Kasra Dash:
So how do I grow a landscaping company.

James Dooley:
So that's a great question that we ask quite a lot. For landscaping companies, if they're looking to grow, there's different methods. All traditional methods are places like billboard advertising, TV advertising, radio advertising, magazines, stuff like that. But I tend to stay away from doing a lot of traditional nowadays. It's expensive, it's hard to track KPIs, stuff like that.

Generally speaking, I think the best methods, if I fresh them all out and then we can discuss further, the best ways to grow a landscaping company would be SEO, search engine optimisation through to your website. We can expand on that in a minute with regards to content, topical authority and links, how to do it in the most efficient manner.

You've got PPC, which is bidding at the top of Google per click. Very, very expensive for what it is, but literally can be generating new leads today. Then you've got being active on social media accounts, so making certain that your brand has got all different social media. That could be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe even Pinterest because landscaping, they do quite a lot of nice visual jobs. So if you can try to get some images and videos put on there for the landscaping jobs of what you've done, it could work very, very well.

Then you've got social media advertising, so you definitely should be getting the retargeting pixel on your website, which then means that if they didn't kind of inquire, you're still following them and showing them ads on social media like Facebook. The social media ads that could work well for a landscaping business to grow would probably be Pinterest ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads or YouTube ads.

And then probably the last method we can touch upon is actually hiring a lead generation company. So over at fatrank.com, we have a no risk supply of inquiries if accepted. We do quite a lot of work with different landscaping companies, whether that could be landscaping for a public open space like a park or anything like that, or just general landscaping and tree planting and stuff like that. There's lots of different sub niches and subtopics within landscaping as a whole where we can help companies.

I'd strongly recommend getting in touch with fatrank.com to see whether you are accepted. If you're not accepted, we also do pass you on to someone we feel would be best to suit your needs, whether it could be a PPC expert or an SEO expert, stuff like that.

But for landscaping companies looking to grow, what would you say, like out of the list there, what would you say the best probably two or three things to do.

Kasra Dash:
So definitely avoid traditional advertising. There's no chance I'm going to be sticking my brand on a billboard or down the motorway that nobody sees.

SEO from my own website, I would probably be attuned to that because obviously it is a long term play, but you are also building up an asset at that point. So say for example you're looking to sell your business in five or six years time, if your website itself generates its own inquiries, that's an actual asset to the business and your business valuation would increase as well.

PPC, I've personally had bad experiences with, so I try to avoid it at all costs. I think that's mainly because the issue with PPC is you're paying per click. You then need to properly dig down of exactly what keywords convert into orders. But also there's a lot of click fraud. A lot of people don't understand that a lot of people are paying for clicks or competitors are clicking on your ad to see what the landing page is.

In the landscaping industry it's about on average around ten, twelve per click, so it's nearly fifteen dollars per click. And your competitor clicks onto it, it just cost you fifteen dollars. So at that point you're like right okay, if your daily spend is let's say forty five pounds or forty five dollars, that's one third of your budget gone just like that.

So I think my go to strategies is if I'm an established landscaping company and I've got let's say a couple thousand or let's say four thousand pounds to spend, I'll definitely invest that into SEO. If I'm less established and I don't have that cash to spend every month, I would probably go down the road of doing social media, like organic social media posts.

So let's say I'm a landscaping company, I might set up a camera and do some video footage, some nice before and after photos, and just make certain I'm consistently doing it. And if I'm being one hundred percent honest, I'd probably be doing both if I'm an established company. And I would also be looking to do social media ads as well.

Getting people back onto the website, like you yourself know this, if you go on ASOS and you don't buy anything, let's say you're looking at a pair of shoes, the next time you load up Facebook those pair of shoes is essentially being displayed to you. It's almost like an online digital billboard and that's the whole point of retargeting and getting people back onto your website and inquiring with your business.

James Dooley:
Yeah for sure. If you're a landscaping company and you are looking to grow online, my personal best methods is start to do SEO, not just for higher rankings but also for branding as well. Making certain that you're looking at the reviews that you have online and making certain that at the eleventh hour, if you are up against another competitor, another landscaping company, and your prices are very similar, and this client now is searching your name and their name, how strong does your brand look online.

Do you look like a reputable company. Do you have lots of five star reviews. Do you look good. Is there lots of very nice photos of previous jobs that you've done or case studies or testimonials. Are they all there. Have you got nice videos.

I'd be looking to do everything I can on your own website. But the truth of the matter is it can be very demoralising when you're doing everything right on social media, posting nice photos, posting nice videos, and doing SEO, that you still might not be getting a consistent flow of quality inquiries.

So to compensate that, alongside doing all the things right yourself, like what Kasra said, you are actually improving the valuation of your site, of your company as a whole, if you can generate your own leads with your own website.

However alongside that, instantly I would go down the road of looking to team up with a company like FatRank that can turn around and give you a no risk supply of inquiries. So you're only paying for jobs that you win and make profit on, and then you pay a finders fee and a commission through to FatRank.

They're the best two plays in my opinion. Not only that is that if you did sign up with FatRank for lead generation to grow your landscaping business, and you're doing the SEO and improving your reputation management, it compensates each other. Your conversion would be a lot better if you started to do this play alongside getting a lead generation company.

So that's what I would do if you're looking to grow a landscaping company online.

Kasra Dash:
Anything else.

James Dooley:
I think that's it. I think the last thing is if you guys do have a landscaping company and you might just want a consultation call with us really, maybe guide you in the right way, make sure to check out FatRank. The link will be in the description. Thanks.