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Category: Small Business Marketing

  • How to Advertise Lawn Care

    How to Advertise Lawn Care

    Advertising your lawn care business needs to go beyond handing out business cards. Small businesses dealing with local clientele are beginning to realize the value of having an online presence. This is especially critical with businesses that fit the subscription door-to-door model, such as pool cleaners, pest control, and lawn care.

    If your lawn care business is failing to expand despite growth in the community, you might need to consider digital marketing. Here are 5 tips for marketing your lawn care business in the digital space today.

    Tip 1: Advertise your lawn services on Google Business

    A lot of businesses make the mistake of doing the bare minimum on their Google Business Profile. This is the most valuable online real estate you have available to you as a local business. Every section of information you can fill out is an opportunity to put in the keywords you want to appear for in Google searches. If you see that you’re 80% complete or less on your profile, keep going!

    Google will tell you if you haven’t filled out your entire profile. Get this up to 100%!

    For advertising your lawn care business, rank is crucial. Creating and completing a Google Business Profile will get you on Google, but to outrank your competition you may consider contracting an SEO specialist to set up your business profile. Simply moving from 3rd to 2nd in local rankings could mean huge increases in revenue, making it well worth the investment.

    Tip 2: Have a website and optimize it for search engines

    A website with proper SEO not only helps your business appear in more search results, but it improves your ranking on the local search results that appear in Google maps. Ensure your website has easy access to the information your potential customers are most interested in. Follow the below tips for some simple DIY search engine optimization:

    • Include the areas you service in your footer and in multiple places on your home page

    • Identify the keywords customers will be searching to find your business, and include them when possible(without ‘keyword stuffing’.)

    • Have a clear path to becoming a customer easily visible on all pages. This could mean a contact form, a phone number-however you want your customers to be able to reach you.

    • If using a visual web-design tool like Squarespace or Wix, be sure to fill out the “meta” sections of your page info. This includes your pages title and page description.

    • Write blog posts relevant to your industry. Share tips for your potential customers and use these as an opportunity to include common keywords on your website.

    Proper design and execution of a website can be complicated if you aren’t familiar with the practice. Market your lawn care services efficiently by doing your website the right way. If you want an efficient website that will rank on Google you can always hire a professional for reasonable rates to do this for you.

    Tip 3: Get (a lot of)Google reviews, and respond to them!

    While Google’s ranking algorithm is always changing, reviews are consistently a definite factor when it comes to local business rankings. And it isn’t just how many stars you have- Google’s local rankings take quantity and engagement into consideration as well. By engagement we mean responding to reviews. You should strive to respond to most of your Google reviews.

    Reviews are also an opportunity to use some of those keywords you’re aiming for. Don’t blatantly keyword stuff, but if you have the opportunity to request a customer mention your “lawn care” services in their review, it can help you in your rankings for that keyword.

    Tip 4: Collect email addresses and utilize email campaigns for advertising your lawn care services

    With the right tools email campaigns can be your greatest asset to increasing your conversion rate.

    Email campaigns for this business model are essentially a method of keeping your brand in the mind of leads that have previously expressed interest in your services. With a tool like Mailchimp you can even track responses and interactions to your emails. This allows you to categorize leads and cater emails based on interest, location or service.

    There are a many methods you can use for collecting email addresses. Contests and giveaways on social media are a common tactic. Your website is a fantastic tool towards this goal. A contact form on your website is a must for utilizing email campaigns.

    When Texoma Marketing Solutions launches an email campaign for a customer, we always include multiple links in the email body. This allows us to track multiple connection points with the lead in one email. Based on their response they move to a different point in the campaign. For example: an email blast goes out to all leads that filled out a contact form but didn’t close. The email body has a link to a promotional discount and a link to a landscaping services page. The leads that clicks the promotional discount link gets more emails with deals in the future. Those that click the landscaping link get emails with content related to landscaping. The goal is to keep these leads engaged with your company until they convert.

    If you’re interested in having us launch a professional email campaign for your company, book a free consultation today with one of our experts.

    Tip 5: Encourage word-of-mouth

    This is the most common method of marketing for this business model for a reason- it works the best. Neighbors talk to each other. Proximity of customers means more efficiency on your operations. It’s a no-brainer.

    While offering a good service is the best thing you can do to acquire word-of-mouth business, there are a few methods you can utilize to encourage your customers.

