The Ultimate Guide To Marketing Your Lawn Care Business

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Lawn Care Business|The Ultimate Guide To Marketing Your Lawn Care BusinessRelaxation is beneficial for both physical and mental health which is what vacations are for. However, being able to relax in your own home is ideal. The landscape you give your home will make this possible, but since maintaining a lawn takes a lot of planning and effort, professional lawn care and landscaping companies are sought after these days.

Now do you happen to own an O fallon MO landscaping company? If you do, remember that the vast need for lawn care service providers means you need to remain relevant in the market. Aiming for a large audience will make you outstanding in that case. With this, marketing your firm should be the first strategy to keep you going a great deal. Read on to know how effectively you can market your lawn care business.

Offline Advertising Strategies

Digital marketing is the way to go these days in marketing a business. However, to create loyalty, trust, and understanding to clients, you can consider offline advertisement. There are many ways you can advertise your lawn care business offline, and below are some:

1. Door Hangers

The effort you put in advertising your business will matter when it comes to getting the outcome you expect. While online marketing is the most preferred means these days, door-to-door services could be pretty good if well deployed. People who need your services may be out there, but if reaching your services is problematic, you’re not going to meet halfway with potential clients. It would be best if you lay a strategy on how to cater to all the clients.

With this, you need a reliable staff that can work on a door-to-door basis. The team should be friendly to win potential clients. Hanging more stickers on doors will make your business visible to a number of clients. Always consider attractive cards with a picture of your business.

2. Magazines and Newspapers

Did you know that many people read through magazines and newspapers daily? You can seize the opportunity to advertise your lawn care business. It will be helpful if you choose magazines and newspapers that are relevant to the advertisement you make. Your target audience should be homeowners and landscaping-related adverts.

3. Billboards

In a town or a busy street, a billboard could capture the attention of many travelers and passers-by. Frankly, this is the best deal in making an advertisement for your business. Considering that many people are always on the move, billboards can leave an impression to clients for a short period of time. You, therefore, ought to make your billboard attractive to impress many people passing by. This may be expensive, but it’s worth it. While this will work well, you should not forget to include your contact information and business name.

Online and Digital Marketing Strategies

Online and digital platforms are many these days. Reaching a good number of people with these platforms is easy as they provide sections for adverts. Choosing an appropriate one for your lawn care business will depend on your preferences.

1. Design a Strong website

A website is the first thing people think of when seeking a lawn care service. Imagine having a site that is slow, not secure, and not organized. This can affect your chances of gaining clients. Seeking professional web design services will be helpful. The functionality, logo, and colors in your website should be attractive to your users too.

2. Referral and Online Reviews

Ever thought of creating a section for your clients to leave comments and reviews? Most companies don’t like this section, but it could be for the best. Most clients trust a service provider that was referred by a happy client.

The ultimate solution to this should be delivering quality within the stipulated time. Your lawn care business should really have experts and friendly staff to keep your new clients. Discounts and coupons can help while clients refer your company to other clients who need your services.

3. Create a Facebook Page

Who doesn’t use Facebook in this era? Ask the gigantic business owners in the market and they’ll surely tell you. The platform has proliferated over the recent years, and marketing has been influential using this. You need a page that is active and should typically reply to client concerns.

Facebook may be easy for everyone to use, but still, you need to keep your audience in touch. It will be helpful if you keep your page updated with posts and adverts at all times. Customer reviews, working hours, and a well-designed logo will help your page target a good number of clients.

4. Google Ads

Google is the most used search engine across the globe. With the site having many users, you can set a budget for your lawn care business in the Ads section. The Ads will attract many users visiting Google in a day. With Google Ads, you can set a reasonable budget for the adverts, and the whole process will be easy to track.

5. Don’t Forget About SEO 

Whenever you are attempting to market your lawn care business online, then you must not forget about the benefits of SEO. Local SEO services can be such an effective way to increase the traffic to your business website, helping you to receive as many new customers as possible without really having to channel that much energy into marketing itself. SEO or search engine optimization is the process of improving and adapting your website so that it can be easily viewed as authentic, trustworthy and valuable by the search engine provider, as such a platform needs to find a way to evaluate the many millions of websites and locate the most worthwhile links. Don’t worry if you don’t really know what you’re doing when it comes to SEO, as you can easily get in touch with an expert to take over this responsibility for you. 

With a lot of competition, you need to remain outstanding in the lawn care and landscaping industry. Choosing the proper marketing and advertising strategy that match your needs can be a hectic task for many businesses. However, as you get positive results, you will realize that all your efforts are worth it.

