The Strategy Months: How Landscape Contractors and Outdoor Living Pros Make the Most of the Off-Season

The Strategy Months: How Landscape Contractors and Outdoor Living Pros Make the Most of the Off-Season
 


The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.

Originally published on November 19, 2014. Updated on June 23, 2022.

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    As we enter the fourth quarter each year, most outdoor living professionals—except for those located in snow-free, work-friendly areas like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina—are winding down their daily schedules, wrapping up the last few projects of the year, and getting ready for the winter season. The final sales numbers are calculated, and next year’s budgets are drawn up. Now it’s the time to take a breather and relax a bit, right?? Wrong. It’s actually go time.

    For leaders in the industry, the work for the “season” doesn’t end here. Even though their crews are not out on as many job sites building spectacular outdoor living spaces or fertilizing and maintaining beautiful lawns, they are getting another type of work done during the winter. For them, it is the time to take a look at their marketing efforts and make the multi-disciplinary improvements necessary to reach the goals set for the upcoming season. 

    In the past, winter was the slow season, but Covid sped up the trends that were already happening in the landscape industry, and what used to be the off-season has become just another season—and that’s good for business! 

    By mid-January, landscape companies, pool companies, and other outdoor living industry professionals are knee-deep in what we at HALSTEAD call the Strategy Months, which owner Corey Halstead discusses in an episode of The Building Code podcast by Buildertrend.

    To summarize, the business decisions made during the three strategic months of January, February, and March can mean the difference between a great upcoming season with better leads, more employees, and more significant profits or a mediocre year with unqualified leads and lower profit margins. It’s your decision, but make no mistake—industry leaders are hard at work during those months by doing what leading firms do.

    Why Landscape Contractors Should Always Be Recruiting

    This likely doesn't need to be explained because you’re already dealing with the nationwide labor shortage and probably recruiting all of the time. But if you’re not, you may want to start. If you want to avoid stress and reduced production, don’t wait until you lose that key foreman or rockstar crew member to begin your search for top talent.

    The truth is, the best lawn care technicians, supervisors, or laborers aren’t actively searching for a job—–they’re working! Successful companies know that they can’t hire when labor is needed, so they are recruiting far in advance of unforeseeable circumstances. Taking advantage of tech that makes recruiting a little easier helps a lot. For example, CrewRecruiter was created solely for the landscape industry and will help you get your job openings on numerous platforms.

    This consistent, always-on strategy keeps your job postings and company information out there where top talent may be passively looking at possible career opportunities. When you have a stockpile of resumes submitted by high-quality candidates, you’re in a good position to hire someone who will be an asset to your company.

    Do Your Processes Need Updating?

    Leading firms have clearly defined policies and processes and review them regularly to see if they continue to serve their purpose and whether improvements are needed to make them more efficient. While a process may have worked fantastically in the past, it may be slowing things down now. The need to recruit all of the time is the perfect example—maybe you weren’t doing it 20 years ago, but you could now, and it would serve you well.

    The off-season is an ideal time to reflect on the past busy season and identify its challenges and triumphs. What worked? What didn’t work so well? What could you do differently?

    Perhaps you’ll notice opportunities for training your staff. 74% of surveyed employees feel they aren’t reaching their full potential at work due to the lack of development opportunities. This is a problem that can be easily fixed. Take the time to invest in your employees by training them to do their jobs better and more efficiently. 

    Update and create processes and share them with the team. You will likely find numerous ways to uplevel your current strategies.

    Is It Time for Website Renovation and/or Optimization?

    The outdoor living industry’s online presence needs to improve, and needs to do it fast. When you compare the industry to some of the other branches of home design, such as architecture and interior design, it’s apparent that the outdoor living industry needs to bump up its game.

    That said, and in all fairness, business owners have heard about the importance of an effective, modern online presence for quite a few years. While this has been crucial since the mainstream adoption of the internet by companies, it has become even more critical over the last five years. 

    As an industry overall, the last few years have shown a massive improvement in online presence and brand. But as of this writing, there’s still a great deal of running room. 

    Why NOW Is the Time to Get Your Landscape Company Website in Tip-Top Shape

    So why is now really the time for outdoor living professionals to invest in better-looking, more effective websites? Mainly because of a few critical changes in the landscape industry specifically and in the way consumers travel through the customer journey today.

