Grow Your Business Without Google Ads, Facebook, or Flyers!

For the longevity and future health of your company, you must take SEO and Internet marketing very seriously. SEO is search engine optimization and we're going to talk about all of that right now. When we talk about online marketing, you can talk about Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all sorts of social media. Then you've got content marketing like blog, then you got your website. So all these facets, we're going to kind of give a high level view of it, of what I suggest, what I've done and what you need to do to create a business that'll thrive and grow exponentially.

One feature that I want you to absolutely make sure that your CRM has is the ability to mass market or mass email customers. Email marketing is something that was created years ago and really went through a period where there's a lot of junk, a lot of spam, and still to this day there is. However, it's one of the most, the cheapest ways to reach a customer that's already in your existing database. And what I recommend is sending out what we call one click estimate emails. Now, you might not have the technology to create a one click estimate email in every single type of CRM. One click estimate email. Okay, and the goal of this email, let's talk about the goal and then how you can build it inside of your CRM. The email is basically trying to pitch one service and has one call to action. Now I want you to send this on a monthly basis. If you bill or invoice every single month at the end of the month, you'd probably want to send the one click estimate email about right in the middle of the month. And what you're going to do in this one email is you're going to pitch one service with one call to action. Now if you have a button and you're able to, you might have a little better of a grasp of your CRM. Have the ability to have a button that then triggers an automation. That's when you can do a one click part where it's a button, they click on it and then that triggers an automation that lets you know that they want a certain type of service. But even if you don't get that far, that's fine. I still want you to send an email on a monthly basis pitching one service and one call to action. Now the call to action might not be pressing a button or pressing a link if you don't have that capability. But at least send an email out once a month with one service and ask them if they would like that service. This is a way to upsell your existing customers into other products and services. It's also a way to get people that have been a year, two years outside of being a customer that were just a lead that you just did an estimate for, but they never actually converted to being a customer. They, these people can be reactivated as long as they keep warm. Keeping your leads warm is extremely important. So sending a monthly newsletter or a monthly one click estimate email is very important. Now on these emails you gotta make sure, like I've said like several times, one call to action. One type of service do not have like five different services. And then say, well, if you want to, if you'd like an estimate, give us a call or send us an email or email us back. None of that. Have one service. We're doing molten stalls. Boom. Highlight molten stalls. Pictures of you doing molten stalls. Why? Mulch installs are important for your grass. Not for your grass, for your flower beds, for your plants. Keeping out weeds, reducing your water that's required to water the plants. This is what you want to focus on. One service, just mulch. If you would like a mulch estimate, then have a call to action. One call to action. Not links to your website and links to your social media and give us a call. Here's our phone number, here's our email address. No, if you want them to ask for an estimate, you might literally just say, respond back to this email with the word yes and we'll get an estimate to you for your bark Mult install within 24 hours. That's the type of quick access that you want in a one click estimate email. Now ideally it's just one click, right? But if you haven't built that functionality into your CRM or it doesn't have that functionality, make sure that you have it as easy as possible for them to respond. We built it at Augusta where it's literally one click and immediately trigger triggers an automation lets us know that they want this specific type of service and we're able to get that to them. And a lot of times we're able to do it over the phone and very quickly or even just send it to them because we don't even have to call them, just send it to them via email. But even if you don't do that, because that's not where we started. When I first got started, it was a matter of sending these monthly newsletters out. And all of a sudden I started realizing, man, we got like 2,000 emails inside of our database. And every time I send one of these, I get 1015, 20 estimates. And if I strategically place them at the right time of the year, I can really increase my leads. And I don't have to be spending money on marketing. I just simply have to ride the wave of these one click estimate emails. And we send out a one click estimate now with thousands of emails in our database and get 70, 80 estimates over one email. And what this allows you to do is now be the faucet instead of marketing be the faucet where when you need more leads, you turn on the faucet of paid marketing. Now when you need more leads, you simply send out a one click estimate email to all of your customers asking them for a specific service that you could upsell them into. Now what's really, really key is timing. What time of year do you send each specific service? I'm not going to do a mulch