While they mightn’t fall into the traditional definition of “tradie”, gardeners and landscapers nonetheless share a lot of similarities with plumbers, sparkies, builders and more.
And that’s especially true when it comes to their digital marketing efforts.
There’s a lot of overlap between tradie digital marketing and digital marketing for gardeners and landscapers when you get down to it:
- Both are services
- Both have a strong geographical aspect to their marketing
- Both use a lot of the same marketing techniques
And most importantly, both tend to seriously underestimate the importance of digital marketing!
Websites for tradies: a crucial starting point
Most gardeners and landscapers have a website.
But are you really making the most out of it?
If your website hasn’t been updated since 2007 or gets neglected when it comes to planning your marketing efforts, then it might be a good idea to start by giving your website a facelift.
Web design trends have changed a lot over the years – nowadays, it’s all about clean lines, comfy colours and minimalism.
Of course, it isn’t just aesthetics that might need improvement – a modern site also needs to be:
- Responsive (that’s to say, it needs to adjust to the user’s device)
- Mobile-friendly (about half of all web traffic today is mobile)
- Designed with conversion in mind
- Fast (long loading times kill engagement)
- Optimised for SEO (more on this later)
For gardeners and landscapers, a good tradie website can mean a lot of new leads and jobs.
So, what can you do to improve your site?
Build that personal link
Ever wondered why so many businesses – tradies in particular – like to attach their faces to their business?
Simple: because it works!
Pretty much all of our clients do this. But don’t just take our word for it – according to some studies, attaching a face to the brand can go a long way towards establishing credibility and building trust.
Adding your smiling face or a shot of your entire team can go a long way towards establishing that trust – and by extension getting more people to call.
Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to implement!
Showcase your work
This is especially true for gardeners or landscapers that specialise in designing and maintaining large and complex outdoor areas!
Unlike a lot of other industries, when it comes to gardeners and landscapers, you’ve got something tangible to show off to potential clients.
So why aren’t you?
A surprising number of gardeners and landscapers use their websites as a way of just listing their contact details, and little more.
And even the ones that go further don’t always put a lot of thought into how all of it’s laid out, leading to a site that can be confusing to navigate and where all the best pictures and testimonials are hidden away.
Another simple way to improve your site is to simply make it so your best work is more visible, whether that’s by adding a gallery to your homepage or simply sprinkling in more photos of successful jobs throughout the site.
Optimise it for mobile
More and more of our internet usage is happening using mobile devices – if you don’t want your site to be left behind, that means taking measures to ensure that it works on mobile devices.
Responsive design is a great first start – this is when your site automatically adjusts to accommodate a user’s device. However, you can take this a step further by:
- Cleaning up the back-end
- Reducing file sizes to speed up loading
- Editing copy to be snappier
- Taking readability into account
- Breaking the site into smaller sections to make it easier to follow on a small screen
While some of these things might require outside help, many of them are easy to implement on your site!
It’s all about conversions
A lot of small businesses just dump information on their websites.
If you ask us however, the best way to format any website – be it a tradie website or otherwise – is to start by thinking of the customer journey.
The customer journey is the idea that each person who thinks about engaging your gardening or landscaping service goes through a certain process before they decide to call.
What’s more, depending on which stage of that process they’re at, they’ll gravitate towards different parts of the website.
For example, somebody who’s in the early stages of the customer journey might still be building a shortlist.
These people gravitate towards the homepage, and aren’t fully sold – thus, you’ll want to ensure that your homepage has this information displayed prominently, along with your best glamour photos.
By contrast, somebody who’s looking for a specific service knows what they want, and are looking for specifics.
To help convert these people, it’s a good idea to have dedicated pages for each of your services, with details about pricing, packages and any value-added services you offer.
Long story short: think about your visitors and what they’re looking for, and tweak your site accordingly!
The most important thing your website can be
Can you guess what it is?
If you said optimised for search engines, you’d be 100% right!
While each of the above are important, if the goal is to get more clients to call you, then you need to be looking at SEO.
Tradie SEO is all about optimising your site so that it appears on search engines. It’s all about understanding what Google’s algorithm prefers and then tweaking your site’s layout, content, back-end and more to ensure that it shows up in the results for specific searches.
While there are some simple things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, the best way for gardeners and landscapers to get results here is to get in touch with a professional.
SEO brings in the leads
Each of the above are important for making a conversion – but first, they have to find your website first!
And that’s where SEO comes into the picture.
By ensuring that your website pops up in search engines, SEO helps drive people to your site – a crucial first step in making a conversion.
SEO makes you more visible
There’s a reason we like to call our strategies HI-VIS marketing – by focusing on SEO, we’re able to dramatically increase your visibility to potential clients.
When you look for a service,what’s your first port of call: is it still Yellow Pages, or is it Google?
Even if you answered with the first one, there’s no denying that most people are relying on the first. Unless your website is optimised for SEO, you’re effectively missing out on heaps of potential customers.
SEO can help you get the jobs you want
When it comes to search optimisation, we don’t just revamp your website and hope for the best – no, our tradie marketing agency starts by carefully selecting which searches we want each page on your site to rank for, and taking it from there.
So you’re planning on targeting a new type of client – say you want to go from domestic landscaping to landscaping business parks. Maybe you want to focus on jobs in a specific area.
Thanks to the in-depth planning and strategy that our tradie marketing team takes towards SEO, we can help you be found:
- For the jobs you want
- By the customers you want
- In the areas you want
Marketing for tradies: how can iformat help gardeners and landscapers like you?
Tradie marketing – digital marketing in particular – is one area that a lot of smaller tradies overlook.
And by doing so, you’re essentially leaving money on the table.
If you’re a landscaper or gardener who wants to take your marketing efforts to the next level, you need to get in touch with a professional.
Specifically, you need to get in touch with iformat!
We specialised in tradie marketing, working with tradies of all stripes. Our strategies are specifically tailored to account for all of the things that make tradie businesses unique.
And since gardening and landscaping services have a lot of overlap with tradies, we can certainly help you!
Don’t just take our word for it – check out some of the results we’ve gotten!
Like what you see? Drop us a line on 1300 88 64 50, or click here to get your free HI-VIS report.
And be sure to do it quickly – unlike other agencies, we only work with a limited number of clients to eliminate conflicts of interest. Get in touch soon, before some other gardener or landscaper gets in!
