I’m proud to announce I’ve just been qualified as a Google Adwords professional. For the past 3 years, I’ve been managing online advertising campaigns for several small businesses successfully getting them many profitable leads at an affordable rate.

Now that spring is hear in most parts of the country, you should be getting your name out where ever possible. I want to help you do this today! For first time online advertisers, I have $100 in free ads to give out. You can’t go wrong giving this a shot. How much is a new client worth to you?

Traffic starts increasing on this blog and it’s all from landscapers looking for find ways to advertise their business. Isn’t that why you’re here?

I just went through the entire list of landscapers licensed in New York state to apply pesticides and found that only 30% of them have websites. Have you ever wondered why the next guy has tons of business and you don’t?

It’s because they’ve made it easy for the new generation of homeowners to find them. Only little old ladies go through the phone book and trust me, you don’t want them calling you.

You want people who have just bought their first house thanks to the $8000 tax credit and are ready to make it their own with new and personalized landscaping. You want their rich parents who moved in nearby to be near their grandchildren. You want to get in with a new community and work their network.

Make it easy for them to find you online. Have a website that’s frequently updated, start a facebook fan page for your business, go twitter.

I’ve been online and making websites for so many years that I didn’t understand why everyone else doesn’t also make their own websites until I talked to my first boss.

He’s a guy in his mid 40’s, runs a comfortable, small design/build firm with a single crew. Ten months out of the year he’s working like a maniac meeting with customers, buying supplies and setting up his crew on the job site. He doesn’t have the time to learn web design, manage a site, write blog posts every week, upload pictures, analyze advertising campaigns on google and other search engines.

That’s where I come in. While he’s out taking care of business I take care and actively manage his website and online presence. Want to get some work spraying dormant oil or do some winter pruning? I write a new sales page all about it and get the word out to people in the target area. He pays me a small monthly retainer plus a commission for every lead/sale he get and I free him up to run his business and bring in the money.

I still have room for a limited number of new clients. Here’s how get started today:

Email or call me now. We’ll have a brief chat about your business so I can bring out your strongest points when writing sales copy for your new site and familiarize myself with your target market. Then, I’ll set up the site and begin writing and adding in images. You don’t have to have a domain name already or even pictures of your work. We can choose a name together and there are 1000’s of great stock images you use if you don’t have your own portfolio. Once the site is up (usually in 24-72 hours) we’ll begin advertising and marketing your business online. In no time leads will start coming in and it will be up to you to work your magic and close them.

When potential landscaping customers come to your site, they aren’t always dying to hire you and only you. Driving around town they see dozens of landscapers. Online there are even more itching to get their business.

Imaging if they came to your site, found you’ve offered tons and tons of help to people needing advice and found that you are truly an expert who loves what he’s doing. Who’s going to get the landscaping job once it gets bid out?

So start offering great advice on your site. Someone else already is.

P.S. Do you want a free business account on gardenobserver.com? I’m giving them out for a limited time.

It’s hard finding good landscaping information online that can be used reliably. State Cooperative extensions have lots of great information, but they don’t always deal with what you are selling commercially.

I’m launching a new site this month called Garden Observer. The idea is to organize gardening and landscaping information on a local basis so where ever you are, you’ll easily find just what you need.

For landscape business owners like yourself, I’ve set up a special type of user account which lets you post articles, showcase your best work and reach out to prospective clients in your area. You’ll be able to setup a profile for your business, get listed in our directory and receive leads based on the services you provide. We handle all the hard work of setting up web servers and driving traffic to your pages. Sign up now and you’ll even get a free guide to writing landscaping articles for the web including the top topics people are searching for right now.

If you need additional help with marketing and advertising ideas (not just limited to the web) I’m always available for help. Just ask.

Clearly, their yard desperately needed a fall cleanup, had no seasonal plantings in the beds and could use some dormant pruning in a couple of months.

In these hard economic times, it’s the businesses that distinguish themselves from the competition who will survive and come out thriving.

So in your flyers, highlight the benifits of what you’re offering and make sure to sell the services people are thinking about and ready to sign up for today.

Here’s a cutesy headline to get you started: “Fall in love with our Fall Cleanup Special!” Then you can say something along the lines of, “Call now, it’s not too late to fill your garden with our beautiful mums, ornamental cabbage and Spring bulbs.” Finishing your flyer off with a picture of a spotless garden filled with fall flowers and a way for them to contact you and then flyer the neighborhood. Make sure to include your website and email. Busy people don’t always have time to play phone tag.