Are Direct Mail Postcards a Legitimate Marketing Strategy in 2021?

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Direct Mail Postcards|Are Direct Mail Postcards a Legitimate Marketing Strategy in 2021?Just because there are newer methods of marketing does not mean the old tried-and-true methods no longer work. The trick is to do it right. Direct mail postcards can still be a great marketing tool if they are done correctly. This means using the best message, the most eye-catching design, and mailing them to the right demographic. So, if a business owner wants to use direct mail postcards, they should identify their target audience, decide on the most productive message, have them designed and printed by the best printer, and choose the best time to mail them.

Do Some Research First

Don’t go off half-cocked on a mailing campaign. Take the time to learn about direct mail marketing to use it to the best advantage. Yes, direct mail postcards are still a valuable marketing tool if used correctly.

Some tips for postcard mailing marketing include the following.

  • Postcards might be one of only a few pieces of mail in the potential customer’s mailbox. Online and email marketing might involve dozens of marketing messages a day. Computer users can have ads directed to spam folders where they are never looked at.
  • If a person uses a direct mailing company or a list broker, the address list can be tailored to the people and businesses who fit the company’s target audience or potential customers, saving postage and printing costs.
  • Choose a good printing company that will help you design attractive, effective postcards or mailers. You want your promotional material to be eye-catching with an attention-getting message.
  • Before going to the printing company, think about the most effective message to send. It should be short but contain important information about the company, its product or service, and special pricing.
  • Do the research to find the demographic or group of potential customers you are trying to reach. How do you get addresses for potential customers? Using a direct mailing service familiar with your area can be useful.

What Does This Mailing Need to Accomplish?

Every postcard mailing should be well-timed and have a purpose. Is your business new and wanting to introduce itself to the neighborhood? Is a special occasion coming up? Is it time for a big clearance sale? Is your product seasonal? Timing is everything. You want the people getting the direct mail postcard to keep it and use it. A well-designed postcard is sized to carry with you when shopping or to keep handy. If that postcard contains the offer of a discount or other special pricing, it is more likely to be saved and used.

If you have a clearance sale once or twice a year, send out postcards a few weeks in advance to give people notice and get them interested in your sale. Make the postcard design stand out, and make the best deals easy to see. Maybe you remodeled your space or got in a new line of merchandise. This is a good time to send out mailers to let people know what you are now offering. Always have something on the card that encourages people to save it and bring it with them. Special discounts or a prize drawing are always good.

Find out what the customers want and like. Then look at the postcard design and ask:

  • Does it do a good job representing the brand?
  • Does it offer the customer a solution to a problem or need they may have?
  • Do the design and message offer a good call to action? Does it have a compelling reason for the recipient to visit the business?


Deciding who Gets The Mailers

Businesses should not just send thousands of mailers to a whole area. Why waste the printing costs and postage on people who will not be interested in the company product? When a company uses a direct mailing service, they can target the best people for the advertising mailers.

They can sort by age, gender, zip code, income level, neighborhood, and more. In addition, the business should have its own customer list to add to the mailing list. In addition, they may gather information on people’s occupation, whether they rent or own their home, if they are new homeowners, their occupation, and more. One thing online shopping accomplishes for vendors is that, when people shop online, their interests are added to databases for future marketing.

It is like when a person shops for shoes online and then, for a few weeks, they get online ads from shoe companies. Direct mailing services can also use these customer interest lists for their customers. There may be direct mail database lists available for each type of business or service. The main point here is to send direct mail postcards to people most likely to appreciate and use them.

Plan What To Do When People Use the Postcards

When a mailing goes out, have a plan of action for those postcards when they come back to the business. Each postcard should have a call to action like a special offer for a limited time, a discount when the postcard is presented, or a contest that the postcard is the entry to. When people come in carrying their postcards all the company employees should know what to do.

There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than to bring in an offer and have the person behind the counter not know anything about the offer. The time it takes to find a manager and ask what to do is time enough for the potential customer to turn around and leave. Have an employee meeting when the postcards go out, explaining what to do with them as people bring them in. Have an instruction sheet at every check-out counter. If it is a contest, have a box handy for entries to be slipped into.

When people get well-designed postcards that offer them discounts or special deals, they are more likely to keep them. When the postcards are sent to people who can use the company product or service, they will be more effective. A little advance planning always pays off in a marketing campaign.

Combine Marketing Strategies

Combine all the marketing strategies the company uses in a well-organized sales and marketing campaign. Use the same message and the same colors. Bounce one marketing tool off another to multiply the effect. Use online ads to tell people to look for special postcards in the mail. A well-planned ad campaign can increase business and make advertising pay off better.

