Green Pro Marketing, Author at Green Pro Marketing

Jan 09 2017

7 tips for an awesome MANTS visit

It’s that time of year again – MANTS 2017 Conference and Trade Show is this week, from Wednesday January 11 through Friday January 13. The numbers associated with MANTS are impressive: over 900 exhibitors, and typically in the 10,000 attendee range. It can be pretty overwhelming, especially for first time attendees. I’ve had a booth there twice and have gone as an attendee many, many more times. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years.

Stay overnight if you can

This is less of an issue if you live, say, within an hour of the convention center. I live about 2-2.5 hours away and to get there when they open, I’d have to drive through morning rush hour on the DC Beltway. Heck no. This gives me plenty of time to walk the floor, plus it means I can get in some…

Networking!

Odds are, one of your vendors or trade groups is doing a happy hour somewhere in the area after the show closes for the day. Additionally, groups like the DC chapter of APLD get together for lunch, some groups have breakfast meetings, and it’s amazing how many people you run into once a year at MANTS. It’s a terrific opportunity to pop out to the lobby, grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich, and catch up.

Be curious

The one problem I have with shows like MANTS is that because there are so many booths, and so many people, and everyone wants to get the heck out of Dodge before evening rush hour, a lot of attendees only go to see the exhibitors they know. If you see a booth that looks well put together but you don’t know the company, just slow down for a minute and check it out. Having worked the floor in the past, I can tell you it’s a bummer seeing all these people streaming past – and knowing that you have a product that could help their business.

Travel light

I should collect catalogs and brochures from every booth at MANTS and weigh the resulting stack. I’d wager it would be in the hundreds of pounds. The free bags they give you get heavy fast, and doing a roller bag is just awkward in a crowd. A lot of vendors now offer their catalogs on a USB drive, or they can give you a login to their online catalog. For some projects I do like to have a catalog to thumb through, but for those I either very selectively pick up print materials or I ask them to mail me one after the show. And let them scan your badge, because that way if you lose their card or brochure they can get in touch with you.

Get the yardstick

Every year there are one or two booths giving out these stout wooden yardsticks. If you want a conversation starter, pick one up. You’ll have everyone and their brother coming up and asking where you got it. Guys that spent $30 on a tape measure go nuts for a free wooden yardstick. I don’t get it, but there it is!

Plan for lunch ahead of time

There’s plenty of food for sale at MANTS, but let’s be honest. It’s a convention center, which means you’re going to pay a lot of money for not-exciting food. There are loads of places to eat within a short walk of the convention center, and once you have your badge you can pop in and out as much as you want.

If you do end up eating inside of the convention center, don’t go sit at a table by yourself! I’ve made some fantastic connections just by grabbing an empty seat at a table. Everyone is focused in or around the nursery and landscape business, and everyone is just happy not to be standing up for a bit. Don’t miss a stellar opportunity.

Leverage your MANTS experience for marketing

Every day you compete against dozens of other lawn and landscape professionals. One way to differentiate your company is to show how much effort you put into keeping up with trends and finding the best products for your clients. Post pics or a quick Facebook live video from the floor of MANTS, post eye-grabbing products to Instagram, or even put together a quick little blog post summarizing what you’ve found. The clients who value working with the best will notice – and they’ll call. If you’re not on social media or not sure if you’re using it well, we can help manage your landscape company’s social media and online presence.

The folks behind MANTS put in a ton of work to prepare for this event every year. Having been on both sides of the booth I can say it runs stunningly well. Whether or not you’ve been before, you’ll have a great time.

I’ll be there all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday. If you want to say hi, tweet me at @daveinthedirt or shoot me an email!

Dec 14 2016

7 landscape companies nailing their Facebook cover image

If your lawn or landscape business has its own Facebook page (which it should!), you need to make sure that you’re taking advantage of a big opportunity to make a solid first impression: your cover image. It’s what potential customers see when they first land on your page, and it takes up a lot of real estate – so why not use it to show off?

Facebook cover image rules

Facebook has some basic rules for cover images. You should read them for yourself, but the most important is that your cover image can’t be deceptive or misleading, and it can’t infringe on anyone’s copyright. In other words, if it’s someone else’s image and you don’t expressly have the rights to it? Don’t use it! This is great advice for the internet in general, really.

Facebook has set the size for cover images at 851 x 315 pixels. If you’re not sure how to resize images to fit, or if you just want a simple solution, you can use a free tool like Canva. Canva lets you create images that are sized just right for a lot of social media sites, and you can’t beat the price.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so let it do the talking for you. Barrett’s Horticultural Services offers plant care and horticultural maintenance for estate clients in northern Virginia. Their cover image shows an example of the type of garden they care for, making it easy for prospects to tell at a glance if they’re the right type of company for them.

