12 Tips for Marketing Your Landscaping Franchise

Alice Tuffery, writer

Published at 12/12/2020, Updated on 04/05/2022 , Reading time: 5 min

12 Tips for Marketing Your Landscaping Franchise — Photo © Landscaping_Franchise.jpg

Joining a landscaping franchise is a great way to earn money whilst getting out and about and keeping fit. But how can you make sure people find your business? Here are some of the top marketing tips for promoting a landscaping business.

As more and more people lack the time to renovate their outdoor spaces, landscaping franchises can offer a valuable service. They design and create practical and attractive gardens for individuals and businesses across a given territory. In this article, we’re looking at how you can upgrade your marketing campaigns.

Tips for marketing a landscaping franchise

1. Highlight your niche

Whether you specialise in one particular area or offer a diverse range of services, it’s worth shining a light on the tasks you can perform to a high standard. You may want to direct your marketing material at a specific demographic, depending on your area of expertise. Consider targeting busy families, landlords or business owners, for example.

I know my strong point is small and awkward urban gardens, so I don’t try to appeal to country-estate type gardens or large landscape clients. I focus on my niche and my content reflects that. —Lee Burkhill, award-winning garden designer

2. Start early

Landscaping franchises are usually seasonal businesses, with lots of leads during the spring and summer. Take advantage of the time you have by starting your promotional activity well in advance of spring and getting a headstart on your competitors.

3. Join popular listing websites

Listing websites give customers the chance to find and compare local businesses. They’re a useful tool and one of the first places people look when searching for landscaping franchises. Be sure to sign up to some of the most well-known websites and create a detailed description providing plenty of information and photographs for readers. Don’t forget to add a link to your website.

4. Build a portfolio

It’s no good just telling people you’re great at what you do - you’ll need to show them. Take high-quality photos of your work and develop a catalogue of images to give potential customers an understanding of the skills you have.

5. Offer free work

In an ideal world, you’ll never have to work for free, but foregoing the invoice is a great way to build up a portfolio. This tip is particularly useful if you’re in the initial stages of launching your landscaping franchise business. You may even be able to work for high-profile clients, which will impress future customers.

6. Start email campaigns

While it might seem like a relatively old technology, email is still a highly effective tool when it comes to marketing. You can use it to keep your contacts informed of any business updates and send out promotional offers and discount deals to entice them to use your services.

7. Collect testimonials

Before you wave goodbye to a satisfied client, consider asking them to review your business. If they’re happy for their testimonial to appear on your website and marketing material, you may be able to attract a lot of new leads. The more positive reviews you can gather, the better.

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8. Create videos

Marketing best practice is evolving all the time, and businesses are increasingly turning to video to engage their audience. Once you’ve developed an eye-catching sequence, publish it on your website and social media profiles.

We are starting to use video and feel this will be the way forward – videos on our websites and social media get significantly more interaction than text and image only posts. —Lesley Spence, Green-tech Communications Manager

9. Invest in branded items

Many of our tips have involved the internet - but you can use this technique to advertise your landscaping franchise while you’re out and about. Buying items like a branded van and uniforms will help give your business a professional look whilst reinforcing your logo among passers-by.

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10. Visit industry events and shows

Search online for events taking place in your local area. Whether or not they’re aimed at businesses in the landscaping sector, you’ll have the chance to share insight and ideas with other ambitious entrepreneurs. You may even be able to promote your landscaping franchise to potential customers too.

11. Make your marketing material count

Marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be time-consuming. By meticulously planning your tasks ahead of time, you can make your material work hard for you. Consider ways to develop multiple pieces of content across several channels to save you time, money and effort.

A video interview with a chainsaw carver could be channelled on social media, tips can be written as a blog post on your website, then link it back to product pages on the website. And communicate that again via social media. And you have still photography, too. So you could have six months’ worth of content just from planning one day, and I think that’s where it needs to be. —Helen Dearing, AriensCo Content and Digital Marketing Manager

12. Use SEO

SEO - or search engine optimisation - is the process of making your business more visible on sites like Google. Read our SEO guide to start improving your ranking position.

Master Lawn case study

Here’s just one example of how a landscaping business increased its leads by taking control of its marketing activity.

Chad Diller, Director of Client Success at Landscape Leadership, was on-hand to help when Michael Hatcher & Associates in Tennessee acquired a business called Master Lawn. At the time, it had 10 website leads per month, 1,300 customers and generated $1 million in revenue.

In the following 18 months, the business:

Updated its brand identity, and used the ‘master’ aspect of the name, introducing the image of a magic lamp and three wishes in reference to Aladdin
Created new business cards to reflect the new brand identity
Redesigned the website, adding more information
Added stock photos to its website and gradually replaced them with images of their real projects and customers
Collected data from the website landing page
Gathered feedback from customers to further improve the business
Used Google Ads to target new customers

By the end of the process, it was seeing 300 leads per month, with 3,000 customers and a $2 million revenue.

Start a landscaping franchise today

If you’re interested in joining an established landscaping franchise, or just scouting out the competition, take a look at our selection of investment opportunities in the sector.