    The first reason is, in part, due to the industry’s rapid growth over the last few years. The scale of the projects today is incredible—outdoor fireplaces, poolside cabanas, infinity pools, and outdoor dining rooms are all part of the modern design of outdoor spaces. Add in the fact that commercial maintenance competition is increasing dramatically every year, it’s coming from new places. It used to be that another company in your service market gradually upped their game. But now you have new challenges to worry about—investors are realizing opportunities in the recurring revenue model of commercial maintenance and buying and investing in firms more and more. 

    Because of this growth, the landscape consumers of today are demanding more from industry professionals. The time has come for many business owners to play catch-up to the demands of these consumers by creating an online presence that meets their needs and expectations. 

    The other reason is the major shift in how consumers buy products and services today. The power and advantage are now with the buyer, not the seller. No longer does a homeowner need to contact a salesperson or business owner to gather information about a product or service they are thinking of purchasing. This means that the average consumer in the market is now better informed and more knowledgeable than ever, challenging business owners to raise their game. 

    This “game” happens mainly online and begins with a potential customer visiting your company’s website. What will they find when they do? It had better be an information-content-packed, beautifully designed digital source that helps them with their research and prompts them to contact you for a consultation.

    Useful Tools for Contractor Websites

    With too much work and too few skilled workers, you may find yourself overwhelmed with leads and not having the necessary resources for qualifying these leads. But have no fear; you can optimize your business website to help.

    Estimating calculators can be added to your website and allow consumers to get a ballpark figure of how much their outdoor living project will cost so that they can make an educated buying decision, take time to save money, or perhaps change the scope of their project to fit their budget. Mission accomplished, your website worked for you in the lead qualification process.

    When a customer has used the tools on your website and is aware of your pricing and the general scope of your projects and work, they’ve pre-qualified themselves and may be ready to contact you. You could make this easy by offering booking and scheduling capabilities right on your website. 

    With this website tool, the customer doesn’t have to call you to set up that initial meeting, which is ideal since many consumers prefer not to talk on the phone. This is especially important as millennials and Gen-Zers enter the landscape market. In fact, 75% of millennials avoid phone calls because they’re too time-consuming—that’s almost an entire generation with which you’d be missing sales opportunities.

    In today’s market, providing the right resources on your website can help potential leads pre-qualify themselves—saving you both time and money.

    The Incredible Power of Content Marketing to Pre-Qualify Your Leads

    So what is content, and why is it so critical to a successful landscape marketing strategy? Content marketing, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute, is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” 

    Simply put, this means that your landscape company should be regularly producing original content that provides real value to your target consumer while helping them in their buying process. This content may include blog posts, videos, and photos.

    Why Produce Content, Anyway?

    Content marketing is the user-focused search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. In today’s customer-driven marketplace, high-quality, useful content is what drives webpages to the first page of Google. We see it every day with the landscape contractors, pool builders, and outdoor living professionals we work with. When executed correctly, and produced by professionals who understand how to make a story connect with readers, content truly is king.

    The hardest thing for business owners to understand about content marketing is that the content should not be focused solely on their business. Now is the time to put the customer first; that is the only way to make the content you produce successful.

    Here is a tactical example of delivering content that is useful to consumers. Say you’re running a lawn care company and want to provide content to solve a problem that many consumers have. You could create content that answers a specific question, such as How do I make my lawn healthy and green?’ or ‘Do I need to fertilize my lawn?’ When you can provide a solution to a customer’s problem, you establish yourself as an industry expert, which is essential in building trust.

    Delivering Purposeful Content to Your Target Audience via Social Media

    Oftentimes, the easiest, most effective method of delivering content is through a blog on your website and social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. The specific social media platforms you use should be determined based on your target audience. For example, LinkedIn is an excellent place to reach commercial leads, while Facebook and Instagram are better for reaching residential leads.

    Top landscape companies balance both paid and organic social for optimal results. Paid social allows you to micro-target a specific audience and provides access to analytics that you may find useful.

    While social media is extremely effective, we can’t discount some of the more traditional forms of content marketing.

    Effective Old-School Content: Portfolios and Brochures

    An important focus for the Strategy Months is creating a better way to show off your landscape company’s work. At HALSTEAD, we are firm believers in the thought that your catalog of completed work is your best marketing—100%, hands down. 

    The outdoor living and landscape projects your company designs and builds are made of you and your team’s heart, soul, sweat, and pride. The easy part is treating this work with the respect of excellent videography, photography, and great graphic design, allowing it to sell more jobs for your company for years to come. 

