5 Ways to Use Your Lawn, Landscape, or Outdoor Living Business Website to Attract Larger Projects and Prequalify Leads
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
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Are you hoping to attract larger, more lucrative projects for your lawn, landscape, or outdoor living business but still seem to be missing out? If you’re only attracting smaller-scale projects or large volumes of time-consuming consultations with unqualified prospects, look closely at your website analytics to see if your business website is really working for you.
The goal isn’t to attract as many leads as possible but to attract qualified leads—quality over quantity—to save both parties valuable time. By providing the information on your website that prospects are searching for in the research phase of the customer journey, you can eliminate calls from DIYers looking for advice and people who want basic information about your services but aren’t quite ready to talk yet, and any other inquiries from people who aren’t the right fit for your business.
Think of your website as a filter that eliminates unqualified prospects so that only the highly qualified contact you. Leading companies have optimized their websites to be lead-qualifying machines, not just traffic magnets. Implementing these five strategies on your website will transform your website into a highly-effective qualification tool.
1. Providing Price Transparency on Green Industry Business Websites
The average person doesn’t realize how much it costs to design and build a new landscape or outdoor living space, so it is your job as the business to educate them on potential pricing. Being transparent with pricing on your website helps establish trust—just don’t make pricing the main focus so that it takes away from the overall experience.
High-end pricing shows that you are an industry expert. Your target audience is willing to pay premium prices for high-quality outdoor spaces. A recent study showed that higher prices drive consumer demand for luxury brands. Higher pricing shows that the landscape contractor has the money to invest in state-of-the-art equipment, premium materials, and a team of highly skilled craftsmen. It also indicates prospects can expect excellent customer service and a personalized experience from this particular contractor.
Displaying your pricing helps establish your branding because, after all, pricing is a strategic marketing decision. Exact pricing isn’t needed nor encouraged, as it can take away from the high-end experience and cheapen your brand.
A ballpark figure or price range is helpful during the research process. If people can’t afford your prices, whether out of pocket or with financing options, they aren’t your target customer and won’t set up a phone consultation—saving you both time.
2. Using Strategic Content Marketing to Appeal to an Affluent Audience
Landing larger projects means targeting an affluent audience, which takes strategic effort. Top lawn, landscape, and outdoor living companies are clear on who their target audience is and know their interests, needs, and desires. They know what motivates their audience to contact a landscape contractor in the first place, and the content they create helps meet those needs and attract their ideal audience.
Sharing content demonstrating your industry expertise will appeal to your target audience. The affluent are willing to pay for high quality, and appealing to this demographic means demonstrating your expertise and master craftsmanship. A blog is the perfect platform to provide educational content that can be shared across your social media channels. 55% of marketers think blogs are the best marketing tool to move potential clients through the sales funnel, indicating the effectiveness of blog content.
Using your blog to answer various anticipated questions, objections, or issues prospects might have will help attract your audience. For example, you could create blogs that discuss landscaping ideas for a customized outdoor kitchen or how to achieve a sense of luxury in your inground pool area, both topics that appeal to an affluent audience.
When prospects have access to informative and in-depth content on your website, they will be better qualified when they contact you. Marketers who prioritize blogging in their marketing system experience 13x more ROI, proving its effectiveness.
Affluent audiences have high standards, both in the outdoor living spaces and landscapes they’re in the market for and in the content they consume. Your website content should be professionally written, easy to read, and free of grammar errors. Visually appealing and highly engaging content will help eliminate the risk of losing a potential prospect. Plus, don’t miss out on the influence of affluent peers on prospects.
3. Providing Social Proof With Customer Reviews on Your Green Industry Website
90% of people are much more likely to trust a recommended brand, even if the recommendation is from a stranger. Featuring customer testimonials and reviews on your website can be influential because it helps assure prospects of the quality of your work.
Many of the clients we begin working with at HALSTEAD don’t have many customer reviews to work at first with but quickly see the value of building their online reputation and garnering customer views. Having customer reviews and testimonials to display requires consistently seeking them out and having an online reputation management system in place to do so, especially considering the high return.
A study by Northwestern University found that conversions increased by 380% when customer reviews were displayed. The power of peer influence is remarkable, which is why leading green industry firms feature social proof on their websites, whether in video testimonials or written quotes pulled from Google or Facebook reviews.
4. Showcasing Your Ideal Outdoor Living & Landscape Projects With Professional Photography and Videography
Your completed projects are one of your most effective marketing tools. Using professional photography and videography to capture them helps demonstrate the value of your work and shows the high-end quality.
Landscape design and build firms with the best visual content on their websites allow time for their projects to mature. Photos and videos showing newly installed sodding or plantings do not demonstrate the potential that a mature landscape does. Seeing lines where the sodding is installed, small plantings devoid of blooms, and disturbed areas of ground near a recently built paver patio isn’t attractive. Planting beds filled with colorful blooms, a lush and green lawn, and a perfectly maintained landscape more accurately paint the picture of luxury.
Larger projects include a complete outdoor living space or a revamp of both the front and backyard areas. Show photos of these comprehensive outdoor spaces to attract these more extensive projects. A photo of a paver walkway near the front entrance of a home will attract small projects of similar scope, and visuals showcasing a complete outdoor living area will attract similar larger projects.
This visual content becomes more meaningful with a story attached to it via an impactful case study. Include details about the scope of the projects, any challenges you faced during the process, and the solutions you implemented. Case studies can help prospects imagine enjoying a similar outdoor space on their own estate, helping create an emotional connection that helps with conversion.
5. Prequalifying Prospects Using Form Tracking on Your Green Industry Business Website
With 74% of companies using forms for lead generation and nearly half of them stating their forms are the highest converting lead generation tool, forms are essential to prequalifying leads from your website. Before you set up a consultation, have the prospect fill out a short questionnaire on your website to help collect their contact information and determine if you’re a good fit for their project.
Ask questions about their budget to see if the prospect can even afford your services, keeping in mind that not all people who fill out a contact form will be right for you. Find out if they’re interested in a single feature, such as a paver driveway, or if they’re in the market for a comprehensive outdoor living space with an inground pool and paver patio, a fully-equipped outdoor kitchen, and an outdoor lounge with an outdoor fireplace and entertainment system. It may require further questions to determine if you can upsell additional outdoor living features or if their budget restricts extra work.
Either way, asking the right questions will help qualify your leads before you ever hop on a phone call with them. If they happen to submit a question that you’ve already answered on your website or blog, simply send them the link to the blog post that answers their question. You’ll save a lot of time rather than answering the same question over and over from numerous prospects, time you can spend dedicated to qualified leads.