Booklet Advertising: Is It Still Effective In 2021?

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Booklet Advertising|Booklet Advertising: Is It Still Effective In 2021? According to a study conducted by Bentley University in the United States, people value printable materials that can be touched. And why not?

After all, digital fatigue can take a toll on anyone’s life. All you would need to feel human again is the sense of touch. In doing so a booklet comes out ever powerful.

Still unsure how?

Let us explain.

You’ve probably read a booklet on more than one occasion without even realizing it. All those catalogs, pamphlets, or training manuals you witness in your daily life are a form of a booklet.

But if your marketing brains are getting ready to reject the traditional idea of integrating a booklet in your communications, then take a pause and rethink your decision.

Integrating this powerful tool can just be the best decision you take for your marketing this year.

This blog post demystifies all the core advantages that a booklet can bring to your organization in 2021.

Why booklet advertising is still an effective communication tool in 2021?

There are a variety of reasons why a booklet that apparently seems to be old school is still a powerful marketing tool. However, to realize the why, you would have to take a few steps back and understand what really is a typical booklet.

Understanding the typical characteristics will enable you to map the scope and power of this marketing tool. More so, it will help you to devise a strategy to design yours according to your unique market requirements.

What is a booklet?

A booklet is actually a little book. It comes in a variety of shapes and sizes with 8-40 pages and simple saddle-stitched binding.

Booklets are one of the most effective promotional tools that any company should have. Booklets allow you to provide your customers with eye-catching, relevant, and focused information while properly branding your organization and generating sales.

They are commonly used as brochures, catalogs, rag mags, newsletters, Bluray, and DVD inserts and can be utilized as little tale books, instructional manuals, and recipe books (DVD booklet). Annual reports, for example, are essentially special-purpose booklets.

A booklet is often made up of four or more sheets of letter-size paper folded in half. And the number of pages in a booklet is always divisible by four, for example, eight pages, twelve pages, sixteen pages, and so on. Of course, some of the pages can be left blank.

Benefits of booklet advertising

A booklet is a perfect choice to help grow the company’s business because the booklet states everything related to the company’s products through image assistance.

Here are the reasons why booklet advertising is still considered effective and valuable despite the rising popularity of digital marketing.

1. Immersive interaction

In the age of the internet, we’ve lost the pleasure of touching and interacting with a brand. The amount of data available on the internet is mind-boggling — enough to give anyone a migraine. A booklet, on the other hand, can be read, handed on to colleagues, or kept if it is of excellent quality.

The best part is it has the tactile experience that software products fail to provide.

Having a company’s booklet is much more than just looking up information on the internet. It not only shows that you are a valuable prospect, but it also fosters interaction and attention.

Rather than scouring the web for an individual article or page, you solely need to read the information and possibly store it in the draw. Plus, nothing beats the scent of freshly printed paper – or maybe it’s just us!

2. Simplified audience targeting

When you have your target audience’s exact contact information and address, an advertising booklet is guaranteed to reach them. You can certainly target your prospects online, but even those advertisements may go unnoticed or be disregarded.

You can, however, put your booklet through the door of those you think would become customers, and the potential is infinite.

Consider how many takeaway menus you receive each day, each detailing the restaurants in your area. The tangible marketing is far more memorable, as evidenced by the fact that many of us seek the menu when we don’t feel like cooking.

And as your advertising booklet is tangible, consumers are more likely to remember your brand when they need services related to your marketing.

3. Personalized communications

Booklets have plenty of room to discuss each service or product in a concentrated manner. It helps in the creation of an informative version of your branding by delivering:

  • Your business history to get loyalty
  • Introduction of new services and product
  • Explain existing services and products
  • Relay core ideas

If people find your booklet beneficial, they can forward it to others who might be interested. This helps in the expansion of your company’s reach.

Also, when it comes to digital advertising, there are length and character restrictions. A PPC ad, for example, is limited to 30-30-80 characters (2 headlines up to 30 characters, one description up to 80 characters). A single Facebook image ad can have a headline of up to 25 characters and a description of up to 125 characters, whereas an Instagram ad can have up to 2200 characters, two lines, and up to 30 hashtags.

On the other hand, a booklet allows you more room to discuss your organization, products, and services.

Therefore, choosing a booklet to advertise your product or service is highly effective as there is no length or character limitation.

4. Cost-efficient

Budget is, of course, at the top of everyone’s concern. Online advertising might cost thousands of dollars each month, but advertising booklets, on the other hand, are pretty affordable. And if printed well, it can last a long time.

