By Chestin Salisbury

If you’re anything like most small business owners or entrepreneurs that I know, you hear the phrase ‘Marketing Plan’ and just shake your head. Who in their right mind has time to actually sit down and put something on paper? You’re probably too busy out running around trying to ‘do’ and have no time to sit down and plan what to do.

Unfortunately, what many people don’t realize is that while they’re out ‘doing’, they’re doing the wrong things to build their business. Or, while they may be doing the right things, they’re doing them the wrong way. This doesn’t have to, in fact it SHOULDN’T, be the case.

By taking the time to sit down and create a blueprint, you will give yourself a clear plan to achieve what it is that you’re working so diligently to achieve. Plus, you’ll accomplish it much quicker than you would if you continued running around just trying to ‘do’.

Creating a powerful marketing plan doesn’t require a PhD.

In fact, with the right knowledge you could create a magical marketing plan that will ensure you’re doing the right activities in the right way in a short period of time. There are 7 key ingredients to creating a plan that will keep you on the path to your dreams.

1. Understand Your Market

Before you can begin to create a plan to build a successful business, you must first understand the environment in which you’ve chosen to build your business and the elements that affect your market. It’s just like trying to build a house. If you’re in the North Pole, you would need to know that its cold the majority of the time. As a result, building a grass hut would be completely out of the question.

The same applies to your business. You need to know the products or services your market needs and wants, the size of the market, who else is competing for the same business, and ultimately, is there a place for your product or service?

2. Pick a Niche

After understanding the market you’ve chosen, it’s easy to think that everyone in the market is a potential customer. However, if you think that everyone is your customer, you’ll quickly find that nobody is your customer. The marketplace is crammed full of businesses competing for the same customers you seek and the only way to truly be successful is to narrow your focus. In other words, pick a niche.

A niche is defined as “a special area of demand”. It’s a subset of people that share a particular interest or need. An example would people that read ‘Underwater Basket Weaving’ magazine. Or people that bet on guinea pig races.

Once you’ve determined your niche, you’ll find it a much easier process to understand your customer, develop the right message, and find the right medium to carry the message to your customers.

3. Understand Your Customer

This step really comes down to knowing who your customers are, what they want, and what motivates them to buy. Unless you know these key ingredients, it won’t matter what type of marketing you do because you won’t be able to attract enough interest to stay in business.

In order to understand your customer, you should ask yourself the following questions:

- What motivates my customers? What are their concerns?
- How do they normally purchase similar products?
- Where do they normally acquire their information and which medium will help me best attract their attention?

4. Develop Your Marketing Message

Your marketing message is what you use to convey what it is you do and how you can help solve your customer’s problems. Or better yet, satisfy their wants. Assuming you’ve taken the time to understand your customer, this is the where you show your customer how you are able to solve their problems.

To develop an effective message, there are three words that you should always keep in mind. Benefits, benefits, benefits. In other words, what’s in it for them.

As nice as it sounds to tell them all about the great product or service you have, and about how it’s handcrafted in Peru or how you’ve spent years studying to become an expert, your customers don’t care.

The only thing that is powerful enough to capture their interest is how can you solve their problem or satisfy their want. Yes, features and facts and credentials are important, but they’re not what sell.

5. Determine The Best Way To Attract Your Prospects Attention

Assuming you haven’t chosen a niche that is impossible to reach, determining how best to contact your potential customers can make or break your business success. To be able to effectively convey your message to your customers, you need to know where to find them.

Again thinking about your customer, where are you most likely to find them hanging out? Listening to the radio? Watching late night television? Reading a specialized newsletter or other publication?

The key to successfully attracting your customer’s attention is in matching your message to your market using the right medium. In other words, it won’t do you much good to advertise a retirement community using a fast-paced, loud and obnoxious radio spot on the local hip-hop radio station.

6. Write Out Your Goals

Goals are a critical element of a successful marketing plan. Until the goals you want to accomplish are firmly printed on something tangible, it’s just a wish. If you haven’t written down your goals then you’re still just wishing for success.

Your goals should include financial as well as non-financial elements. Financial elements such as total sales, annual revenue, gross profit, etc. Non-financial goals could include things such as new customers acquired, new products developed, and total market share.

Some keys to creating goals that have the ability to keep you on track include making them realistic, achievable, measurable, and time specific. By asking yourself if your goals meet these four criteria, you’re certain to be able to create powerful reminders that will keep you on target.

7. Develop a Budget

The budget is the last step in a successful marketing plan because it’s dependent upon the previous 6 steps. Without knowing the market you’re trying to penetrate, or who your customer is, or what medium is best suited for your message, it’s impossible to know how much money it’s going to take to achieve your goals.

One way that some companies determine their marketing budget is to devote a percentage of total revenue. Many successful companies put at least 10% of their total sales into their marketing efforts, but you need to determine what number you feel comfortable with.

If you know what it costs to acquire a new customer, you can then multiply that number by your sales or customer acquisition goal you set in step 6. The result of this simple calculation will tell you exactly how much you need to invest in order to reach your goals.

Know where you’re going and how to get there.

Creating a marketing plan that gives you vision and purpose doesn’t have to be a big ordeal. It doesn’t require fancy software or some expensive consultant to sit you down to talk through these things. No one knows what you want more than you and by taking the time to create a marketing plan for your business, you’ll give yourself a valuable tool to help you achieve the dreams that caused you to go out and ‘do’ in the first place.

