Crazy Marketing Strategy to Get More Mowing Customers

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Endes and you're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast you might be watching on YouTube or Facebook. But I want to say a big thank you for joining on today's episode 66. Today, I'm going to be sharing a tip that I was actually talking about with a course member a few days ago, and we were discussing different strategies they can use to really dominate their market this spring and get new customers. And we've been talking a lot recently about really retaining your customers, your current customer list and really mining them, upselling them, and getting more customer lifetime value out of your current existing customer database. However, this course member was wondering, how do you get new customers? And so I wanted to share a tip that maybe you haven't heard before. Maybe it might work for some of you. I think for some of you, it's going to be an absolute game changer if you use it correctly. So this is what it is. It's very, very simple. I want to explain it to you now. Basically, you're going to use a little company called Zillow and, and to do all this data for you. So you're not going to have to buy any software for this or anything like that. It's a very simple process that really wouldn't have been possible even 10 years ago. So if you go to Zillow.com, basically, Zillow allows you to find all the different.

Properties that are for sale or for rent in your area. And so what I do go to Zillow, create an account, it's free, and then go to your, Search your area, search for the houses that are for sale in your area. That's the first step. The next step is you want to go under a tab that is called Recently Sold.

And so under this tab, you're going to see all the houses that have recently been sold and the date in which they were actually the title was transferred. And so what you're going to do is search for your area. Then you're going to go to Recently Sold, and then you're going to add in certain parameters. So you don't want to see, you don't really care if someone recently sold a house for $5,000 or they sold 5 acres for $10,000. You want to be, you have a very specific target demographic. You should know in your area what is the average home value of the clients that you get. For instance, I know that my clientele, the majority of them are going to have houses that are worth over $400,000. That's in our market and we live in Washington. So it's a little bit higher probably than most people in the country. However, I know that my average consumer, my average client, their house is probably between 4 and $600,000 in value. And so what you want to do is go recently sold, but then bring down the number of results by dictating 400k plus or whatever your number is in your area, that might be 100,000 in your area. If you're down south or other states, that would have a lower home value average. And so for my area, I know 4 to 600,000 is my client's average home value. So that's what I put that as my range, 400,000 plus. It's going to narrow down my search results. I'm also going to make sure that on the tab there, so you remember we're on Zillow, we've searched your local area. So that might be your county, it might be your city. You might actually have multiple cities that you want to look at. But then you're going to click recently sold in that area and then you're gonna dictate the home value price. Then you're going to take out the other types of listings. So this could like there's land, there's commercial, there's for rent, there's condos, there's apartments. You want to make sure just homes. If you're going after residential, this is what you want to be doing. If you're going after commercial, you could go after apartment complexes that are for sale. However, when you go under apartments on Zillow, it's like one bedroom apartments, like individual units. So I would select just homes. Remember, if you're going after residential lawn care and landscaping clients, do you want to select just homes? So now we have selected our area, recently sold homes in our area. We dictated the value of that transaction and then that it's only a certain type of listing and that is residential homes. And so what we're going to do now is we have a very narrow list of the recently soldiers houses in our area. They're in our target market. And the reason these people are so, so valuable, these leads is they just moved. They literally just moved. They're in the mode of buying. They are doing a lot of renovations on the house they just moved and they're adapting to the new school system and the malls and where to shop and all of these things. So what you want to do is become their source of information for their new area. So whether or not they Moved across the, or whether or not they move just across the county, you want to make sure that you are their contact person and you want to get to them quickly. And so because there's other companies, bigger companies doing this sort of thing, like Comcast, the Internet providers, they're doing this similar thing. They're not using Zillow, they're using massive data. But you can beat them if you do this daily. So what we do is every day we're running this because now on Zillow, what you do once you do this, search in the top right click, save search and have it email you a daily report of, of the results that are coming in your area that are meeting these criteria. So houses are sold between a certain range that are residential homes in your demographic market. And then every day you're going to send them a piece of mail, you're going to send them a marketing piece because we're trying to get in front of them. Now you're saying, well, what type of marketing should I be sending them? So I don't want you to send them buy one, get one free for lawn care or just a business card or. These people are stressed out. A lot of times they just moved. It's a stress, stressful process. And so what you want to do is become their source of information. So this is what we do for these pieces of mail that we send to these people, these people we found on Zillow. This is the type of mail that we're going to send to them. So we already have their address from Zillow. That's fantastic. We have their city. So you can sometimes break up this mailer in different types of cities. We just do one for our whole county. But basically this is what our mailer is going to look like. This is page one. This is the one side. This is just an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. And this is going to be page two. This is going to be the back side of the page. So this is one sheet of paper. Front side, back side. So the front and then back over here. Okay. So on one side you are going to talk about your company. So this is going to be about your company. I should do this in a different color, actually. So this page one, the one side of this piece of paper is going to be about your company. You're going to tell perhaps a little bit about the history of your company. So this is about my company.