install in the middle of winter. I'm not going to do a mowing email in the middle of summer. All right, make sure that the timing of your services that you're pitching is very, very pertinent to whatever the climate currently is. So for us here locally, we really our spring rushes, March and April, most of our new mowing customers come on board during that time. So, so what am I going to do? I'm going to send my one click estimate email, my email for that service for mowing during the months of March and April and then every single month I'm going to try to figure out a different service. And you could literally just take a calendar all 12 months and just write on it. What service are you going to pitch for every single month? You can do two or three for the same service for mowing. We usually do two or three in the spring and a couple projects and molten stalls during the summer. Maybe you do some fall cleanups and leaf clips during the fall, winter cleanups and winter services during the winter, do Christmas lights or snow plowing. You can absolutely look at every single month and get a different theme and different service and you can literally just create one email for every single month. People aren't going to remember last year when you sent them a one click estimate email for a mult install. What's really cool about this, we had people that we had done service for for a year, two years, three years, we just did an estimate they never accepted. All of a sudden they click on this button and accept a $10,000 job. All of a sudden they click on this estimate on the button I or they respond back to this email and they literally got them on Service from Rowing. That cost of that customer, that acquisition was zero getting that email sent to us. Whereas you might go spend 20, 30, 40, $50 on a lead from HomeAdvisor or Google or Facebook and spending money on these ads from cold leads, leads that you're gonna have to actually build a rapport with. Whereas these people, you've either done service for them or at least done a bid for them in the past, they have a much higher close ratio. They're usually less price sensitive. These are the type of customers you want, the ones that are in your database. So I highly recommend whatever CRM you use, make sure that you're going to be able to use this email functionality and send out these one click estimate emails. We used to be much more newsletter based. We talk a lot about our crew and behind the scenes and I do that like six or seven months out of the year. Now I'm going for the sale because my invoice is very much transactional. We've charged our credit card the middle of the month. I am trying to build value now, not so much in behind the scenes as much as I am trying to build value in information about their landscaping. So when I pitch my molten stall, I'm also pitching why it's so important for their plants and for retaining the moisture inside of the soil and keeping the roots healthy. All these sort of things offers value. And then I ask for the sale at the end of that email. So in the past we used to do more newsletters. We've moved much more towards we pick a service, one service, one call to action. That call to action could be call, you could have them call you. But again, my problem with calling is what if they open up their email at 11pm and they're calling and there's no one to pick it up. So I want it to be where when they click on there, there's either an email response, you can respond back to this email with the word yes, something as simple as possible. I don't want to make them fill out a form or respond back with what services you would like on your estimate. Make it as simple as possible and if you can get it down to one click, great. I think down the road it'll be where you look at it and you blink. You're trying to reduce the friction of them asking for an estimate, asking for more work to be done. And this is the way to do it. This is the way to literally take your customer acquisition cost to zero. And that is just keep farming your warm leads. Stop abandoning Your warm leads. People you've done service for in the past, people that you've done estimates for in the past, people that already know, like and trust you. Stop abandoning them for the next shiny thing. The next new customer that's completely cold doesn't have a clue who you are. And you have to build up rapport and convince them and go back and forth about price and all sorts of value and why you should choose us. Just go after your warm leads. And that's why after several years, especially like four, five, six years, you really shouldn't be doing much marketing to new customers. You should simply be taking referrals and then sending out emails that are farming those leads from your warm customers, the ones who have already done service with you in the past.

I want to add a couple more things about Google specifically and getting reviews. So first and foremost, Google no longer exists. Then they called it Google My business and that's now being changed out to Google Business Listing. And what they're doing is they're merging with Google Maps. And as I see this happening, I'm seeing more and more of a dependence and an emphasis on your geographical location. Having an actual address instead of just a service area inside of your Google Business listing is going to be very, very imperative to actually show up on the map and actually be a part of those higher ranked locations and higher ranked listings on a Google listing at the top of the page like this is prime real estate. Even if your website hasn't ranked organically the best on SEO, you might be able to be in the top three that are shown at the very top of the page if you have a map to