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?

Since the winter season is starting let’s get started with article ideas related to winter. Here are 5 topics:

1. Does anyone send out thank you or holiday cards at the end of your season. Extra touches like that can make all the difference when renewing your contracts or trying to pass on a rate hike.
2. How do you make money when it’s below freezing in much of the country?
3. What do you about keeping your employees busy during the winter or how do you make sure they’re going to return in the spring if they don’t work in the winter?
4. What are the best ways for getting new business in the winter or lining up work for the spring?
5. How do you use your downtime for networking?

My challenge to you is to start with a blog and write something on a regular basis. Each week, I’ll have a link roundup of all the best landscaping blog posts of the week. There’s nothing like a little competition to help get you motivated.

Also, I’ll be listing blog post ideas each week to give you guidance on what you should be writing about. I’ll even include links to resources such as places to get great pictures you can legally use for your site if you don’t already have a professional photographer and a portfolio of work ready to publish.

If you already have a blog that’s awesome. Email me your link so I can add it to my feed reader and include you in the contest.

Otherwise, I’ll help you get started for a reasonable fee or you can do it yourself following my instructions.

Finally, I’m working on a series of videos demonstrating exactly how blogging and Wordpress works. Checkout the first video now!

Enjoy!

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.

I need a few people to read through it and give me their feedback. The goal is to have a simple, step by step workbook for creating and promoting a service business website online. It’s a great thing to knock off on a rainy day so contact me and I’ll email you the latest version.

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.

While Yahoo! and others do offer free site design tools to make plain html web pages, I’m going to recommend you use a blog to manage your content. But you ask, “I don’t want a funny looking site with blog posts all over the front page?” Both Wordpress (which powers this site and millions others) and MovableType allow you to have a static, non changing home page. Both programs are easy to install with Yahoo!. All you have to do is click on the link, give it a name and Yahoo! takes care of the rest. There are literally 1000’s of theme templates available for free and many excellent designers out there if you need a custom design. Take a look at http://themes.wordpress.net/ to see some.

Once you’ve installed the software, all you have to do is add in your content. On your home page, you’ll want to have a clear sales message. If someone has found you through a google search odds are they already know you’re a landscaper and provide all the services they need. I’d bet that they’ve even checked out several of your competitors sites. It is extremely important to make sure you clearly distinguish yourself and have a call to action so they will contact your. You should have your phone number clearly listed on all the pages, an email address, a page with all your contact information AND and contact form so they don’t have to leave your site or pick up a phone to call you. Your “about page” should have a little biography of yourself and the companies history along with a photo of yourself and staff to personalize the visit.

Showing off photos of your work will help separate you from the crowd and there are several ways to do that easily. More on photos in another article. Why do I recommend using a blog? Isn’t it enough to have 5 or 6 static pages with your basic information? Blogs are really just articles arranged in chronological order with the latest ones showing up first. What’s great is that you don’t need to pay a webmaster or deal with html code to update your site. Also, blogs are easy for your clients to subscribe to by email or within most browsers. Search engines love blogs because they are constantly being updated with new information and you’ll end up with a higher ranking the more you write not to mention being about to show off your knowledge to clients. It’s a cinch for visitors to email a page to a friend. Don’t you love getting work from word of mouth advertising?

What are you waiting for? Get started now! I’ll even help get you started by email/phone.