If you don’t already have a website for you business, take a few hours this fall to get started. I’m available for help by phone and email. Just contact me and we’ll get you set up in minutes.

1. If you don’t already have a website, get a domain name and web hosting.
2. Submit your business listing to directories such as google.com/local and Yahoo! Sponsored Search.
3. Print up new business cards and flyers with a seasonal gardening tip on the back. Use this link for discounted business cards. 75% Off Premium “Custom” Business Cards at VistaPrint.com!
4. Start a blog and write a complete gardening guide for your area including information about botanical gardens, parks, nurseries and plants that thrive in your climate.
5. Drive people to your landscaping website by advertising on search engines. Yahoo! Sponsored Search connects businesses and customers online. Sign up and get a $25 credit.

What’s your favorite way to advertise?

I’ve written several times about how to create and manage a website for very little money a year. I’m talking about less than $100 a year. What’s the cost of advertising with flyers? You have to buy the paper, print them, distribute them door to door or by mail. It gets expensive quickly! And then you have to think about the number of people who consider the flyer to be litter because they have absolutely no interest in your service. With a website, the people who find it are the ones most interested in learning about what you have to offer and become potential customers. You can use adwords to drive 100 local searchers to your site for less than the cost of sending one man around town dropping off door hangers.

Here’s the question of the day: How much money would you be willing to pay per new customer? My challenge to you this winter is to send out your flyers as usual and start a website using adwords to drive traffic. My money says the web version will cost you much less money and leave your employees more time to work and prep for the spring.

Take a minute and do a search on Google.com for the name of your city, state and the term “landscaper or landscaping or landscape designer.” For instance, in the search form you may write in “palo alto ca landscaper”. On the right side of the page you’ll see a section of sponsored links. Using Google’s Adwords product, businesses are able to place ads alongside search results for whatever terms they wish.

How can this help you make more money? By writing very specific ads you will be able to attract the kind of clientele that best fits your business model. You can tailor the ads for design work, plantings, cleanups, bulbs, holiday lighting and more. This way you won’t be getting calls for people looking for lawn mowing when that division is booked solid for the year.

How much does it cost? Adwords work on a bidding system. For each search term you tell Google how much you are willing to spend per click. Google then places your ad next to their search results and watches how many people click on it. The more clicks it gets relative to the other ads the higher up in the sponsored links section it’s place and usually you end up paying less. You’ll have to sign up for an account to see what the rates are in your area as the number of landscapers advertising varies around the country, but count on it being very reasonably priced. Where I’ve been working in NJ people are more than happy to pay a month or two’s maintenance fee to buy up routes. Adwords will cost much less.

Do you need a website to get started with Adwords? A quick cheat if you don’t already have a website is to add you businesses information to google local and then direct your Adwords traffic to your local listing. Otherwise, send visitors to a special landing page tailored to what they are searching for. In other words, don’t send them to your homepage. Studies have shown visitors decide within 8 seconds if they are going to stick around and browse a site. Why not make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for. So if you’re advertising fall bulb planting send them to a special sales page all about bulbs and have an easily accessible contact form so you can grab their information and follow up immediately.

If you’d like help getting started with Adwords I have a client account where I can manage your ads. You set the budget and I’ll work on the ad and web copy to bring in new leads.

Take a minute and give me your feedback on what you think the best landscaping flyer should look like.

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I saw the page of local business listings he had printed out. There were over a dozen companies on it. Mine was all the way at the end of the page, but it was the ONLY one with a paragraph about my business. Where did that paragraph come from? From the information I gave Google when I created my local business listing.

Take 5 minutes and go to submit your business info to  http://www.google.com/local/add?hl=en&gl=us, http://local.yahoo.com/ (link to add a listing is all the way at the bottom of the page), and MerchantCircle.com. You don’t even need a website to get listed.
I’m working on writing up a complete handbook on how to design and promote websites for landscapers and need 3 businesses for a case study. What we’ll do together by phone and email is create a website that will drive you new business, keep you in touch with existing clients, promote it on search engines and more. You’ll have a real, live website within 12 hours of our conversation that you can start using immediately as an added sales too. Email me at jakeandwolf@yahoo.com and let’s get started.