location as well as a lot of reviews. So getting reviews and having a map to location is extremely important. Now after Covid when a lot of people moved their businesses back to their house, we've seen Google be less restrictive about having an actual business location that has a signage and an office space. Back in the day they would make you prove that you had a business by having a commercial space and they wouldn't allow you to run a business out of your house and let it show up on the map. We've seen that relaxed and so there's still sometimes we see it being flagged, but my recommendation is try to make it where your business, even if it's your house address, has a physical address. Now you can't use a UPS store box or a PO box from the post office for an address. You can't do that. They'll get flagged. Usually, however, try using Your home address, if you're just getting started. And it'll be massive for your SEO for your Google listing and your Google ranking. So number one, try to make sure you get an address even if you don't have a physical space, even if you don't have something outside of your house, just use your house address for now and try to verify it. And I've seen about 80 to 90% of people be able to get their home address as their business address, and it does much better on Google Maps and Google listings. The next thing is getting reviews. You want to have an automated way to do this. Ideally, your CRM has some sort of automation that when a customer's property is completed, when their service is completed, they automatically get an email asking for review. And those links are going to go directly to to your Google listing page. Now, right on your Google listing page, there's gonna be a link. That's the link that you can send to people via text message or email that will not only just send them directly to Google and into your listing, but it'll actually open up the review tab already and put five stars in there. So that's the part you want to copy and paste and give to customers that ask for it, but also make it part of the automated process that when someone completes a job, maybe it's every three months or four months, you ask them for an online review. Now, ideally, you don't just send that to everybody. Ideally you have an email that goes to these people and says, were you happy with your service? And then you have a yes or a no and you have buttons and the no. So they're unsatisfied, should go to a Google form where they can fill out their information that they're unhappy about. They're mad, they're freaking out and they can fill it out and it goes to you. The yes is what should go to Google Reviews so they can leave a positive public review for everyone to see. Do not just make an online review system where if they just complete the job, it sends them and asks them for a review online. Because now you're going to literally put that in the hands of every MAD customer. And MAD customers are much more inclined to take the extra two minutes and write a review if they're freaking out and they're mad. So I'd ideally want to screen those people out by asking them, were you happy with your service? If they say no, that should go to a Google form. That Google form should go to you when they submit it, not online and publicly. So you're gonna be able to screen out all the people that are really, really mad and would otherwise be spewing online garbage for everyone to see on Google Reviews. You only want people going there that are going to leave you a five star review. And you can do that by having an automated sequence and email that goes out to these customers asking were you happy? Yes or no? They click yes. That's the only way that they get to the Google Reviews tab.

Alright, so if you're gonna do door hangers, I really recommend pairing that up with a very localized strategy. Again, if you're doing door hangers, we're probably knocking on doors, pounding pavement and you're just getting started and you're really focused on a very tight mark. So I want to pair that up with every door, direct mail, yard signs, and other various forms of marking that are also very localized and targeted. So if I'm going after two neighborhoods, I'm gonna do door hangers on both those neighborhoods. I'm probably going to match it up the same week with an every door direct mail campaign where they get a flyer in their mailbox. I'm also going to match it up with the same week I also put a bunch of yard signs around their neighborhood and all the different areas of entry to their neighborhood. So matching up the door hangers with those other forms of marketing is really the most powerful because you get a lot of penetration. In most cases, take six to eight different touches with a customer in the form of marketing before they actually start to recognize your brand. So if you can touch them in the form of a yard sign and then door knocking and then all of a sudden there's a door hanger on their.

