[00:00:01] Welcome to the Grow show, brought to you by Mardi Grunder's Grow Group, where we specialize in helping landscaping companies clarify their platform, grow their people, build their processes, and realize profits. Everything we teach is grounded in real experience. Our team's actively involved in the day to day operations of Southwest Ohio's Grunder Landscaping Company. New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays and are made possible by the support of Aspire, Bob Yard and Exmark. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
[00:00:28] Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Grow Show. My name is Emily Lindley and I am the events and content manager at the Grow Group and marketing manager for Grunder Landscaping Company.
[00:00:37] It's been a minute since I've been on here to do an episode of the Grow show. So since you've seen me last, I have had a baby. So I now have two, two little girls, Sylvie and Alice, and they're doing great. Alice is five months old now, so back to work full time as of July. But I think this is my first podcast episode that I'm record since Alice has been born in April. So it's good to be back here, good to be talking with you all again this week. But as I, as I'm looking at the fall ahead for Grunder Landscaping Company, we are setting up the 2027 marketing budget and the 2027 marketing plan that will go along with that budget. And so since I'm doing that on our end for the, for Grinder Landscaping, I thought maybe some of you are working on it this week as well. And this might be helpful for me to share my thoughts and share all the things that we're looking at channel by channel and, and then some things that I'm testing as well so that, so that you can use this information and hopefully it can help you as you're setting your own marketing plan.
[00:01:32] So first, before I jump into any of the channels we're using, I want to talk about the framework that, that I like to use for evaluating the marketing channels that, that we are going to go forward with. So as I sh. I'm sure a lot of you share this as well. I. There's a lot of options. There's a lot. And all the incoming sales requests for additional marketing work from agencies and ad companies and newspapers and this local thing, it can be pretty overwhelming, honestly. So I think deciding what you're going to do is kind of the first step in the battle. And one of, one of the things I try to look at is what is that one clear job that, that channel can do. So can that channel help me to get more design build leads? Can that channel help me to get more residential maintenance leads? Is that channel going to work really well for lawn care?
[00:02:20] And then I think the second point to that is do I have enough channels that are focused on every type of business that we are doing? And then I think if that, if the channel's job isn't clear anymore, we need to cut it or shrink it. So there's, there's plenty of marketing things that we've historically done that as we've gone through, as we've reviewed the data and as the company has changed, it just doesn't make sense for us to continue doing those. And so we've had to step away from them. But this lens kind of applies to everything that I'm going to talk about today. So thinking through that one clear job, balancing the jobs that our marketing is doing so that we aren't giving any one line of business too much attention, I think both of those things are really important to consider as you're laying out your marketing plan.
[00:03:03] Now before I go into the channels that we use, I do want to acknowledge that most of my marketing, most of my outbound marketing is going to really heavily favor our residential design build. Now there's a few reasons for that. Number one, that's kind of the easiest, the easiest line for us to really drive results on when we're looking at broadcast marketing efforts. So things where I can send out a message and get some inbound leads as a result of it. It's a lot easier to do that on projects for the residential side. It can be hard to mail a postcard and have it get into the right hands. For a commercial client, for example, maintenance doesn't seem to have the same response rate for some of these things as well. But you are going to see that some of these, these channels are more heavily weighted towards residential design build.
[00:03:52] That's, that's intentional on our part too. Our hope is always like if we can get a new client from design build work, we can hopefully do a good job on that and then convert them into a maintenance client from there. So, so that's really kind of how, how we, I view our pipeline going. And then also there is the truth that sometimes people call in for a project and really what they needed was maintenance. Maybe they really, they called in for a spring cleanup and we can get them for a spring cleanup plus, plus all the maintenance plus a fall cleanup, that would be great. So that's just something to keep in mind, this is going to be a little bit more residential focused. I will talk about commercial and what we are doing on the commercial side as well. But you are going to hear a little bit more heavily focused on the residential design build.
[00:04:34] So let's start with number one, which is I think the, the most obvious of the things that we do and that is postcards. We've always, we've been doing postcards as long as I've been part of Grinder Landscaping company.
[00:04:44] They are some of our most reliable marketing for projects for design build projects. So the, the one service that we are focused on heavily for postcards is that secondarily for postcards is going to be lawn care work. So that's kind of our, our second priority for postcards. Number one, residential design build. Number two, lawn care. So lawn care applications, et cetera, not including mowing.
