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The Long-Term Lawn Care Game

by | Aug 26, 2022

Anyone in the green industry will tell you that proper lawn care is a marathon, not a sprint. So when spring finally rolls around, and it is time to bust out the New Balances for the first mow of the season, it can be a real thrill. But a single mowing session won’t be delivering you the lawn of your dreams.

A terrific turf requires a serious time investment. You must be prepared to mow your grass for the entire season consistently. Providing the proper hydration is essential. You’ll also need a strong pre-emergent and post-emergent weed control game, along with several fertilizer applications throughout the year. We also can’t discount the impact of additional lawn care such as aeration and overseeding. Boosting your style with edging and stripes takes time too! But when all that is done, you can sit back, kick off your New Balances with a nice cold beer, and drop some dad jokes while you look at your glorious, green masterpiece. We recommend you sit outside with the beer to observe your neighbors’ obvious jealousy as they drive by your home on the way to their mediocre lawns.

The point is that reaching your goals takes time and effort. This is true of anything in life. Long-term goals are required to get the results you want. If you want to run a marathon, you can’t wake up on race day, having done no training at all. Saving money requires time and discipline. Learning a new skill of any sort can take months, or even years, to reach mastery.

If this is the case with everything else in life, why would marketing be any different?

Long-term and short-term goals are required to get your business where it needs to be!
The good news is that there are many ways to improve your marketing game, and not all of them involve a lengthy process. That’s the beauty of micro and macro goals. The micro gives you the small wins needed to keep you progressing and motivated to continue.

If your green industry business is like most, your long-term goals probably include growing your business by:

  • Generating more leads
  • Increasing your annual revenue
  • Gaining additional employees and equipment to sustain your growth

What smaller goals can help you accomplish this?

  • Developing a strong brand
  • Driving organic traffic to your website with SEO
  • Building a social media presence
  • Executing an effective ads campaign

Where does it all begin?

Branding.

Developing a strong brand is in and of itself a long-term goal as well, but it is one that will pay off for you in the future because your brand is forever. To have a recognizable brand, you’ll need to plan out several small steps to help you paint the bigger picture.

A great brand starts with a great logo. The average consumer must see your logo about five to seven times to remember it. But studies show that colorful, professional logos can improve brand recognition by 80%.

Next, you should consider your brand materials. You want everything you put out from your company to be cohesive. Using the same fonts and color sets is crucial in building marketing materials that add to the professional look of your brand. This is an important piece to the puzzle because business owners often tend to invest in a logo and then create the rest of the materials themselves. This shows more than you think.

For example, a professional business card can go a long way and should never be forgotten. In fact, more than half of consumers judge a brand based solely on their business cards. Unfortunately, a cheaper-looking card may lead potential clients to believe that you’ll skimp on your services too!

While the logo and materials are important, a strong, clear, consistent brand voice can make people fall in love with your company. But how can you ensure your voice is heard and your message is disseminated?

Social media, of course!
Lawn Care

Besides showcasing your quality results and professionalism, you can share the tone of your brand voice in every post. The key here is to ensure that everything you write, including your responses to reviews, sounds like the same person is writing it. So whether you start with humor or want to ooze professionalism, each post or engagement should be consistently peppered with those qualities.

The use of social media and ads can get you more immediate results, but there is one important component that will take some patience…the building of a strong website. The fact is that this goes far beyond aesthetics.

Anyone can build a website that looks phenomenal, but will it perform? Will it draw visitors to the site organically and get you leads? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial strategy to achieve these goals and other macro goals you have set for your business. This involves using keywords and various other web development and content strategies to help the site rank at the top of Google.

While it may be simple to write about your services, you need a certain amount of words just to rank as a Google authority. Much like a credit score, SEO builds over time and can be frustrating because the results are not delivered overnight. They do, however pay off BIG in the long term.

Blogging can help boost the SEO of your site too. Posting articles adds thousands of words to your site, increasing your authority in your area of expertise. This also adds keywords and allows you to provide value to anyone who visits your page. You can also share these blogs on social media to boost your content game! When done correctly, backlinking can also build the SEO on your site and help your rank to skyrocket.

With all that goes into SEO, you can see why it is most definitely a long-term strategy. However, once you are at the top of a Google search, it will be an investment you won’t regret!

When your branding, social media, ads, and SEO are working for you, get ready to absolutely crush the long-term goals you set for your business! Then, of course, it will be time to decide on new goals to set, but that is a pretty great problem to have! Moral of the story? Long-term goals equal long-term wins!

Kimberly Tice

Kimberly Tice

CCO

Fueled by frightening amounts of caffeine, Kim spends her days creating a variety of content for the Green Marketing brand and leading our wonderful team of writers. In her spare time, she enjoys going on adventures with her two children, running marathons, and taking long walks down the aisles of the Boynton Beach Target.