    Yes, posting this content within an online portfolio is an effective marketing tool and especially useful for establishing better prospect connections via email and social media. But you can’t discount the value of luxury printed portfolios and brochures. However, the “photo book” available from the mass online printing vendor with the “online design software” simply isn’t a high enough quality product for the expectations of today’s consumer.

    Enter the branded, magazine-style portfolio with high quality imagery and engaging, useful content. Think of a luxury home magazine only focused exclusively on your company’s story, mission, and body of work. Sounds impressive, right? It is. And it’s just the kind of forward-thinking marketing that will win the best landscape projects this year and beyond—right from your first consultation.

    So, this is all great, but how do you make it happen? There are three main components of bringing a marketing piece, like a brand portfolio magazine, together successfully.

    1. Partner with the best marketing company for the job. Choose a marketing company with a strong landscape and outdoor living industry niche. A magazine-style portfolio like the one we describe here requires authentic, accurate content that only a marketing company that specializes in the landscape industry can deliver.

    2. Invest in high-quality project photography. The best magazine or book with the highest quality design and production is completely ineffective if combined with poor images. The days when a company could use low-quality photos of unfinished projects to win bids are over. Even if the company’s projects are stunning in person, one needs to step back and make sure that a project’s quality is being communicated effectively through photography. It’s a small investment when compared to the effort of building the project in the first place.

    3. Pay attention to the end product. The format and production of the portfolio magazine itself are just as crucial as the choice of the landscape marketing company. The proper photography and the integrity of the design and production are what makes consumers connect with the content. There are many options to be considered including overall trim size, paper thickness, cover finishes, and binding treatments. The right combination of these choices results in a dynamite selling tool that is second to none. 

    Investing in Quality Content and Marketing Expertise

    Being that you have a business to operate and grow, it’s very often the best option to partner with an outside content marketing firm to start seeing the results of great content faster. Because authentic, helpful content is paramount in today’s buying environment, niche agencies are surfacing across the country, specializing in specific industries. 

    It is becoming increasingly difficult for the traditional marketing agency of yesterday to create connection-driven content across all industries. General, broad-sweeping content just isn’t good enough anymore, hence the specialization of marketing agencies within niches like health care, event production, weddings, and architecture. 

    Whoever you choose to partner with for a successful marketing campaign for your landscaping company, make sure they understand how to market your specific business and provide data to back it up.

    Data-Based Planning and Optimization of Your Marketing Strategy

    Few leading companies plan marketing changes in April. This task is completed in Q4 of the previous year, or the first few months of the current year, and is done by analyzing the concrete data from the past year or quarter, etc. This brings up an important question: Can you track your spending back to revenue?

    If you can’t, it’s time to start digging into the data to see what is working and what isn’t. The data never lies. If you want an accurate picture of your marketing effectiveness, you must know your numbers.

    Marketing Automation Is the Key to Efficiency

    While marketing automation was optional five years ago, today, it’s a necessity. When you see the benefits of it, how it can free up team members to do other tasks, or how it can increase overall productivity, we are confident that you’ll want to implement automation however you can.

    According to The State of Marketing Automation, 71% of companies are using automation to execute their email marketing strategy, and 59% feel like they’re not using the marketing automation tools to their fullest potential. Successful companies know how to strike a balance between being personable without seeming too automated and keeping the focus on what the customer wants.

    Communication is key to fostering relationships with your customers. Automation is the perfect tool to help in your communication efforts. There are various communication methods that can be automated, such as emails and text messages. 

    Implementing Software for Landscaping Businesses

    The Strategy Months are a great time to implement any new software you’ve been considering. Spanning production management, accounting, estimates and proposals, data and analytics, and design, leading firms leverage modern technology to help improve efficiencies in their businesses. 

    Customer resource management (CRM) software is an essential tool for maintaining relationships and keeping better documentation. HubSpot even offers free CRM software that many lawn and landscape business owners find helpful. CRM software allows you to automate emails, text messages, and more.

    LMN is software that features everything you might need to run your landscape business, including a business planning tool, estimate builder, time tracking, scheduling, job and payroll reporting, and sales and marketing reports. It also has CRM capabilities and credit card processing features.

    Aspire is landscape management software for service field companies of all sizes. This comprehensive software includes CRM, estimating, scheduling, purchasing, invoicing, reporting, accounting, and payroll. By keeping all of your business information in one place, you will be able to see data that will help you develop your marketing strategy for the next season and beyond.

    Before deciding which software to implement, do your research and explore which one can meet most of your needs. The business decisions that you make in the off-season are often the ones that can have the most significant impact for years to come.

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