[00:05:11] So we like to start with a pretty aggressive spring push. Now what I see is that the spring demand, when that goes high for as people, as the weather's warming up, people are getting outside seeing projects that need done. It's a lot easier for us to capture a bunch of leads there and then use that natural demand versus trying to artificially create it later in the year. And right now I'm working on just mapping out the full spring stick schedule. Now I like to go into the year knowing this is when my postcard drops are going to happen approximately and having them budgeted now so that I know okay for us to, to cover the amount of time I want to cover with postcard drops. We need X amount of dollars to make that happen. I think it's helpful to just lay it all out at once so that you have the full plan and you're going into it with a, with the full picture already in mind of this is what we're going to get, this is how much it's going to cost us. Typically the postcard cadence that I'm going for when I, when I'm laying that out is going to be in every other week and every other week drop for residential design build. And we're going to do an every other week postcard drop for lawn care. I try to alternate those weeks. So there is going to be a time period in the spring where people on our mailing list might be getting a postcard from us once a week, every week. Typically I stretch that over about a six, six to eight week period.
[00:06:34] There's going to be the lawn care postcards might end a little bit earlier than the design build postcards do Again, we just try to balance the budget, figure out what we, what we can make happen with the budget that we, we know we have, and then also just try to really, really drum up the leads in the spring. Because we know that for both, for both design, build and for lawn care, if we don't capture that business in the spring, it's really hard for us to make it up later.
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[00:07:31] Okay, next up. This is my favorite channel and there's a lot of reasons for it, but my favorite right now is email.
[00:07:38] We have a really great, really responsive email list. We are seeing about 40% open rates on emails that we send to this list. And it's a, it's a sizable list. So the lists that I have available are prospects. So people who haven't done business with us yet, I also have a customer list, so people who have ever done any sort of business with us. And then I have like current maintenance routes, current lawn care routes. So I have all those lists set up. We use Marketing Pro, which integrates with Aspire, so all those lists are current and updated with who is still currently on the route. So I can very easily send something out to everybody who is a maintenance client. Right now, everybody's a mowing client, et cetera. And it's really easy to like, kind of segment that list up, which I really, I really like about that tool.
[00:08:23] So what I like about email and another thing, so we can segment our lists and based on real, real data.
[00:08:30] That's super helpful because we know that we are getting messaging in front of people who are the most likely to take action on it. So we are seeing good response rates as well to that. The other thing I like about emails, it's really easy to rotate that messaging by season. So we don't do a newsletter template per se just because I find that template to be kind of restricting and what we need, what we need to do. And, and then I think because that kind of template can be restricting, it can end up feeling kind of stale to the people who are receiving it. So instead what I try to do is every other week we send an email. From March through November is my goal. We might end up doing it year round, I don't know. But March through November is is my goal each year is to at least cover that time period of every other coverage. And and I rotate every week right what we're what we're talking about in that email. So it doesn't feel like you're getting the same newsletter over and over again.
[00:09:24] So in spring, the topics that I'm typically covering are design, build things, talking about projects. I like to do a Mother's Day and Father's Day gift guide, so talking about how, you know, your landscaping can kind of be the gift for your Mother's or Father's Day present.
[00:09:39] We talk about drainage projects because we have a lot of drainage issues in this area, typically in the spring as well with all those spring rains. And then we also talk about lawn care. So just advertising that as a standalone service, highlighting what makes our program different from competitors, etc, also highlighting if there are any sort of seasonal issues that we expect to see in lawns at that time of year, highlighting what those are. So this year we did have a pretty heavy, heavy snow that stuck around for a while. So then once it did melt, we did have some snow mold which is not common. That's not a super common turf issue in our area, but it was one we were seeing this year as the snow snow melted. So we were, we were trying to be proactive with about that, communicating what people might be seeing in that and then how we can help.
[00:10:24] Summer we shift. We still are doing some design build features, but it's going to be more like shade plantings, pools, things like that. And then we also One of my favorite things to do is the mosquito fogging add on.
[00:10:38] So I segment our list and I send this only to our maintenance clients and our lawn care clients. But just as hey, we also offer mosquito fogging. If you've been noticing that you've been getting bit in your backyard, we can help with that. It is X number of dollars per application. Reply to this email or contact your salesperson to add it on to your next visit. There's a few reasons why I love this one. Number one, it is an add on that our techs can do when they are already there to do the lawn care application. So our maintenance clients are all on our lawn care routes as well. So they're all getting our lawn care applic and then our lawn care clients obviously have their techs on route so it's something that we can do that's going to add a little bit more revenue to that stop. But our tech is generally not going to have to make a second stop and add the extra drive time. So it's, it's profitable for us. It's really great little add on but it does provide a benefit to the client that they will value as well. Right. You can be back outside in your yard without getting bit up by the mosquitoes.