Door and then there's a piece of mail in their mailbox. All of these things are different touches that allow you to get that brand recognition that you're trying to look for. So if you're gonna do door hangers, though, I do recommend that if you're walking up to the person's house, you're walking up their driveway, you might as well give them a price while you're there. For most customers, price is the biggest question mark as to whether or not they want service. If everything was free, of course they want you to trim their bushes and mow their lawn. So the biggest question mark over whether or not they want you is the price. Why not give them the price on the door hanger? So this is what I recommend doing. Have a door hanger and you can get these@lawncaremedia.com we call them instant Quote door hangers. And basically, it is on the door hanger. It has a spot for you to put the price on for either a mowing job, a property cleanup or mulch installation. And so literally, as you're driving, walking up the driveway, instead of just walking up to the driveway, walking up the driveway and putting up the door hanger on the knob, now you're looking around. Okay. Okay. This would be like a $40 coat. $40 per cut. Mow bam, $40. You open the door. I would knock on the door if I was you. If they come to the door, you can hand that to them, introduce them yourself like I mentioned in the last video. But if they're not home, you can now literally put that door hanger on the doorknob, and they are going to have an actual price for whatever service that you're trying to sell. Instead of you putting a door hanger that had a whole bunch of promotional material and says, give us a call, go to our website. Why? To get an estimate. Why not just give them an estimate? You're already at the property, and most of the time you don't even need to go in the backyard. You don't need to see the backyard. Especially if you're in a neighborhood where there's a whole bunch of houses. They all look the same. You can look on Google Maps and see the backyard if you really need to and get a very accurate quote, whether it be mowing, mold installation or property cleanup. And you can literally have all three of those different types of door hangers. And depending on the type of property and what their needs are. Oh, okay. This property looks like they need a lawn service. The grass is overgrown. Bam. I'm going to use the Instant Quote door hanger for mowing. Oh, man, these trees are overgrown. Or there's a bunch of leaves in the flower beds. Okay, I'll do a property cleanup estimate. That's the type of thing you can do. And now the customer doesn't have to call you. Now what they're gonna do is take a picture of that door hanger with the price and your quote is basically on there and email it to you on that. It's gonna have their name, their address, and their phone number, and that's all you need to basically get started. The quote has been accepted by them sending that picture. The job is really ready to go on the schedule. So that would be my recommendation. If you're doing door knocking, be very localized. Pair it up with other localized marketing strategies, like every door, direct mail and yard signs. And then make sure that when you're doing every door, direct mail, when you're doing door knocking that same week, that same two weeks, try to put it all in one spot. So that way they start, man, I saw them in the mailbox, and I saw them on the door. Then they came and knocked at my door. Then I saw them out on the street on a yard sign. Putting all those things together really allows people to be like, man, they're everywhere. And you literally are just going after a couple neighborhoods and spending $1,000 or $2,000. That's the best strategy at the end of the day. Door knocking, hanging door hangers, all of those things are just a numbers game. So people get very discouraged after knocking on doors. And they go through 100 and don't get a single customer. Literally the next three customers, your 101st, 102nd, 103rd customer, could all accept a job. And then now, all of a sudden, you got three customers in the space of a couple hours. So I would recommend all those things. I'd also recommend knocking on the door, not just putting the door hanger on. And again, if they answer, you now already have a quote for them. It's really like, hey, Mr. Jones, I noticed you might need some things. I just wanted to give this to you, introduce myself. And if you ever need anything, let me know. But there is a quote. I actually wrote it up while I was walking up the driveway. If you need anything, just let us know. And you just use a Sharpie and just literally write it right on there. That's all you need. And that's gonna get a conversation going. You're gonna have a much higher close ratio if you actually talk to the person. But if they're not home, you knock. There's no answer. You just put that door hanger with the quote on the doorknob and you're good to go. And you're gonna get a very small percentage of people that respond. One percent would be incredible. Half a percent likely. But again, if you need 200 houses, there's your one or two customers. That's a really great return. At the beginning of your business. You're gonna exchange time knocking on doors, door hangers, things that are unscalable. Instead of money. Cause you don't have $10,000 to go run a Facebook advertising campaign and a bunch of Google Ads and do a bunch of fan stuff on Spotify and a big newspaper thing. You don't have the money. So go localize. Very, very targeted, and hit them from all these different angles and make sure that you're spending more time than money. Because right now, if you're just getting started, you have 10 customers, you have all the time in the world. You got plenty of time to go knock on doors, put door hangers out. You don't have the money. And down the road, as the business grows, as we'll get into in the future, you will go start spending money on marketing that's more scalable. Facebook ads are more scalable. I can spend $500 tomorrow and get a bunch of leads. I can't do that necessarily if I'm door knocking. But at the very beginning, you're not going to have that type of money to spend on ads. You're going to want to focus on spending time. Either have time or you have money. At the beginning of your business, you have time. So go knock on the doors, hand out the door hangers, and pair those things up with other guerrilla marketing in the form of yard signs and Every door direct mail.