Terra Firma Gardens is a British landscape company that does beautiful work with a contemporary feel. This cover image nails that, with a brightly lit photo of one of their projects. A client looking for that style will immediately know they’re in the right place.

Facebook used to have a rule that your cover image couldn’t contain more than about 20% text. They’ve backed off that rule but it’s still a good idea. After all, that cover image should have some wow factor, especially for an industry that’s so visual in nature. A little text is good for reinforcing your brand or showcasing a special offer. Here are examples of two landscape companies with very different styles, emphasized with their cover images.

Environments Studio is a landscape architecture firm in Illinois. They do a lot of work with stormwater management and sustainability. They clearly have a different style than Susan Cohan, a landscape designer in New Jersey:

Isn’t it amazing how two simple images can tell two completely different stories? It’s a powerful, powerful opportunity.

For an example of a company using their Facebook cover image to communicate a special offer, Stadler Nurseries does pretty well. They’re a family-owned retail garden center with locations in Virginia and Maryland, and their tree planting sale is a huge promotion for them every year. While I don’t often love the use of stock photos, the bright green is eye-catching and the simple image puts all the focus where it needs to be: on the special offer.

While it’s not a special offer, Kingstowne Lawn and Landscape uses their Facebook cover image to tell us their value proposition: “delivering total satisfaction”. It also shows that a cover image doesn’t need to be just one image. The two inset images weren’t selected by accident. The image of the home they selected appeals to a wider range of customers than the typical mansion-style homes landscape professionals love to feature. The photo of Kingstowne’s team helps put a human face to the company.

What about snow removal? The Grounds Guys is a landscape maintenance franchise with locations around the United States. It’s currently December which means it’s time for customers to think about snow and ice management. The Grounds Guys make this pitch in a pretty playful manner:

The bottom line

What’s the takeaway here? Personally, I think your Facebook cover image is a wonderful opportunity for your landscape company to show some personality. We’ve showcased several examples that each stands out from the competition in its own way. Do you want a potential client calling 5-7 random companies in your area? Or do you want them calling YOU? Like Jules says in Pulp Fiction, “Personality goes a long way.”

Not sure how to make your Facebook page better? Do you need help with your online marketing efforts in general? We’d love to help! Contact us today and we’ll review what you have now and how we can make it better. Your competition will wonder what the heck just happened!

May 31 2016

Amazon Home Services Review: Good for them, bad for contractors

If you search for “Amazon Home Services review” there’s not a whole lot that pops up. It’s a relatively new program and outside of a few niche businesses (PC repair, tv installers) they just don’t seem to be getting a lot of traction. Yet. Don’t dismiss them to soon, though, because Amazon has some serious bucks to spend if and when they decide to really go for it.

This is a first-hand Amazon Home Services review

Even after jumping into this amazing sales and online marketing business for landscape contractors, I kept my little design firm sort of active. We do a handful of landscape design projects a year, and Tony and I can use it as a sort of “marketing laboratory.” In that spirit, I signed up for Amazon Home Services about a year ago. How would I describe it so far?

How Amazon Home Services works

I won’t get into the details of signing up, because it’s pretty basic if you’ve ever signed up for an online lead platform. From what other contractors have said they look pretty hard at your online reviews with Yelp, Google, etc so it’s a good incentive to keep that house in order. There’s an application, a background check, and eventually a congratulations email. It’s when the leads start coming in that it falls apart.

I’m set up for Amazon Home Services landscape design consultations (a custom category), so when someone wants that service I get an email:

Click on the link and it takes me to my dashboard, and I see their more detailed request. It gives me a zip code, their timeline, a brief description, and the prospect can also provide photos of the site. I then have a few options for how I respond:

I can dismiss the request and tell Amazon Home Services why (too busy, wrong area, not work I do). I’m not altogether sure what they do with this info because there seems to be no filter for the leads I do get, but… more on that later.
I can give a fixed price quote to do the work.
I can give a range.
I can tell them a site visit is needed.
I can ask questions.

That’s it. Now, in my sales process I insist on a phone consultation before scheduling an on-site meeting. You can judge really easily how serious someone is in a three minute call, versus emailing back and forth. Here’s the first reason that my Amazon Home Services review is a little harsh: there is no pre-visit discussion option.

Amazon is very explicit that you can only contact your leads through their platform. If you try to put in your phone number or your actual email, the system automatically strips that out of the message. As a result your options are to give a price on a job you haven’t seen in person, or schlepp out to the site with no way of knowing if the lead is even remotely qualified. Because you and I know that the average online shopper homeowner isn’t going to be up for a detailed back and forth messaging you.

