Be Intentional (with your marketing)
👉 THE BOTTOM LINE:
With proper, intentional marketing, you can control the type of work you do, rather than simply taking what projects and accounts come to you.
🧭 The Shift to Being Intentional
I've been finding myself using the word "intentional" a ton lately. Be intentional with your marketing, be intentional with your company’s direction, etc, etc. It's something I've come to realize is lacking in many landscaping businesses, and altogether missing in most marketing strategies. It makes sense—it's super difficult and demanding to remain intentional as life pulls and pushes us all over the freakin’ place as entrepreneurs.
Fact is, the majority of landscape business owners sort of fell into being an owner. Even those that now operate $20M+ operations started out working in the industry as a way to make a few extra bucks, either starting in high school with a push mower or growing up in the family business.
For me, it was both. My uncle owned a small landscape maintenance company. I started working there during summers and days off from school when I was about 14. I wanted to buy my first car, which turned out to be a sweet red Datsun 280z - she ran for about a month before quitting on me. I later upgraded to a stunning baby blue 1984 Nissan Sentra - it all worked out 🤔😫.
In these early years of a business, the mentality is a "take whatever you can get" mentality—and it’s 100% necessary in the beginning. But old ways of thinking die hard—most lawn and landscape business owners still think this way 3, 5, 10, even 20 years later—simply reacting to the work that comes in. Full-on reactive mode.
Enter the "Be Intentional" shift.
⏰ The 60-Minute “What and Who” Sesh
One of the foundational first steps to building out marketing that actually grows your company is just a little owner soul-searching. Whether you’ve been in business for 2 years or 20, this step is critical to setting the course for the growth to come. The best time to do this is after you’ve proven the concept, and gotten some traction and a mixed bag of clients on the roster—say $500k+ or so in annual sales revenue. This way you’ve tasted the good, bad, and the ugly. This perspective helps.
“Marketing strategy” is a fancy sounding phrase agencies throw around. Put simply, it’s the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of your business. Today, we are focused on the “Who” and “What.” You are going to shift to be intentional about what type of accounts and projects you actually want, and who you want to do them for.
Block-off 60 minutes on your calendar this week. No, like actually block it off right now or it will never happen. The week will explode with shit-shows and you won’t have the time. If you block it off, it’s done. I can tell you that owners of the largest 10% of the industry manage their calendar in time blocks - but that’s another email.
For those companies on the road to $3M, this 3-step exercise is going to clarify what you want to do, and who you want to do it for. You might not see it now, but I promise you that this 60-minutes is going to change your business forever. Shocking that 90%+ of landscaping companies never formally do it. Well, not really. If you want to be in the top 10% of companies, you need to do things that the other 90% don’t do. 😉 🏆
🎯 TAKE ACTION:
1. Dig deep:
Which of your current accounts do you hate? Why?
What design/build/landscaping projects did you do over the 24 months that you wish you didn’t have to take on? Why?
Which of your current accounts are your top 5 favorite? Why?
Top 3-5 design/build/landscaping projects ever? Why?
2. Map the similarities:
What do the accounts and projects that you like have in common?
The type of customer? ie Middle class, upper class, Profession? Age?
The geographical area? ie You wish you could work in a handful of towns and avoid the windshield time and logistics to others.
The type of work? ie You really enjoy doing comprehensive outdoor living projects vs one-off front walkway projects or you want smaller size mow and blow only.
The service line? ie You want to do more irrigation and lighting and less residential maintenance.
The sector? You love your commercial customers but can’t stand your residential ones.
Something else? ie Other things you’ve noticed additional to these categories.
3. Reality check:
Now it’s time to make sure it’s possible in your service area.
Is there enough demand? ie do customers actually want and need your above choices?
Does the make-up of your geographical service area support your choices? ie If you aim for 20-acre estate maintenance in the D.C. market, it’s going to be tough since there aren’t a lot of those properties there.
What about competition? Are their competitors having success doing what you want to do, in your service area? Is this a sign there’s a market fit problem? Can you compete?
Congrats! Now that you've got a clear, intentional direction in mind, crafting a marketing system to reach and convert your ideal customers will be easier and more streamlined.
📞 A Conversation with the Owner of a $4M Landscape Company
A note on growth in the landscape industry. The direction you set now, can (and often does) evolve and tweak over time as your business grows. At a future stage of growth, you will likely want to get even more specific.
For instance, I was on the phone the other day with a fairly young owner of a $4M landscaping company who offered design/build and maintenance services. This owner realized that he needed to grow his year-round maintenance packages for high-end customers and estates in order to drive the recurring revenue to get to the next level. He was explaining to me that there are some folks on his team that don’t understand why in the world they would do marketing when they have more leads than they can handle. We chatted about reactive vs proactive business mentality and it hit home for him. See, while the leads were always coming in, not enough of them were aligned to his ideal work—where he actually wanted to take the company. Because there wasn't enough of the perfect-fit leads, they are always taking on accounts and projects that weren't ideal. They need to keep the crews busy, of course. So while they had done this exercise earlier on and decided they were going to be a higher-end residentially focused installation and maintenance company, they now needed to go one step deeper to the year-round estate maintenance focus. Not just the broader category of “residential maintenance.” They are excited for the next stage of growth as they push towards the $10M mark.
📈 Better Marketing Awaits
Nailing the intentional direction of your business as early on as possible improves the efficacy of your marketing dramatically. When you know your ideal project and/or account, you can leverage better targeting, better messaging, and drive better lead conversion.
