In this article, we are going to focus on a local lawn care business that I helped to elevate their marketing and lead generation in New Castle. For a more granular set of additions and changes, we:
- Created a new website with a regular “.COM”
- Optimized their Google Business Profile
- Created service + regional specific content for better SEO performance, locally
- Created engaging content for social media for promotion
Case Study Client Snapshot
The client is an owner/operator of a local lawn care company. The business is primarily servicing New Castle, and to a greater extent, Lawrence County in Western Pennsylvania.
The current lawn care industry, at the time, was fairly vast. As lawn care encompasses lawn mowing, grass cutting, lawn edging, weeding, small tree trimming, small bush trimming and similar actions, many businesses are in the area. The size of the competing companies range from weekend operations, up to full-service incorporated outfits, and down to the local teenager saving up money on the weekends.
New Castle is a small town in Western Pennsylvania. It is located in the middle of Lawrence County; divided into a few areas including New Castle, Neshannock, Ellwood City, Wilmington and areas spread in between.
I mention this as it is relevant in talking about a business that deals with properties in and around the area of New Castle. Local businesses that offers services have a unique challenge, as well as unique tools, to help boost their brand awareness and accessability.
Client Issues, Problems and Major Challenges
Specifically, the client needed a fast and simple method of reaching more (and better quality) clients, without spending thousands on paid advertising channels.
At the time, most of their business was coming from word of mouth, and shared posts over social media (Facebook being that platform that 90% of this happened in).
The largest problems that the client was facing at the time:
- Competition had a few crews; client had himself and a main full-time assistant
- No clear method of lead generation apart from word of mouth
- Wanted to have long-term clients, not single cuts on the weekend
The New Client Journey: How they got here and why
In the past, the client had avoided named marketing agencies. They had done a rather good job of creating brand and touching customers on social media with images, videos and even live videos.
What changed was that he wanted full-season clients. At the time, his main clients that were new were single-session clients – customers that wanted a single cut, usually on the weekend.
Since we knew each other, I had approached with some simple things he could do, changes he should make and other odds and ends that would yield some benefit. While it was not a marketing campaign in complete, there was enough information to change his brand.
A few months had past, and he told me he was ready for some more expert help. The client was tired of talking with people that had pricing far above what they expected their results to yield. As well, most of the agencies and services the client talked to used double-talk and hidden strategy disclosures (kind of gatekeeping any processes and strategies).
The first thing we did, the client and I, was discuss the tangible goals he wanted for his marketing. This is important because we needed to know the correct tools and platforms to work in, as this was going to need to be truly affordable and efficient for him.
Next, I investigated his brand, looked at the competition and reviewed some trends that would benefit his brand. This report would yield insights into what could help to elevate his brand more effectively, with customized tactics for the region and specific services.
After another meeting, we covered all of the research and the strategy in full. While it would give him the results he was looking for, it also would not cost him an arm and leg to be produced. It would also allow for some open-ended future marketing and advertising without reinventing the wheel.
Strategy & Solutions For This Client
The following were the marketing areas, in order of priority, that were needed the most by my client. I tried to focus on the overall effect and results of the area, and on my clients resources to produce those results.
- Local SEO
- Business website design
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Social media content optimization
LOCAL SEO
Simply put, local SEO is a local service-based business’s best friend. Your ideal customers are in the region you serve, so it makes sense to use a marketing practice that targets them in full.
Our tactics included using regional signals in the website content, building more local citations for better quality links and using the client’s Google Business Profile to help reinforce content and offers.
BUSINESS WEBSITE (AND DESIGN)
A website is the nucleus of a brand. My client was using the free website given as a “business.site” website from Google when you claim your Google Business Profile.
Instead, we were going to create a simple 6 or 7 page business website. This would also allow us to have a proper “.COM” and more professional email address.
As well, we could create lead magnets, handle lead generation from forms, run a blog for more content and other bits and pieces that were necessary.
GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE OPTIMIZATION
A business’s Google Business Profile (GBP) is a simple and clear bridge between a brand and regional customers.
Your GBP also can show up within search results directly while looking in Google.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT OPTIMIZATION
We needed to make posts more CTA-heavy. As well, we needed to change some of the posting to allow for more cost-effective boosting and advertising possibilities.
The client’s social media profile was already active and content-heavy. However, there were little to no CTAs within the posts – not even a simple “Call us today at XXX-xxx-xxxx”.
Final Timelines & Implementation
This particular project needed completion to occur within a few weeks – my client’s season would be starting soon. While this was true, I also didn’t want to mask the long-term results with short-term wins that would skew the real results we were aiming for.
I started actual work with a GBP optimization session. We received administrator access to the GBP, audited the profile and then updated information as well as branding on the profile. For most GBP situations, just taking the time to fill them out in full is enough to have an impact.
The GBP optimization session led into a Facebook Business Page optimization session.
While doing the above, I started to design and build the client’s website. This needed to focus on regional signals, talk a lot about the services provided and give clear methods of next actions (quality CTAs).
At the 2-week mark, the client now had a live website, updated and optimized GBP listing and we were integrating offers and updates with the websites and GBP. The website also had service pages built with regional signals embedded, but not regional pages with services attached.
For instance, we had the following structure:
- /lawn-care-services
- /lawn-care-services/grass-cutting
- /lawn-care-services/small-tree-removal
And so on.
The above linking structure was in contrast to what some companies use, where regions are involved in the links. Because my client’s services were based primarily in and around New Castle, this would have created more work to not yield any greater of results.
In weeks 2 through 4, we templated some of the social media posts to allow for better CTA. These were scheduled and reviewed with the client as a teaching moment for future content posting.
The last thing we did was to collect and create a round of heavy content for the website, GBP and social media – images, video, etc. This was then branded (with logo and phone number) and uploaded and posted onto the website, and scheduled on social media and GBP.
How’d We Do: Project Results
Within a few weeks after the website being live and a consistent amount of posting on the client’s GBP, a B2B client was in touch and signed. A property management company was also in touch with the client within a month after everything was live and content was being searched and posted – about 2 months in.
The client also saw the majority of his new clients go from “one-off” weekend jobs to full-season clients. This meant recurring income and a steady work schedule.
The client’s GBP also saw a healthy growth period. The 3 month cycle following the optimization and website installation grew contacts via the GBP listing from 15 per month to over 40.
Over the course of the next 3 months, engagement and following numbers grew by over 20% month to month. A few posts actually outranked previous social media posts by 500% or more in engagement (one how-to post, and a video of before/afters).
Key Lessons, Learnings and Moving Forward
One of the most impactful things that happened was how we communicated to people on social media in this project. Because businesses were contacting the client more often, we knew our messaging could be more inclusive to businesses.
The project also caused us to change a priority – lead magnets. At first, we discussed various lead magnets and how they would work – how they were marketed, who they served, what the funnels look like. After week 4, we recognized that a lone lead magnet, that was for general services, made more sense than targeting specific audiences.
We also circled back around and began creating articles and pages to help reinforce the services he wanted to target. From our conversations, and using traffic metrics, we began to formulate other offers to capitalize on what the service area wanted / was looking for.
Finally, we started to experiment with boosting Facebook posts for more leads. We talked about a templated style of post and how to use the boosting feature for geotargeting and audiences.
Are you looking for results like this?
The biggest hurdles in this project were simple: keep things affordable, and get results quickly. To do this, we used a combination of Local SEO actions, a correctly built and linked website, along with an active and optimized GBP and social media profile.
If you would like to see how we can help you, give us a call today for a free consultation at (724)510-7201, or schedule a free consultation on the site.