Videos are crucial for your landscape business if you want to stand out from the competition. 

From before and after projects, team videos, career testimonials, or training tutorials, videos can help you: show potential customers what you can do, make your company easier to find online, generate leads and sales, and build relationships with customers. 

With countless video platforms out there, consider Vimeo and YouTube as your top options. But….which one is the right fit for you?

YouTube 

• #2 search engine in the world.
• You can plan when your videos go live. 
• You can view comments and opinions from your industry. 
• Access to detailed analytics on your video performance. 
• Strict copyright rules. 

Vimeo 

• Experience no ads while viewing. 
• Your videos will be secure with privacy features. 
• Videos stream well with no interruptions. 
• You can quickly change or replace videos. 
• Access to customer support. 
• ...

If you own a small business, even a landscaping business, you’re going to do a lot of writing. Web copy, blogs, articles. We often write more than we think we will, and as a result, our writing comes out rushed. Technique gets shouldered aside. But we promise you, if you keep reading, you’ll come away with some simple strategies to make your writing much more effective.

Believe it or not, we spend a lot of time reading. While leisure reading of books is falling, think about how much time we spend on our phones throughout the day, and what we’re doing with our eyes as we’re scrolling around our screens.

That’s right. We’re reading.

It might not be War and Peace, but we’re reading nonetheless. Over time, we develop a natural ability to differentiate between good and bad writing.

We might not think about it, but we are picky, demanding readers. We don’t waste time reading things that are preachy or poorly...

You know you do great work. Your customers know you do great work. So why isn’t your shelf weighted down by engraved gold trophies and awards shaped like embossed glass shark fins?

In landscaping, as with most industries, awards don’t chase you down, you have to be proactive. To go out and get them. That’s how the Grammys work. The Oscars too. If you want one, you’re going to have to do a bit of campaigning.

Luckily, there are TONS of local and national landscaping awards you can apply for, competitions you can enter that play to your strengths. And awards you win come with benefits that go beyond the hardware.

Awards give you an edge over your competition. They provide a well-deserved pat on the back to the employees who work so hard. They congratulate property owners on their creative ideas and YOU for bringing them to life.

Hey, it’s okay to want awards. Winning feels good!

So how do you find competitions to enter?...

Dennis Evans came of age in the landscaping industry. When he was young, he found that he enjoyed the outdoor ‘chores’ his parents gave him. Mowing, weeding, minor landscaping projects- it wasn’t a bad way to spend the day.

Soon, Dennis had transformed his parents’ yard into the best on the block, and neighbors began to notice. They came to him asking for help with their own lawns and gardens, and in 2001, Dennis started a landscaping company.

Quiet Village built its reputation from the ground up. It expanded slowly into more complicated projects. Hardscaping, garden installation, functional landscaping projects. Dennis’s little company became like those trees he planted in his parents’ yard. It just kept on growing. 

Since his company’s growth happened in such an organic way, Dennis found that many of his clients were asking for the same things. They knew Quiet Village had a reputation for landscape design and...

Landscaping is a Pretty Cool Job

Landscaping is a pretty cool job if you think about it. Our office is outside for the most part, in the fresh air and sunshine. We get to be creative and solve problems. Landscapers are basically artists who paint with living materials. Who blends natural beauty with curated functionality. Our work touches the senses. You can smell it, touch it, feel it, and taste it.

Some of us love it so much we devote our entire lives to it. We hone it as a craft, give it years of our lives, and in the process, many of us decide to start our own landscaping companies.

It’s a great feeling, seeing your name on those fresh-pressed company t-shirts. Having homeowners gush about your work when your team finally finishes off that landscaping project they’ve been dreaming about for years. You made it possible. You made it happen.

But business ownership brings problems. One common problem faced by many of today’s...

You could say that Marni Center is an animal person.

She moved from Deerfield, Illinois to Denver to study ecology and evolutionary biology. She's owned beautiful dogs and had so much fun training them that she completed The Animal Behavior College’s Dog Training program after she graduated. Since then, she’s made dog training her career, and she’s trained dogs all over the Denver area.

As Marni became more involved with the world of dog training, she began to find problems with some of the training methods her peers were using. That’s because many of them were using a method called Aversion Training.

Marni working on training with a client's dog

Aversion Training is a very common strategy for training dogs in the US and aims to expel unwanted behavior by utilizing things that are unpleasant to the dog such as shock collars, loud noises, and spray bottles. While this method often seems like it is working in...

Well, that's a bold thing to say! But, hear me out.

Print advertisements can be great when they are designed for a niche area that you service. It’s an opportunity to develop name recognition for your brand while promoting seasonal services and/or events. 

However, if we’re looking at a limited marketing budget to spend, print advertisements would be one of the first that I cross off the list. The main reason is simply shelf life. Anything that you send out in print will eventually get thrown into the recycling bin.

On the flip side, digital marketing footprint lasts forever and allows for more precise, specific, and measurable campaigns. This leads to better, more quantifiable results. 

Here are a few ways you can assess your online presence, cut back on what’s not working, and double down on what is. 

Take a look at your leading and lagging indicators.

Return on investment (ROI) is a huge metric but it is a lagging indicator, meaning it will...

Now more than ever, it’s important to be able to structure your business to run lean with limited office staff. You can keep important communications in place by utilizing Automations to communicate with your clients. 

Here are some ideas for automations that you can implement immediately to continue to build trust and loyalty to your landscaping company: 

• New Lead Welcome and Introduction
• Proposal Sent Follow Up
• New Client Onboarding
• Satisfaction Survey/Review
• Scheduling Reminders
• Service Completion Alerts & Education

One of my personal favorites is a callback/respray follow up campaign. If you’re a fertilization and weed control provider, you’ll no doubt have to go back to a client’s property to re-treat at some point. Following up after this service not only shows that you’re concerned with the client and their satisfaction, but gives your company a chance to improve with constructive feedback. 

Last year, one of my...

^{This blog post written by Kelly was originally published as a guest post on Landscape Management Magazine's website. http://landscapemanagement.net/guest-post-recruit-high-level-candidates-on-linkedin-through-your-personal-brand/} 

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking site with over 530 million users, making it the go-to social media for job seekers and job recruiters.

If you’re looking for management candidates to help you grow your landscaping business, LinkedIn a great place to create new relationships.  Here’s a hint - it’s not just about posting jobs. These candidates probably aren’t actively seeking a new job because they’re already employed.  Use these tips to stand out and get their attention. 

Your Public Profile Essentials

No matter how long you’ve been using LinkedIn, take a good look at your public profile. This is the first thing potential recruits...

The primary goal of marketing is to generate and nurture high-quality leads. You want to attract the right potential customers to your business and to set expectations in their minds about the experience they will have with your company. It is the role of sales to convert these leads into customers.

For almost all businesses, the right marketing strategy enables the company to grow faster and provide customers with a more satisfying experience.

It may seem as though your business is getting along just fine without investing in marketing, but you will likely reach a tipping point where it starts to make sense to invest in marketing, including  a marketing consultant. I go into more detail here on when creating a budget is worth your time, so if you are unsure if your business is at the right stage for this, start with that post and circle back. (After all, if you are not yet ready for a budget, you are likely not ready for a marketing budget either.)