I voiced this concern to the customer service team at AHS and they said “well just tell them a site visit is needed.” When I explained that that’s likely a huge waste of time, they told me “you can charge for the visit, you just put that in the field.” Riiiiight. Because charges for the first visit are always so well received, especially in the bargain tier of leads? And it’s hard to sell someone on your value for a paid consultation when this is all they see if they click your profile:

So… no photos, no description of your company, no link to your site. Well shoot, why wouldn’t someone just want to hand me $125 for an initial visit? The thing is, this would be an easy problem for Amazon to fix, at least for me. “Landscape design consultation” is pretty open ended, and most people seem to click this whether they want a landscape master plan or they just want three hostas moved and their townhouse’s beds weeded. So I asked the customer service rep if I could create a packaged product, like a site visit + a basic sketch for $300. “Uh, we hope to have that functionality but it won’t be this year.” So out of all the leads I’ve received, two were for what I actually do. Which leads me to:

Lead tracking SUCKS in Amazon Home Services

I use a CRM for my business. When a lead comes in I log customer name, address, contact info, lead source, etc so I can see what’s working and what’s not. As you’re probably realizing through this Amazon Home Services review, they don’t give you enough info to make it worth plugging the data into a CRM. No biggie, I figured, I can at least track that through my dashboard.

Nope.

If you don’t act on a lead, if you dismiss a lead, or if you make an offer and nothing comes of it, that lead vanishes once the expiration date hits. Poof! Gone. So if you want to track what kinds of leads you’re getting, or you want to see what percentage close, you need to open up a spreadsheet because Amazon Home Services doesn’t want you to have that data in their app.

Holy money for nothing, Batman – the fees!

No Amazon Home Services review would be complete without a discussion of their fee structure. Because boy, do they make sure they get paid. Luckily they provide a pretty clear graphic that lays out their fees.

A pre-packaged service would be something like the site visit + sketch for a fixed price that I mentioned above. In exchange for connecting you with the lead, Amazon Home Services takes 20% of your total invoice. Custom services are if someone contacts you for plantings, and you’re creating a unique design and invoice. That’s a 15% fee. Recurring services are typically maintenance items. If you booked a lawn care client through Amazon Home Services, they’ll take 10% off the top every. Single. Visit. That’s madness.

Naturally, Amazon Home Services sees what we do as a commodity and the only differentiating factor is price. They’ll even send you an email as the bid phase is closing to tell you that if you reduce your price YOU could be the winning bid!

The bottom line

I think it’s important to remember that Amazon is a technology company that wants to broker home improvement services. They’re not a home improvement company. I point this out because it’s clear that they don’t understand how the sales process works, they don’t understand that you can’t just sell more hours for less money and magically survive, and they really don’t care to understand anything like that. What they do understand is that whether you cover your costs or not, Amazon Home Services has the potential to be hugely profitable – for Amazon.

Where do we go from here?

I’ll wrap up this Amazon Home Services review with a positive spin to things. AHS illustrates that yes, people are looking for service providers online. It also shows that people want to have a way of knowing if they can trust their landscape contractor. The great news is that you can be found online and show how great your company is without Amazon Home Services.

We offer website design and SEO (search engine optimization) for landscape business owners just like you, helping you get found by clients located where YOU want to do business. I love writing website copy and I can help you showcase everything that’s great about your company, and Tony can help you get set up with online payment platforms and other tools to help your customers give you their money. Contact us today and we’ll help you grow your business, all without handing over a huge chunk of revenue to Amazon.

Apr 14 2016

Rock your social media with an editorial calendar

Every time I give a workshop on blogging and social media I hear the same thing: “I want to use social media better but I never know what to post!” It’s a common problem with a simple solution: plan it in advance with an editorial calendar.

By waiting until the day you want a post to go live you run the risk of “life happens” syndrome. You have jobs in progress, vendors to call, bills to pay, and now you’re trying to come up with something to say on social media? That’s a lot of pressure that you don’t need to put on yourself. An editorial calendar makes it easy. You decide in advance what you want to cover, and then you just have to show up. Here’s how it works.

Building an editorial calendar for your landscape business

We’ll talk about editorial calendars for landscape company blogs, but the same principles apply for any social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, etc). When we’re planning editorial calendars for our clients we always start big and work down to details.

Step One: Monthly

The first step is to decide what you’ll cover each month. Ideally you want this to line up with what you’re trying to sell at those times. For example. September or October (depending on where you live) may be talking about the benefits of fall cleanups or fall fertilization. November could be holiday lighting. You want to use your social media efforts to help your sales.