[00:11:39] Sometimes we have mosquitoes in the area that test positive for West Nile. So when that happens I try to link the article and just talk about, you know, how, how this can be a safety, safety thing for your family as well. But that is definitely something that we, that we use email for and have success on email for now I'm not saying you're going to add a million dollars to your revenue by, by adding mosquito fogging on. These are small services there but they do add up over time and they do make that visit more profitable with that text that's already going to be on that property.
[00:12:10] One thing about those is I do try to send them out before the tech is going out for their next round. I try not to send out the mosquito fogging add on like while we're mid round application just because that might mean that they've already been to some properties and they would have to go back. That's not the end of the world. We will do it. It's just going to cut into the efficiency where if I do it right before they, they do all their applications then we can just add them on as they're going for fall.
[00:12:35] We talk about maintenance and then we talk about aeration overseeding on the lawn care side. So again these are things that are not like high dollar things but because they're not high dollar we typically have really easy close rates on these so they're easy for the salesperson to sell, easy for us to get, get some movement on maintenance. I think the fall is a great time to send out a maintenance email to like our full list just because it's when, it's when somebody is maybe frustrated with their current maintenance provider and we can maybe capture them on a change for next year and get them thinking about us for next year. So that, that's a great one for both residential and commercial. Same thing with aeration. And overseeding. We could do that. Most of those are going to be residential. We can do it commercially as well. But those are, those are what we're doing there. And, and I think as I was going through this you can tell that once again my, my focus is really residential for these emails but we do do some commercial as as well. In there. So we do want to make sure that we are still highlighting the commercial routes and the commercial applications of some of these things where like design build, like if your employees need, need an area outside to sit and eat their lunch, things like that.
[00:13:49] It's just kind of sparking the idea. We have seen pretty good results from these both on those little add ons and on some of those bigger, bigger projects. I know the sales team got one great lead last year from a client. They were like, oh, we didn't know that you guys could install pavilions and pergolas too. Could you get me a quote for that? So again it's, it's putting the idea in people's head, staying in front of them so that they think of you when they have a project for you. The next thing that. And, and I'll be quick on this one just because it's, it's not really something that we're doing a ton of pre planning on. But is is social media so organically we are consistently posting. I think the consistency is important there. I just want, if somebody sees us out and about they can find us on social media platforms and they can tell that we're a.
[00:14:35] And that were polished and put together on there as well. I think those are important things.
[00:14:39] We will do some paid social media so we will zip code target that. That's very important. We want to make sure we are overlaying our zip codes. Typically we overlay those on our postcard drop zones because it just creates that reinforcement. I don't see that as redundant. I see it as reinforcement. You saw our postcard, you're seeing us online and with all of those different, those different places that you're seeing us, you're just really creating that brand awareness that hopefully will push somebody over the edge and get them to call.
[00:15:07] These ads are mostly going to be for design build and then for lawn care work. Those are the two things that we're running ads for organically. We are going to highlight our full, our full service offerings. You're going to see organic posts from us that are across the board.
[00:15:23] Next up, door hangers. So door hangers are really a priority in neighborhoods that we already work in. Typically it would be neighbors of active jobs, neighbors of maintenance clients, hoas. We maintain if we can get like we might maintain the common areas at the HOA and then we can door hanger houses within that hoa. So generally we have success with door hangers when they are placed on houses where people are already used to seeing our trucks because again, it's that, it's that, it's that reinforcement, that reinforcement of our brand, that reinforcement of hey, you've seen us around. We are taking new clients. Hey, you've seen us around. We can also do this. That's what we're really looking for with the door hangers.
