Use the Month of May to Educate Your Clients

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month and Skin Cancer Awareness Month which you probably already knew. But have you told your clients?

This month is a great time to promote health and safety in all of your written communications that go to your clients. You can write a blog with simple tips to remind your clients to use sunscreen while working in their yards, as well as you can write a tips sheets with ideas to help them control dangerous pests on their property. Your clients benefit from the reminders and you benefit by positioning yourself as a caring business person and expert.

What are other ways that you can promote your business during May?

You can add a daily sun safety reminder on Facebook and Twitter. You can write a short blurb about how to safely remove a tick. Just do a Google search on “sun safety” and “tick prevention” to see what kinds of ideas you’ll find.

Just a friendly reminder, though: Don’t copy and paste from other blogs and websites. That’s plagiarism. Instead, try to find basic facts on your topic that you put in your written communications.

Use the month of May to promote safety and health to your clients. You’ll be doing a public service as well as doing some positive public relations. Plus, you can encourage your clients to contact you for services in your call to action which is located at the end of your blogs, articles, flyers, and brochures.

Your turn: How have you reminded your clients about Lyme disease and sun care protection this month?

Less “We’s” and More “You’s”

What’s the first thing that a person will see when they land on your home page? Is it you just talking about how great your company is?

How much time did you spend on the “About Us” page versus how much time did you spend on getting testimonials from satisfied customers?

What or who do you focus on when you’re writing your blog? Your prose or your client’s current, seasonal turf questions?

Hopefully, you spend more time solving your potential clients’ turf problems and posting testimonials that back up your service claims rather than just tooting your own horn. When someone does a Google search for lawn care or landscape services, they expect that your website will tell them how you will help them with weed control, bare patches on their lawns, or how much your mowing services cost. And customers appreciate when regional lawn service and landscape companies answer the land care FAQ’s of their region.

Unfortunately, most lawn care and landscape websites that I’ve visited over the years are very basic. Most of them include portfolios showcasing their work, a long or short “About Us” page telling me when and where they started. Yet, there’s not a lot of information connecting me to them. They don’t connect with me because they’re not addressing my basic lawn care frustrations. And, that’s not good marketing.

Instead, when I land on your website, I should see a picture of you and read how you can solve my most pressing grass and landscape problems, whether that means that you entice me to join your mowing loyalty club or that you specialize in disease-resistant plants.

To solve this dilemma, remember to employ the “What’s in It for Me?” rule. Your customers are coming to your blog and website to learn something, to check out what services you offer, etc. They may check out the “About Us” page after they read your blog, but they’ll see your homepage and blog first, so think about what you can do for them when they “step into” your site.

Look at it this way, when you walk into a restaurant, the hostess doesn’t come up to you and tell you about the restaurant’s history, or who works there, or why they’re the best. She simply smiles and asks, “How many are in your party?”

So, keep your ideal clients in the forefront of your mind when you’re writing your blog or putting up website content. Think about their needs and wants. Think about the client who has kids and doesn’t want a lot of chemicals on her lawn. Think about the senior citizen who may want the basic mowing and lawn maintenance. In other words, think about your readers first. Keep the “we’s and I’s” to a minimum and the “You’s” to a maximum.

Your turn: Have you designed your website to be customer-friendly? If it’s not, what is one thing that you can do to connect with your clients?

To Blog or Not to Blog Part 2

In the past two weeks, I’ve been busy writing blogs for other land care businesses. And I’ve learned something about blogging since I wrote “To Blog or Not to Blog” Part 1. Here are some tips to get you started on writing your blog:

1. Be consistent: You need to publish your blog on a consistent basis. That doesn’t mean that you need to blog every day, or even, every week. I advise my clients to start out with one blog a month and then move up to blogging two times a month once you’ve gathered a following.

2.Plan your blogs around a theme. If it’s springtime, than write about lawn care and landscaping tips that will help your clientele manage their properties. You can also take a basic lawn care, landscaping, or gardening tip and describe how you can help your clients meet their turf needs with your land care services.