One of the best aspects of publishing Booklets for advertising purposes is the cost, especially if you order in bulk. The larger your print run, the less you’ll have to pay.

Also, you have a lot of control over the price of your Booklet order. You may easily change the pricing by deciding what you can afford – for example, the number of pages in your booklet, the paper type you want to use, and the product finishes you desire. Customization gives you the ability to make better pricing decisions for your organization.

You can even deliver the booklets by hand or take advantage of bulk postage rates offered by most mailing firms to ensure that your campaign reaches your target audience.

5. Improves Return On Investment (ROI)

Online advertisements do not last long and vanish in a flash. Booklets, on the other hand, being a physical representation of the advertisement, not only stress it but stay for longer. They don’t quickly fade away unless they’re discarded.

6. Improves and retains traffic

Booklets are helpful in capturing the attention of potential clients, especially for small and emerging organizations with limited resources. A booklet designed with the latest graphic design trends is a unique method to catch people’s attention.

An online advertisement is only visible for a few seconds; hence it lacks attention. On the other hand, booklets tend to last longer since clients take them home and keep them for longer.

Booklet advertising is all about the company’s product and service offerings to the customers and enticing them to a visit. It becomes super attractive because it contains little text and a lot of images.

Furthermore, booklets are significantly more effective than digital advertising because they demand the buyers’ whole attention. They encourage the reader to sit and sift through the pages, looking at your products, which is far more effective than simply scrolling through a paid internet advertisement on their smartphone.

If discount coupons or response forms are included, the booklets become even more appealing to potential customers.

7. Improved versatility

Booklets are one of the most versatile tools for informing people about your products or services.

Booklets with product information are frequently displayed at the front of the store or in the waiting area of retail stores and offices with a lot of customer traffic. For example, customers can review booklets on each category of the financial product while waiting in the lobby of banks.

Booklets are also taken to trade exhibitions and presentations by marketers to hand out to potential clients or business partners.

8. Increased business authority

Investing in a proper booklet will establish trust and demonstrate that you value your customers. Furthermore, you can increase your clients’ confidence in your business by including your objectives and goals.

Booklet designs that are professional and eye-catching, along with high-quality printing, lend credibility, authenticity, and respect to a company.

Booklets are so crucial for business promotion, therefore don’t compromise on the printing and design quality. It is worthwhile to invest in good design. A poorly printed booklet can destroy your company’s credibility and value.

A booklet also boosts your company’s authority by demonstrating to customers that you’re a serious organization with regular and reliable business procedures.

9. Effective promotion

Booklets can contain tear-off offers or discounts, making them an effective advertising tool. They can be used for effective promotion, create a time-sensitive offer, or other promotional campaigns. The best part?

It makes the measurement of the efficacy of your campaigns so much easier than the complex digital landscape.

Final thoughts

By looking at the effectiveness of booklet advertising, there remains no reason why you should not try using a booklet as a marketing strategy.

You must have a booklet as a crucial component of your sales funnel to provide more detailed information about what you’re selling or how you’re educating people.

Whether you’re using a booklet for technical specifications, a workplace manual, a product magazine, or something else entirely, you’ll want to make the most of every page to get the most bang for your buck.

To make the most of the booklet, make sure your booklet catches the reader’s attention, entertains them, piques their interest in the offered product or service, and finally prompts them to take a specific action.

It is necessary to have a descriptive and appealing brochure that will stay in people’s minds.

Let us know in the Comments section below what are your thoughts on booklet advertising.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor|Atreyee ChowdhuryAtreyee Chowdhury works full-time as an Instructional Designer and is passionate about writing. She has helped many small and medium-scale businesses achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She lives in Bangalore, India with her husband and parents. She loves to read, experiment with different cuisines, travel, and explore the latest content marketing and L&D trends in her free time. You can reach her on Linkedin or write to her at [email protected] for any content writing/marketing requirements.

3 Marketing Strategies to Direct your Food Business towards Success

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing Strategies|3 Marketing Strategies to Direct your Food Business towards SuccessRestaurant marketing trends are continuously changing the digital works, and staying updated often seems a challenge. This saying holds good, especially when you’re keeping up with day-to-day restaurant management. And, choosing to ignore marketing for your restaurant is never an option. It is essential for retaining current customers and is an excellent way of maintaining healthy long-term growth.

Thereby, successful business tycoons suggest establishing a marketing campaign. It is because it helps in understanding your target audience. By doing so, you’ll have a glimpse over whether you’re marketing for young millennials or families. And, in turn, helps in ensuring that your brand message reaches your target customers most effectively. Spreading those marketing resources wisely is not to mention!