[00:16:05] Uh, the rule though, we, we don't ring doorbells. We just put the door hanger on the door and leave. We don't knock, we don't ring the doorbell, we don't disturb them. It's not even a salesperson that does this. We have somebody else who goes around in door hangers. I again, having a, having a new baby at home, I'm maybe a little extra sensitive to this. Somebody was going door to door in my neighborhood this week and rang our doorbell at 8pm which I can tell I'm getting old because I'm like 8pm is so late. What are they doing out there ringing doorbells at 8:00pm? But we had, we had just finally gotten the toddler to sleep and the five month old to sleep and they rang the doorbell and the dog barked whole thing and it woke the baby up. And that's, that's the worst. It's the worst. So nothing against cold calling if you do it, but to do it during reasonable hours, please. And we just don't, we just don't feel like we have success there. We just don't feel like that's our brand or aligned with what we want to do. So we don't go door to door. We don't do like door, door cold calling for Grunder Landscaping Co. But we will do these door hangers and just leave them on doors in an unintrusive way.
[00:17:13] So again those are going to be really focused on residential, residential maintenance and residential design build. So would both of those things. But they're really going to heavily mirror kind of our maintenance routes and where we have residential maintenance stops because the goal there is really just to build density both on, on residential maintenance but also on design build. It's also helpful for us to keep working in the same neighborhoods for design to search engine optimization. SEO. This is really the commercial focus. So we use SEO on a residential side too. But, but this is the tactic that I think I see the most value in on the commercial maintenance side. So we have blogs that we are creating that are optimized for search terms. Kennedy on our team owns this and she is really looking at the search terms, figuring out which ones to prioritize and then writing the content for Those and then we are publishing those every other week right now. So, so constantly putting out new content in those blogs. Some things that are important there is is that you don't want to use too much AI while you're doing that because that'll get you flagged there. And you want to make sure that you are writing it to, to hit these keywords and to kind of fit what, what the algorithms are looking to see from you on the SEO side. And what that's going to do is it's going to help you show up in search results when people are searching for landscaper near me or tree removal near me or people paver patio near me, et cetera. I do think that this has a lot of value for commercial leads. It's probably one of the only things here that I think can work for commercial leads for maintenance. So just, just making sure that we have some topics so that we are showing up in the search results if somebody is searching for a commercial, commercial maintenance near them.
[00:18:58] This is Emily Lindley with the Grow Group. Come see Marty and I at our home base, Grunder Landscaping Co. In Dayton, Ohio. This year we host small groups for our GLC field trips to show how we operate a successful landscaping business and how you can too sign
[email protected] before these events sell out.
[00:19:17] So I think at this point it's also important for me to zoom out a little bit and talk about just the support, support for the sales staff and what that looks like. We are at Grunder Landscaping as we plan our budget. We are looking at next year. A lot of our growth in past years and going forward is coming from commercial work. It's necessarily coming from residential work. Now. Residential design build leads. Right. We start over each year. It's not like maintenance routes where you renew some contracts. You might have to fill up some, some, some new holes in your schedule that might come from people not choosing to work with you after that year. But we have pretty high retention on our maintenance routes. So generally speaking we are keeping our maintenance routes, maybe growing them a little bit and having a little bit of capacity for growth. But we are really looking at commercial bid build as a source of growth and then commercial maintenance as a source of growth for us for, for the future. So that does mean that, that we need to kind of look at our marketing budget and figure out does it actually make sense for us to be spending that and does it make sense for us to be spending that knowing that these are our goals so what we would spend as a Percentage of our total revenue when we were $5 million and most of our work was residential is going to look different as a percentage of revenue when we are like this year or last year. Last year we were $17 million in revenue, but a larger share. We're about 50, 50 commercial and residential now. So the, the percentage of total revenue that we are spending on marketing looks different for those two companies because of those expensive marketing efforts kind of not working as well for those commercial clients. So we need to look at the, look at business development and thinking through what budget do I need to set aside from the marketing budget? Because that's how we allocate it. But what marketing budget do we need to set aside for sales to have business development activities?
[00:21:09] And then also what time do I need to set aside so that I'm creating collateral that that team needs to be able to go out and make the sales, make the connections that they need? I just think it's really, really important to look at these things and not let some of those shiny residential, those residential things eat our whole budget, especially when we know we are balancing those two and we do expect to stay at about 50, 50 for each. So we need to, we need to be considering that and just making sure that we are, we are being wise with our money. I think that, you know, as marketers, we, we can sometimes have a tendency to throw money at problems and sometimes that works. But I think it's equally as important for us to say no to some things and to conserve budget when we can because we are looking at trying to keep our company margins. Right? We want a profitable company at the end of the year. We also want to make sure that we are not getting our overhead so high that we are then going to have to price ourselves out of some work and make the sales team's job harder than it, than it needs to be. So I think we're looking at, we're looking at both of those things and just, and just planning that out, figuring out, you know, how do we keep our budgets in line with, with where they need to be and how can we be responsible with that marketing budget?