3. Remember to employ the “What’s in It for Me?” rule. Your customers are coming to your blog to learn something, to check out what services that you have to offer, etc. So, keep your ideal client in the forefront of your mind when you’re writing your blog. Think about their needs and wants they have for their properties. Think about how they can have a beautiful landscape while sticking to a budget. In other words, think about your readers first. Keep the “I’s” to a minimum and the “You’s” to a maximum.

4. Engage your readers at the end of your blog. Ask them to share their lawn care questions and concerns with you. You or someone in your office should daily keep track of incoming comments and blog readership so that you can respond to anyone’s questions or concerns in a timely manner. I usually advise folks to answer readers’ questions within 24 – 48 hours.

5. Put a call to action at the end of your blog post. Always invite your readers to call you for an appointment. Always provide your phone number and email after each blog even if they can find the contact information on your “Contact Us” page. Remember it’s about serving the customer, and one way to do that is by providing the information right at their finger tips so they can call you as soon as they’re done reading your blog post.

What results have you gotten from your blog? Ifyou haven’t started a blog yet, what’s holding you back? Feel free to share your stories in the comments section.

If you need help writing your blog, call me at 717-405-9873 or email me at wendykomancheck@gmail.com. We can set up a phone interview to talk about your blogging needs and how to better reach your ideal clients.

To Blog or Not to Blog Depends on Your Clients

When it comes to marketing, there seems to be a lot of pressure for businesses to maintain a blog on their websites. However, does every business need a blog?

I don’t think so. I think it depends on what type of landscape business you have and who your clients are. So, here are some tips to think about before starting a blog for your green business website:

1. Who are your customers? Are they homeowners, HOA’s, or commercial clients? If your client base are homeowners and HOA’s, a blog would be a good idea to keep in touch with your clientele. However, commercial clients will be less interested in blogs that would have basic lawn care, landscape, and gardening tips.

2. Do you have a garden center or a nursery associated with your landscape business? If so, blogging is a great way to introduce your garden center clients to your landscaping services and vice versa. It also provides a connection between you and your customers.

3. Are you a community volunteer? If so, a blog focusing on how you take your landscaping and lawn care skills out to help those in your community builds up local interest in your services, as well as encourages other green industry businesses to get involved in their communities too.

Overall, you need to determine your clients’ needs and desires before you start blogging. The purpose behind a blog is to keep in touch with your clients, bring in new clients, and to showcase your expertise in the land care industry. There’s no point in maintaining a blog, if no one is going to read it.

What do you think? Should all green businesses have blogs or are there certain niches within the green business industry that are better suited to hosting a blog than other businesses? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Standing Out in the Landscape/Lawncare Crowd

What is your unique selling position (USP)? Some of you may know what a USP is and others may not. Simply put, what makes your landscape/lawncare business stand out from the crowd?

Before you hire a writer to blog about your landcare business, you need to decide what makes you stand out from your competition. Is it your attention to detail? Is it because you have own a one-stop shop business? Or is it something else?

You can define what your USP is by answering the following questions:

1. What do you do better than your competition?
2. What’s your company’s purpose or mission? Why do you exist as a business?
3. Who are your clients? Are they mostly upscale residential clients or more commercial clients?
4. What’s important to your clients when they hire a landscape and/or lawn care professional?
5. What is your niche and why did you decide to focus on that niche?

These are some of the questions that you need to answer to arrive at your USP.

Account Representative, Tim Allen, from the Ephrata Review, a newspaper in my area, shared this example:

“Most customers of Joe Smith’s Lawncare like how he is always on time, grooms the shrubs exactly how they ask, and leaves the property, taking all of the yard waste. Joe realized that his customer’s time was a priority, that his attentiveness to their needs, and that cleanliness were all important. So when he decided to focus his marketing, he knew that he wanted his prospective clients to know his USP:

‘Lawncare that values your time, your wishes, and your property’.

It’s a great start, but after asking more of the questions, he discovered better ways to communicate what he does, why he does it, and why his business is a better choice.