Chestin Salisbury is President of LawnCareMarketingMagic, a direct response marketing consultancy located in Charlotte, NC that focuses on the lawncare and landscaping industry. He has been helping small businesses grow for 5+ years by creating marketing systems that use time-tested direct response marketing principles. LawnCareMarketingMagic has access to 100+ years of experience and is capable of creating a marketing plan that grows YOUR business. Chestin is also the chief-editor of ‘The LawncareMarketingMagic Minute’, a weekly e-newsletter that focuses on helping your grow your business. You can obtain a free lifetime subscription by sending a blank email to: easytips@lawncaremarketingmagic.com

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It has been a real busy week for me thats for sure. Working on The Lawn Blog, setting up my marketing for Murphy Property Maintenance and help taking care of our newborn. Life seems to come at you all at once at times. Anyways, I have been working on a lot of marketing material for my property maintenance business, and I thought I would post the door hanger that inspired the previous post.

What are your thoughts of the door hanger? This the original one before I edited it. From this image and the previous post, would you make any changes to it?

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I recently made a door hanger and posted it on a forum to ask people what they thought of it. I had lots of comments some good some bad mostly one liners like “I like it” and “It’s ok”. But I had one comment from a gentleman named ‘John White’. I was first pleasantly surprised by the length of his post and then I got into reading it…this lad actually knew what he was talking about! He gave me some great advice and also agreed to write an article for The Lawn Blog. The following is an original article and I would like to extend many thanks to John White for his time and efforts in preparing this for The Lawn Blog.

Advertising for Start-ups and Growth
by: John White

Getting new customers is often the hardest part of the gardening, landscaping and planting business. Advertising is often the best vehicle to generate new business, given the old tried and true word of mouth as the exception. Many contractors also find new customers at client properties, as their work speaks for itself and nearby homeowners will approach them at the client property. Instead, this article is about how best to obtain new customers through advertising avenues.

As with any plan, and your advertising program should be a planned strategy, but first some goals have to be outlined, and the target market should be well defined. For instance, if your target market is middle class income, smaller sized properties, it needs a different approach than going after five acre estates in the most affluent sections of your territory. Budget restrictions may limit what you can and can’t do in terms of advertising expenditures. Define which and what segments of the market offer the most opportunity for revenue growth in your working territory, and let that dictate what the highest priority will be in terms of advertising investments.

Door hangers - These are very effective ways to advertise. This vehicle does have some drawbacks, however. Distribution is labor intensive and time consuming, but the 0.5 to 2% response rate beats any other method out there. Why such a big variation in response rates? That is primarily a function of how effective the layout, design and appearance is, particularly as it does or does not appeal to the target client base.

For very upscale areas, a four color single fold 8X11” brochure-hanger with photographs would work better than a single one color half sheet hanger would. Use that piece on a middle income 80X100 plot homeowner, and it would scare him off. Affluent areas that fall between these two target markets might respond well to a four color 4X11 door hanger, while middle income homeowners won’t be left with a bad first impression from a single one color hanger, as long as the information is easy to read, clear and concise.

There are few hard and fast rules with advertising, but there are some. People are inundated with signs, ads and commercials. Often, they will simply filter out most advertising, but a door hanger requires action, even if it’s to remove it and throw it out. The vast majority of people will at least glance at a door hanger. That means there are two or three seconds to communicate a message. THAT message should always convey who you are and what you offer. When designing a door hanger, keep this in your foremost mindset. The eye should be automatically drawn to the who you are and the what you are offering in a second or two. That is all the time you have.

Once the target client has that first, most important message, then a clear concise easy to scan listing of services offered will be read by any potential customer that might be interested in getting or changing their existing contractor.

Be sure to differentiate yourself from other companies. Free front lawn double cuts for new customers, free soil testing for customized soil and turf treatment plans (even though it is likely that they will get the same program you offer other customers…. It is still a custom plan if the soil test is normal) or if you are a start up with not much heavy equipment, sell the idea that you will do fall cleanups in three trips instead of one for the same price. Little do they know, nor do they need to know that is what you would have to do anyway, given your startup equipment inventory. Soil testing kits are dirt cheap. It’s a way to differentiate your business from others for nearly no cost. Find a way, no matter how creative to separate yourself from your competition.

Other Advertising Print Media - The same general rules for door hangers still apply to local advertising newspaper type ads but while these local community “flyer” type booklets seem inexpensive, the cost per response falls far short when compared to door hangers. Half page ads work well in these publications as far as image goes, but image is not what small localized businesses should care about. Reputation is far more important, and that cannot be purchased.

Silver Bullets:

Consider advertising in local church bulletins. They are inexpensive, and extraordinarily effective. People trust companies that advertise in church bulletins, and it’s important to live up to that trust as well. It is a vehicle that is very local, keeping new customers close by in your target territory which saves on expenses when servicing any new accounts you may win. Keep in mind that if you don’t live up to your commitments with these customers, the church will refuse future ad placements. Every silver lining has a dark cloud.

Inserts, Newspaper ads, local advertising mailers:

As previously mentioned, the number of responses per dollar is very small using these vehicles. Lawn and landscaping referrals are the norm, responses to ads in these publications is rare. Now, if you are looking for an expert spackler, or a reliable local plumber, people will use these vehicles as they are not contractors that show up every week. The next door neighbor may not have someone to recommend. Not so in this business of lawn care and landscaping.

The last thing is that even though there are a few solid rules in advertising in this service industry which should be followed, it is still your business. Where and how to advertise is your decision. You after all are the one who has to live or suffer with the results of spending hard earned cash.

Be brief.
Make you and your services offered easy to read and up front in a matter of seconds.
Start pre-selling your services AFTER you have established the WHAT you are and the WHAT you offer has been clearly stated.
Answer phone calls the same day.

After that, it’s a matter of how you want to do things. Best of luck, and happy advertising!

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