Now that you’re focused on growing your restaurant business, here are some marketing strategies that can help you increase your business revenue. These are:

Enable Mobile Ordering and Delivery:

Customers today are demanding more flexibility and personalization in their ordering. And, this change makes restaurants experiment with things like ordering through self-service kiosks to even through a mobile device.

Restaurant services and e-commerce businesses witnessed a paradigm shift when they delivered food. Also, both these businesses saw an immense increase in revenue.

Research shows that customers that order food online tend to visit a restaurant more frequently than those who don’t. And, restaurants are reaping the benefits of increased visibility and better promotions on delivery websites and apps.

Just make sure that you have operational software in place to track the financial impact of delivery expenses. By doing so, you tend to make more informed decisions about your marketing priorities.

Optimize your Restaurant’s Menu Engineering:

One of the most visible pieces of restaurant marketing is its menu. And, that’s the reason your restaurant menu must be relevant and profitable for your bottom line. Know that creating menus need an apt balance of popularity and profitability. Thus, make sure real-time and accurate data drive it.

Successful restaurant owners are all thumbs up for the latest technology, that’s outdoor signage from Sun Vision Display, as it fascinates customers to visit the restaurant and place orders. Studies show that 30% of customers influence digital menus at their restaurants. Also, it helps in converting paper menu cards into digital ones.

As a restaurant owner, you can display all your food ideas by having a digital menu list in place. This screen also helps in displaying respective prices on the digital signage screen. These are a must-have for businesses and restaurants, especially as they show offers and discounts, which helps grab customer attention and motivates them to place orders.

Prioritize Local SEO:

Local Search Engine Optimization means optimizing your local restaurant website. By doing so, you attain a higher rank on Google pages for their search keywords local area users search about your state or city. For example, “the best pizza in Chicago”.

Also, for optimizing your website for local SEO, it’s vital to work over your keywords. This factor will help you see what your audience is searching for. You can make use of tools like Google Keywords Planner or Keywordtool.io. Now you know all about it, turn to website development to focus on ranking for these terms.

Local SEO doesn’t show quick rewards, but it can have bigger prizes. Know that around 75% of users never move past the first page of search engine results. Thus, if your SEO efforts are up to the mark, the impact on your revenue and visits can be significant.

The Verdict

Restaurant marketing strategies are complicated and ever-changing. However, by using these creative strategies, you can gain information about customers and operations, which can help your restaurant marketing gain new revenue.

5 tips for getting things right with your virtual conference

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 5 tips for getting things right with your virtual conferenceIt’s extraordinary now to think that, as recently as two years ago, holding virtual conferences was a rather niche pursuit for business leaders. However, necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes – and, now, many of these leaders both attend and run virtual events.

This trend has realised a fair few advantages listed in a UC Today article – like the absence of both a commute and having to repeatedly trek across conference centres. However, you should still be careful to follow certain dos and don’ts when delivering a virtual conference.

Decide what you are aiming to achieve with your conference

Maybe you’ve got some news to break to the world, you want to address a specific issue that has long been left lingering or you have spotted an opportunity to generate more revenue. Alternatively, maybe the conference is an annual one usually held in person but you want to digitise it this time.

As a virtual conference isn’t easy to organise, you want to be sure why you are doing it and how it would benefit your audience.

What audience are you eager to attract?

You probably already have a good idea of what the conference’s audience will be if the event will be an internal-only one strictly intended for employees of your company.

Otherwise, though, you should ask yourself a series of questions outlined by UKTN – questions that could help you figure out how to attract the ‘right’ audience. For example, do you want to pique the interest of new customers, and from what age range would you like to draw attendees?

Determine a message or theme for your event

Is there a particular message you would like to be left in attendees’ heads as the conference closes? If so, keeping this message – or what one thing you want the audience to remember from the event – in mind as you organise the conference could help you to keep it streamlined.

If you can’t decide on a specific message, at least give the conference a theme for all of its elements to revolve around, enabling people to discern what to expect.

Organise more than one speaker

Speakers you organise for your virtual conference can include managers or employees of your business or professional, industry-relevant speakers from outside your company.

You could even choose to wrap up the event with an inspiring talk from a motivational speaker, leaving the audience feeling encouraged and energised.

Test your tech before the conference proper

If there’s going to be a technical glitch, you obviously don’t want it to happen during the conference itself. This is why, once you’ve selected all of the tech you will need for the big day, you should arrange a test run to make sure all of the required hardware and software works as it should.

To this end, you should utilise a virtual conference software platform from a reliable provider like ON24, and ask guest speakers to check their own audiovisual equipment if they will be participating from their individual homes.