[00:22:20] So I wanted to end today talking about a couple of things that we are not doing yet, a couple of things that maybe we'll do for 20, 27. I'm still kind of figuring it out. And a couple of things that honestly I would love to hear, to hear your feedback on. So if you, if you have ideas, if you have thoughts, you can email
[email protected] I'd love to read through it and see what you guys thought, what you guys think and what your experiences have been. So like a lot of you, you, I, I receive like near constant pitches from agencies, groups, community groups, et cetera. Saying no to all these outreaches is a lot, a large part of my job. Right. It's, it's respectfully saying we don't have the budget for that this year. Thanks for thinking of us. Let us know if, if you have another opportunity, maybe we'll have room in the budget for next year. So I say no to a lot.
[00:23:10] There's a couple things that I've questioned if maybe I should be saying yes to. So one of those things is home magazines. I have heard from people in other markets that they've had success with those, but I'm skeptical. We've done ads in them and they just don't turn into anything for us. Now, maybe it's because I'm not you. We're not using the right magazines. Maybe it's not the right mailers. I'm also skeptical because just me personally, I get some of the mailers that, that go out like this and I don't hang on to them. I put them in the trash. And I don't know if everybody does that or if it's just me. I also had a one local like home magazine pitch me and say that, that they, they think that I could get four $250,000 residential install jobs from, from running one ad in their, in their piece. And while I would love to believe them, that just feels kind of too good to be true. To me, that feels like those are, that's, those are big jobs. And I, I just felt like that was getting a little too salesy. But maybe I'm being silly, maybe I'm being dumb and, and that is true, maybe that would happen. But I think that that kind of goes back to, you know, you're getting these constant pitches and everybody's trying to convince you to get your money and, and I think it's easy to maybe be too skeptical. So if you are running home magazines, if they are working for you, I would love, I would love to talk more and hear about what metrics you're seeing that tell you that they work, et cetera.
[00:24:32] The other thing that I'm intrigued by, and this is one that I'm probably most intrigued by, and we might be doing it next year, I don't know. It's dependent on the budget and where I end up, end up landing the budget this year. But streaming ads with a retargeting component. So there is a local company that can do the streaming ads. They help you create the video commercials for them. And then those ads get, get inserted into streaming platforms so as people are watching whatever their streaming services on their tv, it'll get inserted into the program. It's a local ad, so it runs just for, for the area that we decide. And then they also recommend pairing those with some retargeting web ads so that there is something clickable to this campaign as well, just so that you can, you can direct people there. So it would be a video ad and then we'd retarget them on other channels to hopefully get those clicks and get website. So I, I think that one sounds interesting just in the metrics we could tie to it and being able to do some video work as well. But again, I'm just not sure, I'm not sure if, if it would just be more of a brand awareness thing or if we'd actually see results from it. So if anybody's doing that, please email
[email protected] Would love to chat about it more.
[00:25:46] So I think that the biggest takeaway I have from, from all of these pitches and all these calls that I've done, some of them just to be nice because I know what it's like to be out there selling things and I hate to, you know, just tell somebody no without hearing them out. But some of them because I'm actually interested in it too. But I think the biggest takeaway there is that interest does not automatically mean that it gets a budget line item. So we still have to be responsible with our budgets even if we are interested and we think that it might be a good idea. So just kind of evaluating all those things. That's what I'm looking at for the year ahead.
[00:26:22] But just, just to recap for us here what we are doing and the marketing that I'm really looking at putting into our budget for next year is going to be postcards, email, social media, door hangers, SEO and then some sales support for our commercial sales reps. So those are the things we're definitely doing. And I think my challenge to you is to just look at your overall marketing plan, think through what do you think worked well this year, what do you expect you want to do again next year? And then let's start to plan that out. Maybe we can plan it out and be a little more organized this year. May as part of that organization we can be a little bit more strategic. Maybe we'll see better results as a as as we do that. So that with that, that is all I have for you this week. So this is Emily Lindley with the Grow Group signing off. We will talk to you next week.
[00:27:08] Thanks for listening to the Grow show and a special thanks to Aspire, Bob Yard and Exmark for making this episode possible. We'll talk to you next week.