    • Offer a referral discount, and track it! There are many digital tools available online for tracking referral codes.

    • Provide customers with print material they can hand to neighbors

    • Be active on social media- many referrals happen on social media these days. By having presence you help remind your customers to recommend your services to others

    • Ask your clients- if you offer a good product and your customers are happy with you, don’t be afraid to ask for a referral to friends, family and neighbors

    For more tips on advertising your lawn care services, consider scheduling a free, no obligation consultation with one of our experts.

  • Case Study: Web Design & SEO

    Case Study: Web Design & SEO

    In this case study, we will demonstrate what SEO, proper web design, and an efficient CRM did to help this company more than double their annual revenue in just 18 months.

    SEO & Web Design

    Prior to Texoma Marketing Solutions, you were not going to find this company’s website by searching for their services. A major mistake small businesses make is not optimizing their site for valuable keywords. This means that the only way anyone will find a company’s website is a branded search. A branded search is any search engine query that includes the company’s name. These are not valuable for bringing in new leads. If somebody is already typing your company name into a search engine then they already know about your brand. That is not how you expand your business.

    Local Pack rankings in April of 2021

    You want to target keywords that your target demographic is searching for. In the case of this company, we targeted keywords that our research indicated had high volume in the target demographic. Our goal was to rank higher on the Google Local Pack for these keywords. In a little over a year, we improved their average local pack ranking tremendously, achieving the golden “Top 3” ranking that local businesses all strive for.

    Local Pack rankings in January of 2022, less than a year after Texoma Marketing Solutions

    CRM

    Texoma Marketing Solutions identified that the growth the company was about to experience would make their customer management difficult. Customer management that was being done on spreadsheets was about to be difficult. Our solution was a custom CRM to help the company track not only every customer that used their service, but every lead that considered their service.

    This not only allowed for easier customer tracking, but allowed for efficient remarketing, leading to a higher lead-conversion-rate. The ultimate result was a higher return on investment for the marketing budget.

    The Results

    Ultimately, the results for this company were phenomenal. Their annual revenue in 2021 more than doubled what it was prior to utilizing the skills offered by Texoma Marketing Solutions.

    Think your company could benefit from a similar service? Book a free consultation today and see what Texoma Marketing Solutions can do for you!

  • SEO For Small Business

    SEO For Small Business

    SEO is typically the thing that small businesses can benefit from the most. The primary goal with SEO is to make your website the first thing your target audience sees when searching for your services, not your business. This is a key distinction. If you own”John Doe’s Plumbing” you want people to find your website by searching for “plumbing company near me”, not just your company name.

    When considering what will benefit our clients the most, there are two categories we consider when it comes to SEO:

    • The Google Local Pack
    • Organic Search Results

    Let’s discuss the difference between these two.

    The Google Local Pack

    The Google Local Pack is an extremely important aspect of SEO for any business that is focusing on a particular region for their business.

    The Local Pack is that top section of a Google search you see when you’re searching for a service that is region based.

    A Texoma Marketing Solutions client ranking #1 for their keyword in the Google Local Pack

    The Local Pack differs based on where you are located. Any business seeking to improve their rankings for the local pack need to first determine what area is most important for their business.

    Texoma Marketing Solutions utilizes multiple tools to determine where our clients rank on the local pack to within a 3 mile radius. Our strategy is to begin small and gradually increase. In other words- we take a new client and get them ranking high on their local pack within a 15 mile radius, then move to a 30 mile radius, and so on until we have covered their entire service region.

    Local packs generally help regional companies the most, such as brick-and-mortar stores or service-at-home businesses.

    Organic Search Results

    Organic search results are typically much more competitive than local pack results- but there is a way to use them to your advantage locally.

    It comes down to keywords- Ranking high for the keyword “pool construction company” may be extremely difficult, but ranking high for “pool construction in North Texas” is significantly easier.

    It all comes down to your keyword strategy.

    In addition to keywords, Google does take into consideration mobile users location on certain keywords.

    For example- if one were to search “Mexican food” on their mobile device(which is tracking the users location) then Google is automatically going to prioritize websites that Google sees as being in the area of the search.

    Take Away

    What you should take from this is that there are very particular ways you should set up your website in order to optimize where you rank based on what your audience is searching for. An expert SEO company can help you with this.

    Reach out to Texoma Marketing Solutions for a free consultation to see how you can optimize your website for the keywords your demographic is searching.