When it comes to every door direct mail and the program that they have, keep in mind that it doesn't matter if it's a flyer or a postcard. In terms of the cost of delivery, Only extra cost is going to be the cost of printing. So I recommend if you're going to spend 18 cents for delivery using the every door direct mail program, spend an extra 3 or 4 cents getting color on both sides and maybe a nicer stock of paper quality. And again, if you need more real estate, more space, an eight and a half by 11 is going to cost the same amount in terms of delivery as a postcard. So why not spend a few extra cents, get an eight and a half by 11, be able to share more information, have a larger picture, have a larger footprint. That would be my recommendation. We actually would do cardstock for our 8 and a half by 11 every door direct mail flyers. Because it's like, look, I want to spend the extra 1 or 2 cents to get card stock versus a really cheap thin paper that's easier to throw away. So that'd be my recommendation. When it comes to print quality and every door direct mail. Keep in mind, what you're gonna have to probably do once you go through their program is bundle them in hundreds. And then for each mail route, you're going to have, let's say there's 1,000 addresses, you're going to have 10 bundles of 100. Keep in mind, you're going to need the every door direct mail stamp on all of those pieces of Mail. Now we've seen across the country it vary massively based upon the postmaster and who you're working with at the post office, whether or not they require the stamp. But to be safe, I'd recommend it. And on lawncaremedia.com where we have all of these designs for you to download, we have the stamp on everything. Because just in case. But if you're designing your own, please before you print them off, like maybe print one off and take it to the post office and have them approve it because you do not want to print off a couple thousand of these. And now you've wasted hundreds of dollars and they're like, oh, we're not going to send them because they don't have the EDDM stamp. It has like local customer and ERCWS on there. So highly recommend that you have the stamp on whatever design you're using. And again, you can check out lawn caremedia.com has all the flyers, postcards, there's other things like door hangers and yard signs, but the flyers and the postcards is what you're probably going to be focused on when it comes to every door direct mail and sending out those campaigns. Now when should you be using every door direct mail? When you should be using these print marketing tactics is when you have hyper localized marketing campaigns. You are not going to want to send this out to 20,000 people. The Bang for your bucket is just not there because sending out to 20,000 people is probably gonna cost you $5,000. $5,000 spent on Google Ads or Facebook ads is gonna get you a lot better return typically than sending out 20,000 flyers on every door direct mail. And so what I would recommend is use every door direct mail when you're really targeting like one or two neighborhoods. And if you're just getting started, that's what I believe you should be doing anyways. Don't try to boil the ocean and go after a massive 20 mile radius. Focus if you're just getting started on a few neighborhoods because you're going to be more profitable from the onset if your lawns are all close to each other, if your projects are all within a mile or two radius, that's where you're the most profitable. At Augusta Lawn Care, our territories are five mile radiuses. But when they come for training, I tell them literally one or two miles is all I want you to focus on because you'll be more profitable your first and second year. If you're going after a very tight market versus a massive 5 mile, 10 miles, 20 mile radius, it Gets so spread out, it takes a long time and a lot of customers before you have adequate route density to actually become profitable. So I recommend going after a really tight market anyways. And if you're doing that, that's when every door direct mail can be very powerful because you're going after say 1000 houses now all of a sudden it's $200, $250 to get something delivered to their house, including printing and delivery. Well, you could do that four or five times for $1,000. That's a really good deal. And now I'd much rather personally have 50 customers in a 1 mile radius than 100 customers in a 5 mile radius. I'd rather have half as many customers. But if I know they're all that tight, they're all that close to each other, I'm gonna be very efficient, I'm gonna be very profitable on those customers and it's not gonna take me years of growth before I get a correct amount of an adequate amount of route density where I can be profitable on those jobs. So I recommend every door direct mail, especially at the beginning. We haven't done every door direct mail for years because now we're spread out. But we have lots, hundreds and hundreds of customers and they're all profit. All the customers can be profitable inside of that 5 or 10 mile radius. But if you're just getting started, go after a very tight market. And that's when I'd use every door direct mail. Target those 500, 1,000 homes that you know you can get customers from. And that's your ideal market. Because honestly, if you go after a thousand houses and penetrate them with every door direct mail, maybe put some yard signs up, door hangers, knock on their doors, we'll talk more about that in just a moment. But if you're going to do all that in a thousand houses, you could easily get one out of 10 houses to get you your service. That's 100 mowing customers in just a few neighborhoods. That is where really money is made in this industry is when you have customers where you park your truck and you do four houses, you drive down the street a little more and do three houses, that's where you really start to make great money. That's when your employees down the road, once you put them on pay for performance, that's when they can really start to also make performance dollars, is when they're not driving. Drive time and windshield time is the bane of this industry's existence. Especially when it comes to lawn care and recurring work, but even projects you don't want to be driving 45 minutes one way. What happens if you forget a wheelbarrow? Well, you're driving an hour and a half round trip just to go get the wheelbarrow now. So I really recommend every door direct mail. When you're first getting started, your first 50, 100 customers really go hyper localized, very, very centralized to a specific neighborhood, a specific couple neighborhoods, and target them only. Every door direct mail, door knocking, door hangers. That's the recipe for getting those markets that are really, really tight in those neighborhoods. And if I was you, I'd check out lawncaremedia.com for all of these designs. You can download them, customize them yourself, order them for printing or whatever it is. I think it's like 3.99 for literally like 60 different designs. So check it out today. I think it'll be really beneficial for your business.