And you're going to talk about what services do you offer. Do you do lawn care? Do you do fertilization do you weed control, do you do trimming, pressure washing, landscaping, hardscaping? What do you do service wise? Do pictures, lots of pictures of before and afters, pictures of your team. I would suggest, make sure you have your website contact information. I would do a lot about you, about you as the owner, what your goals and objectives of the company are, what you stand for, what separates you, what sets you apart. But lots of pictures. I literally do half of this as pictures before and afters, different your team members, your uniforms, your team and things like that. That's page one. But what's gonna make this mailer different is page two. So yes, you want to do information and all that sort of thing, but this is really the value, this is the value that you want to be providing on this mailer. And this is going to basically be a recommendations of the different other providers in the area. I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong, but recommendations that you're going to give this individual. So when someone moves to a new area, they have no idea of where to shop. You know, who should be doing their hair, who can fix their car, who can do all the services that you just take for granted if you lived in the same place for a long time. And so what you want to do is be the person that recommends quality service and companies that are reliable. And by doing that, you are going to associate yourself with great companies that are doing great service and you're going to provide meaningful value to this individual that just moved across the country and has no idea what to do as far as these different services they need. So some of the different things you can do is a mechanic. So if someone's moved across the country and everyone knows that a mechanic can be a real. Can really scam you if you don't know what you're doing as far as automotive. But then they can also be a really good value and be able to help you and get your car working. And so knowing a trusting mechanic, it can be sometimes literally one out of every ten that are actually good and they're going to do quality service and going to charge you correctly and explain things and not just to overcharge you or sell you parts you don't really need. So a quality, good service mechanic, that's a great recommendation. Give them one or two options. Another thing that they're going to be looking for is a hairstylist. Like a lot of times when people move, they are moving away from someone that has been doing their hair for many, many years. So a hairstylist is someone that's a personal connection with them that they're going to develop a meaningful relationship with and that they're going to have to trust that they do a good job. So if you can be the point of contact, the person that recommends these things, you can really create a relationship with this customer by just offering valuable advice. Now, what I would do is on this recommendation page as well as somewhere on this page, is say that, hey, we want to give you these recommendations. They're from our team, they're from our employees, however you want to say it. Or even if you want to put pictures of your team and say a little caption that says they would recommend a certain service. For instance, if you have an office manager and she's a lady and she's working the front desk, maybe you have a picture of her with a little box that has her favorite stylist and what she says about them as far as hairstylists. And maybe one of the guys doing a mechanic and have a picture of him with a little blurb quotation explaining why he likes a certain mechanic in that city. Another place is. Another thing people are looking for is restaurants. So especially if someone just moved, a lot of times they need to eat out for a little while. They're trying to move everything around their house. They don't have the food that's really required to make meals. So they're going to be looking for places to eat. If you can be the person that can recommend different types of restaurants, fast, casual, and you can do fine dining and recommend a few different types of options for their dinners, their lunches, their breakfast. This is another thing that people don't know when they come to a new area. They don't know where the good places are to eat. They don't know the little quaint cafes and different luncheon places that they can go. Little delis and the bakery that everyone loves locally but they don't know about because they just moved into town. So these are just a few different things that start making you think about what are the different types of industries or services that we rely on. Another one is handyman. People come to a new place, a new house, and they need someone to do handyman services. They need renovations, they need a wall knocked out, or they need some applian appliances installed. They might have a leaky faucet or a leaky toilet. When people move in, there's always work to be done, even if it's a new house to get things just the way they want it. And so they really need a handyman that is quality, that is dependable, that is not shady, that's going to do a good job, that's experienced. So what we do is we do two different types of handyman. One is like more of a contractor that can do decks and can do larger balconies, things like that, garages, take out walls, put in cabinets, do flooring. And then a handyman, we do two different recommendations. One, the handyman does more like repairs the leaky faucet, maybe changing out a toilet or changing some light fixtures, little stuff, handyman things. But the thing is, if someone just moved to the area, this is very, very valuable to them. And if you can identify your brand with these companies that do a great job and offer quality service and then this individual that needs these people goes and uses your recommendations, the value and the place that you have put your brand in their mind is enormous. And I wouldn't go for a right hook. I wouldn't be going for a hard sell here. I wouldn't be trying to sell them services. I'd be informing them about your company and the services that you provide and then giving them heartfelt recommendations from your team. You as the owner, you could even make it like recommendations from the, from the desk of the owner and put a picture of yourself. If you're a one man crew or if you have a team, try to integrate where they now see the team's faces and their uniforms and they begin to trust and associate trust and expertmanship and professionalism with your brand. So this is a piece of mail that I think can change your business. Go on to Zillow, see what's selling in your area. It might be two, three, ten houses a day. You just need to send this one 8.5 x 11 in a letter. Literally by the time you print this thing off full color, you might be at like 20, 30 cents. And then you get an envelope and a stamp for less than a dollar each. You can send this piece of mail that I believe is going to convert a whole lot better than any other form of postcard or a door hanger. It might take a little bit time, but once you set up that Zillow, save the search, it can email you those address list every single day with the houses that are being sold. And within two days of them signing on their house, they can have a piece of mail in their mailbox that is giving them valuable information and then associating your brand with quality service. So I highly recommend you give this a shot, try out for a few weeks Let me know how it works in the comments below. Thanks again. This is Mike andes. Check out landscapebusinesscourse.com.