. Flyers, networking groups, yard signs, lettered trucks and trailers get us initial calls, and at present, we are near 60% word of mouth referral. For the outrageous prices yellow page ads charge for the ridiculous claims they will make to you, save your money.
If your yellow page sales person is so sure their ad will work for you offer them the deal I did.
Tell them if you get the new business they claim you will you will pay them double at the end of the year. But, if you don't get calls, or not enough calls, or bad leads, you pay nothing. If you can get them to take that deal and you ever need a job, call me you will be our point man in sales!

[tfld]

And we have a done a few really nice jobs, it just turns out that one was governed by an HOA which didnt let us put up yard signs, another had my yard sign sitting out front for several weeks, but was in a hit and miss urban neighborhood, and the other was in a very high traffic neighborhood, but only generated 1, yes 1 lead over almost 3 months.

It made me pretty upset as well to see that in the last neighborhood, almost all three ajacent houses landscaped within months after our finish of this house and all of them chose a different company. We sodded, installed ne sprinklers, craned in some boulders, planted over 60 plants and trees and mulched. The neighbors did the stupid rock everywhere thing and now their yards look like desert wastelands.

This indicates to me that people either just done have the money in my target area or they dont want to spend it.

The rest we've done have been pretty low profile, smaller projects that you cant really advertise or really even use in your portfolio.

I'm going to pick up the guerrilla marketing books and try to get some fresh perspective.

I'm just having a hard time spending a chunk of money when there is no money coming in, ya know.

Nick

[VoodooChile]

tfld, it's hard for a homeowner to distinguish a quality job from a hack job, but if you are doing good work, your projects will look better and better year after year, while the hack work declines. Just don't expect Joe Clueless to notice.

Case in point, while watering in a new planting and hosing off boulder crops tonight at a two home job in a new subdivision we've been working in for the past three days, I watched one of the heavy hitter's crews show and blow out a "scrape" in under two hours. The funny part was the homeowner was there supervising, and I had to laugh as the obligatory maple was planted in a hole half an inch larger than its rootball, burlap wrapped, wrenched and leveraged around like a stick shift on a drag strip, but the tree was straight, tall and in leaf when the crew left and Joe Clueless probably thought he'd done his part to insure the installation was up to snuff.

Time passes, tree languishes, maybe dies, is replaced with the same methods, and over the course of many years the true tale of tape is revealed.

Don't expect anyone other than your fellow landscapers and spouse/dyadic soul mate to appreciate the subtlety of your craft, especially in those first few years when anything other than mud and dust looks good to your clients.

[P-Train]

YP is so different in different locations. Here, it's a must. My ad is a little bigger than a business card and I do really well from it.

Thing is, I've seen some landscapers that did great work take a 1/2 -1/4 size ad out their next year and not be able to make the payment. Think about the winter you have there and then think about that bill.

I think it's best to evenly distribute the advertising allowance to various horizons, but focus on what gets you the best return for the money. It may take several years to see what people in your area bite...

[tfld]

Thats what I figured p-,

I'm just not the type of person that likes to wait around for things to happen, ie, I have no patience.

Nick

[Terry D]

YP ads for me were good as gold!

Among other calls, a typical call in Silicon Valley these high tech computer geeks from other Countries (France , Germany, Ireland etc.) would land a 3 year project or get brought in to run a dot.com division and they'd buy a new home. Not knowing the area, they'd rely on the YP to get their work done. Bingo, most of the time, if I showed up on time and gave a decent presentation, the question was "when can you start"?

My ad was the size of 1/2 business card. The next year I went the up a size as the YP sales staff have promotions: next size, same price as last years size etc. This is how they get you to upgrade knowing eventually you'll stop increasing size but by then, you'll be $600 + per month in sales for them.

The reason I stopped the ads is that they were too effective!!!

I was getting 4,5,6, calls per day, 7 days a week, I couldn't keep up and eventually got snowballed and buried. I was calling my competitiors w/ free leads, most thought there was a 'catch' so they refused!

I realize growing your business is important to many, but the key is having a system in place to handle the new work, and never lose sight of your net profit.

Net profit needs to be your single most important constant, otherwise your losing ground and what is the point of growing if your falling further behind?

[VoodooChile]

My week for being wrong...
I wrote:

Don't expect anyone other than your fellow landscapers and spouse/dyadic soul mate to appreciate the subtlety of your craft, especially in those first few years when anything other than mud and dust looks good to your clients.

Well, I was out at the job with the "stick-shift" maple this week, and noticed that all that leveraging with the trunk took its toll much quicker than I expected...in about 10 days!

[VoodooChile]

Nice landscape, huh?

Forgetting about the foundation planting, I don't think Silver Maples are supposed to turn purple in July. Here we have an instance where the wheat and the chaff seperate pretty quickly.

The two houses we've been working on are across the street from this job of a "competitors". We've been at it for six days, and have a 1/2 day to go yet. My competition banged this scrape out in two hours. All I can say is that all the trees we planted aren't showing their Fall color yet!

Even Joe Clueless is gonna know something isn't right with this tree

[Stonehenge]

Whaddaya mean - you haven't heard of the 'Reverse Schwedler' (Acer platanoides "Schwedler Reversii")? Very popular these days.

We just dropped a marginal customer yesterday - I made a concerted effort last year to only spec trees that were at least 2.5" caliper, as part of our move to a niche where clients can afford and are willing to pay for a more complete landscape at day one. Anyway, we revamped a design and bid from 2001 for some backyard plantings. I explained in our meeting that we were planting nicely sized trees (where the previous plan called for none), and that prices usually go up over time. Client calls later and says "Your pencil isn't sharp enough. If you can't come down a lot, I don't think we can do business." I say to him, "Then I guess we can't do business. Thanks for the call. Take care of yourself." *click* I find that I'm kind of enjoying shedding some of the dead weight clientelle that we have, but I wish I was doing it more expediently.

Terry - I don't understand how you can be in the Frisco area and not already be paying $1000/mo for your YP ad. I would think the rates there would be outrageous - they actually sound somewhat reasonable. You are right, they nail you on the day you decide to cut back. So always have in the back of your mind that someday you will either have to start REALLY paying through the nose for your ads, or you'll have to cut way back on your ad(s).