Technology Has Changed the Landscape Construction Industry
—
The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
Originally published on December 2, 2014. Updated on July 18, 2022.
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Prospects today are far more informed and empowered than those of the past, and the buying process has completely changed. This is true for every industry, and landscape construction is no exception. The new customer journey and sales process are due to advances in technology and the vast amount of information that’s readily available to consumers online. If your business isn’t providing the information that consumers expect online and making it easily accessible, you will quickly fall behind your competition.
Technology—and how we use it—changes so quickly, often leaving businesses, and complete business models, scrambling to keep up. In fact, there is an annual Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference to specifically address these matters for our industry! Today, landscape contractors must constantly reevaluate their marketing and sales strategies, customer service policies, and business plan to stay relevant and competitive.
Landscaping companies looking to grow their revenue and increase their average project size need to restructure their sales and marketing approach to better serve this new world. Gone are the days that a consumer calls a business to learn the basics about the services they provide.
Today, by the time you speak with landscaping prospects, they have already researched their potential project for hours. They have a list of all your competitors, available material choices, proper construction techniques, and market prices. Hopefully, they have found your business online. Will the lead love the high-quality project photography on your website? How about your updated, useful content that helped them with research? Inbound and content marketing for landscapers is the way to reach and impress these customers early on in their buying process.
Here are a few key areas of our industry that have changed dramatically.
Websites for Landscape Contractors
It is hard to believe, but it wasn’t that long ago that a business owner could build a basic website, make it live, and be done with it. Those days are long over, however. Today, customers in the market for landscaping services expect a fresh, constantly changing site, with useful content and jaw-dropping inspiration.
Optimized websites are essential, especially because they often serve as the front-line sales team. You can streamline the sales process by featuring an online appointment system where leads can schedule an appointment without ever needing to make a phone call. Many landscape contractors have online forms for leads to submit their information so that they can be contacted.
Leading companies invest in professional website design services to ensure that their website is reaching its full potential and operating smoothly. Something as simple as a 1-second delay in website load time can decrease customer satisfaction by 16% and cause potential leads to abandon a website. A good website design is critical.
Social Media
Prospects also look to connect with landscape professionals on social media through sites like Houzz, Facebook, and Instagram. Social media often serves as a portfolio where potential customers can browse your work, which is why it’s critical to include high-quality, professional photography and videography—a strategy that applies to content posted on your website too.
Social recruiting is also becoming increasingly more popular as more people are spending time on social media than ever before. In fact, 92% of employers report using social and professional networks to recruit. This has also led to a transformation of recruiting practices, making it more of a marketing effort to try to attract top talent like that new rockstar lead foreman.
Online Sales Pre-Qualification Systems for Landscapers
Technology has also been an incredible time-saver for both businesses and consumers when it comes to the sales process. Rather than taking up time to visit a potential customer’s home only to discover that you are not a good fit for the job, you can pre-emptively prompt customers to pre-qualify themselves. Content, more than anything, serves as a pre-qualification system, for example. Top landscape contractors are transparent about their pricing and services so that leads can pre-qualify themselves when they view the company website. In addition, some on-site visits can be eliminated by simply having a Zoom sales call.
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Recruiting can be an overwhelming task, especially in the green industry where we are facing a labor shortage. This is where an ATS can be so beneficial, making the entire process more efficient.
CrewRecruiter is a recruiting framework with an ATS. Not only does it post jobs on over 100 job boards and platforms, but it also keeps track of all of the candidates, allowing you to rate them and send automatic “thanks but no thanks” messages to the ones who aren’t a great fit for your company. This is just another way that technology has revolutionized the landscape industry, including the recruiting process.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM systems make maintaining customer relationships much easier, and when you have your hands full with the day-to-day tasks of running a business, this is a lifesaver. This software helps you build relationships and grow your business through contact management, sales management, email systems, and more.
By keeping all of the information in one place, it eliminates the possibility of misplacing random pieces of paper where you’ve jotted down customer information in your truck. CRM solutions can automate some processes, such as sending follow-up emails, saving you lots of time while also improving customer service. In fact, 74% of respondents in a survey report that these systems allow them to provide more personalized service to their customers.
Improved Landscape Business Software
Aspire has been a game-changer in the landscape industry by eliminating the disconnect between manual processes and unintegrated systems. This cloud-based system includes capabilities for estimating, scheduling, job costing, CRM, invoicing, and reporting, just to name a few features. The Aspire software gives landscape business owners full control over day-to-day operations as they can quickly access important information all in one place. Not to mention, leading companies find real-time insight into company performance invaluable.
LMN is another tool that has had a big impact on the industry. This software, which features a mobile app, helps landscape contractors scale their businesses with business planning tools, estimating capabilities, payroll reporting, sales and marketing reporting, time tracking, and a customer portal. It can also be used to track your crew to reduce waste.
Being able to present your potential customer with 3D video renderings of that proposed paver patio and landscaping project makes your business look more impressive. VizTerra and Pool Studio are some of the tools that allow landscape contractors to do just this. Unilock offers UVision 3D Landscape Creator Software, to turn their hardscape and softscape assets and your customer’s ideas into a 3D format. These capabilities just weren’t available 20 years ago, but now they have become the norm.
Improved Landscape Industry Technology and Tools
While your crew members may have worried that a robotic mower would take away their jobs, they would have quickly found that it wasn’t the case. Instead, robotic mowers have enabled top companies to better allocate their resources. For example, crews might spend their time trimming and edging while the robotic mower takes care of cutting the grass. Improved technology such as this is especially helpful during a labor crisis.
You (or a hired professional) have likely used drones in some aspect of your landscaping business, whether that be for the design phase, mapping, or even professional photography and videography. Drones can be especially beneficial because they can streamline the surveying process and enable designers to deliver realistic plans for customers to visualize their new outdoor space. They can quickly determine the grade of the land, which is a process that could be time-consuming otherwise.
Smart Systems for Landscapes
Home automation has become increasingly popular, not only within the home but in outside spaces too. Outdoor lighting systems can be programmed to turn on at a certain time of day. Smart irrigation systems detect the moisture level of the soil and turn on automatically when watering is needed. Plus, outdoor lighting systems, sound systems, and irrigation systems can be controlled by an app on your phone. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that.
More Landscape Materials and More Choices
Do you remember when there were five styles of interlocking concrete pavers that came in three colors? How about when you had the same 20 plants to choose from when designing a front yard landscape? Fast-forward to today and customers have access to anything they can dream of: hybrid plant varieties that combine the best of two or three traditional varieties, hardscape material choices that will make even a professional’s head spin, and access to practically all the supply chains and manufacturer information anyone could ever want. Not to mention, customers have the option of environmentally friendly landscaping options such as LED lights and permeable pavers. With LED lighting specifically, the energy saving allows for more extravagant projects.
Oh, and then there’s this—instead of having two local businesses to choose from when hiring out their landscape construction project, they likely have more than 30 companies to consider. Technology has made competition for landscape contractors extremely fierce, which is why implementing it effectively is so important.