Step Two: Weekly

How often are you posting? Let’s say you post once a week. Within that broader topic (for example, holiday lighting) come up with a related topic each week. I might talk about LEDs vs incandescent for one post, best ways to light a roof peak in another, and so on. The idea is to let the client know YOU are the expert. As mentioned, the same principles apply with your other social media platforms.

Step Three: Execute!

Now you just need to write your posts and schedule them. If you choose to do them the day they go live, you’ll find having a plan makes things way easier. Even better though, you can now do batches of social media posts at once. There are tools like Buffer and HootSuite that let you schedule your social media posts in advance. We use CoSchedule because it lets us easily schedule blog posts as well as all our social media posts promoting our posts.

If all this makes sense but still seems like a lot of work, we can help! Green Pro Marketing offers workshops on editorial planning if you want to handle your social media posting in house, or we can do it all for you. Contact us today to learn how we can help you increase your leads and get more quality prospects.

Apr 12 2016

Choosing the best landscape design software for your business

I’d wager that the majority of landscape pros are still doing most of their drawings by hand. A hand drawing is quick and easy and often all you need to sell a small project. However, many small businesses reach a point where they may need to start looking for the best landscape design software, based on any of these conditions:

You’re no longer on site all the time and a crew needs to be able to easily understand your drawings
You’re submitting drawings for HOA or review board approvals
It’s a large, complex project with many moving parts
Making revisions is eating up your time
You’ve reached the limits of your hand drawing skills
You’re doing a huge volume of drawings and wish there was a quicker way

So how do you know what to choose?

3 factors for choosing the best landscape design software

There are numerous options for landscape design programs out there, and the choice can seem overwhelming. Luckily there are just a few factors to consider

Output

The first question I ask when debating what’s the best landscape design software is “what do you want it to do for you?” You have a lot of options:

2D black and white plan views
Color rendered plan views
3D computer-generated renderings
Photo manipulation (overlay pics of plants, etc on a photo of the existing site)
Full material takeoffs
Estimating

It’s important to think about how you want to present to the client and select your software accordingly, rather than adapting your business to what a piece of software does.

Ease of use

There’s going to be a learning curve with all software, but deciding how much effort you’ll (realistically) devote to learning it is important to consider. Many software packages let you do a 14 or 30 day free trial, which is a great opportunity to see if that package works for you.

Related to ease of use is the availability of training for a landscape design software. Are you totally on your own? Are there good written or video tutorials? What about classroom training? Part of the reason why I use AutoCAD is it was what they taught at the local community college.

Price

Price is always a consideration when choosing the best landscape software for your business. If you use it regularly and it helps you sell jobs it will earn its place in your office, but the numbers still have to make sense. Be sure to research thoroughly to see if upgrades are covered and if it’s a one time fee or a recurring monthly subscription.

What are the options?

There are a boatload of landscape design software options on the market. These are the ones I see talked about the most.

DynaScape – If I were started out as a landscape designer, I’d probably look most closely at DynaScape. The output looks great, especially if you spring for the color rendering features. It is a bit pricy, but if the numbers work it’s pretty slick.

AutoCAD LT – as mentioned, this is what I’ve always used. It does pretty much none of the thinking for you and there really aren’t fancy features for rendering or estimating. It’s best described as a dumb electronic drafting table. The advantages are price, the fact that the .dwg or .dxf formats mean you can exchange files with architects and engineers, and a lot of the manufacturer CAD libraries are made for AutoCAD. You can also buy the full version of AutoCAD, for a lot more money, but in 10+ years as a designer I never found my toolset lacking.

SketchUp – SketchUp is an amazing tool for 3D work. What makes it so powerful is that there are loads of programs that work with it for rendering and creating gorgeous finished models. I’ve seen some people use it for 2D plans, but that just seems clunky to me. Plus it’s like using an M1 Abrams to go get milk at the corner store. So much wasted potential.

VizTerra/Pool Studio – This is another 3D design program. I haven’t used it but I’ve worked with several pool builders who do. It’s very popular in that space, which leads me to believe you can crank out projects pretty quickly (pool sales is crazy competitive and fast moving).

PROLandscape – based on informal conversations, this seems to be a pretty popular entry-level CAD program. Contractors seem to really like the ability to take photos of existing conditions and create a representation of what things could look like.

There are plenty of other options out there, but this gives you a great head start on choosing the best landscape software for YOUR business. If you’d love to go with a landscape design software but you need more leads to justify the outlay of cash, what does your web presence look like? We can help you increase the number of leads and close more jobs. Contact us to find out how.