Tim suggested the following tips to move your USP to the next level:

1. How about you? Have you started asking some of these questions? Maybe it’s time to ask and answer all of them.
2. Give it time and re-evaluate your USP in six months or a year and see if you answer them the same way.
3. (A USP) is something that can be refined and made more accurate, or reflect a shift in any of the areas identified by the questions.

What makes you stand out from your competition in the landscape and lawn care industries? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

If you would like someone to help you brainstorm about your USP, shoot me an email at wendykomancheck@gmail.com. I’d be happy to help you.

Four Tips for Getting in Touch with Your Landscape Clients

Do you know what your clients want to read on your site’s blog? Folks tend to look for blog posts that answer their most pressing landcare questions. So when you write your blogs, think about what’s important to them. Ask yourself, “What do they really care about?”

If you don’t know the answer to that question, then it’s time to do some listening. Here are four tips to get in touch with your clients’ landscape and lawn care needs:

1. Write down the common questions and comments that you hear from your customers each season. Is there a pattern to the questions? For example, do you have Mr. Smith asking you how to rid his yard of Japanese beetles every summer? Do you get questions about how pesticides affect the local environment? Do people ask you what are the best shade-friendly perennials?

Pool your common questions and comments to use as future blog posts.

2. Think about your popular landscape packages. No, not the ones that you heavily promote, but the ones that everyone seems to purchase. Ask yourself, “Why does everyone seem to like this particular package? What does it say about my customers?”

Then, take those answers and turn them into blog posts.

3. Simply ask your clients what they would like to see on your blog. If you don’t feel comfortable asking them outright, then include a simple survey with their renewal invoice. Or better yet, set up an informal survey using Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) or other survey programs (http://forum.researchinfo.com/showthread.php?870-Online-Survey-Sites) and invite them to participate in the survey. Sweeten the deal with a coupon for participating.

4. Ask other landcare businesses what they have found are common concerns that customers want answers to. This type of “research” can be done through social media sites, such as Linked In or Twitter, or you can ask that question at your next landcare association’s meet ‘n’ greet.

As you can see, this type of thinking puts your customers first. And this type of blogging draws potential customers to your site.

What other ways have you found blog ideas that interest potential clients?

If you need a writer to help you set up a customer-focused blog, please contact me at wendykomancheck@gmail.com.

10 Reasons Why a Land Care Company Needs a Writer

A picture is worth a 1,000 words, but does that mean that words aren’t important to your site if you’re a land care professional? Won’t your uploaded project portfolio and your impressive client list do the trick to get people knocking down your door for their summer landscaping needs?

Not necessarily.

Here are 10 reasons why you should hire a professional writer to write the content for your website, your press releases, and other communication needs:

1. A writer makes you look professional and sound like an expert in your field.
2. A writer helps you develop trust and credibility with existing and potential clients.
3. A writer creates content that will help your search rankings on Google and other search engines.
4. A writer conveys your message through words. A writer tells and sells your brand to the public.
5. A writer saves you time and frustration. If writing isn’t your thing, hire a writer to do the work for you.
6. A writer can update your blog at regular intervals, so you can educate customers about landscape and gardening issues that THEY care about—you become the expert that they turn to with their green questions.
7. There’s a trade magazine where you’d like to share your expertise, but you don’t have time to write the article. A writer puts the trade article together with your voice and your name on it.
8. Press releases alert industry members and clientele of any news about your company. A release needs to be written in the correct format that includes a catchy title and a hook to get an editor’s attention. A writer knows what it takes to put those elements together so that you’ll get noticed.
9. A writer puts together your quarterly newsletter to keep employees and customers updated on what’s happening within your company. It’s also a project that can contain gardening tips, land care reminders, and when customers need to schedule with you for their fall cleanup appointments.
10. A writer is a silent assistant who proofreads and edits your communications before they go out to the public. Consider a freelance writer to be your “right-hand man (or woman).”

Good writers are like you—they know their customers, they deliver excellent work on time, and they want to help you.  We’re landscapers, but we work with words and pixels while you work with soil and plant media.