We all know the importance of standing out from your competition.  It’s a big mess of competitors and if you don’t do SOMETHING to stand out from everybody else, don’t give your prospects a good reason to choose you over them, then you end up competing on price.  This is a scary place to be in today’s turbulent economy.

So, what can you do to stand out from the crowd?  Here’s a short list of reasons you could implement and/or give your prospects and customers:

• One time every time
• No hidden charges
• You educate them on what you’re doing and why
• You have a 100% satisfaction guaranteed policy
• You only charge for the work you actually do
• You take the time to understand their needs and you actually LISTEN to their input
• Customers have DIRECT access to their project leader

Again, this is a very short list and these things may or may not be relevant to your target market.  The idea here was to share some suggestions to stimulate thought.  What things can you say about your business that no one else can or is saying?

Give it some thought and then start implementing these things in your marketing.  Otherwise you’ll find yourself down in the trenches fighting over the left over scraps with everyone else competing on price alone!

Considering how rapidly the landscape is changing, it’s no wonder so many people are dazed and confused when it comes to marketing their lawn care or landscaping business.  It’s easy to get ‘analysis paralysis’ and end up either spinning your wheels or not doing anything at all.

So, to help cut through some of the clutter, I want to hear from you.  What’re your biggest marketing questions?  What’re your biggest obstacles to effectively marketing your business?

Are you trying to get more traffic to your website?  What about what to do with the traffic once it comes to your site?

Are tired of the same old, boring, ‘generic’ postcards, but aren’t sure what else you could send out that would generate positive results?

Whatever your questions, leave them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer each one of them.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to login to post your comments, but it’ll definitely help me do a better job of following up to make sure your questions were answered.

So, post your comments below about marketing your lawn care or landscaping business.

I wanted to share a quick thought with you before the weekend got underway.

Marketing by itself is difficult enough process. If it weren’t, EVERYONE would have rock solid businesses that throw off tons of cash. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Plus, throw in the economic mayhem taking place these days and sales and marketing is pretty much a nightmare. Big time.

And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like things are going to be getting any better any time soon.

So, as you look for new ways to cost effectively market your business, keep these two thoughts in mind:

1. People do things for their reasons, not yours.
2. Imagine your prospects have a sign permanently tattooed in the forehead that says, ‘So What?”

Think about it, people don’t care one lick about who you are, how long you’ve been in business, what kind of equipment you use, or the fact you desperately need to feed your family.

They have their own problems and concerns they’re trying to deal with so if you really want to sell them your services, your job to translate everything you offer into benefits that answer their question, “So What?”

So as you’re thinking about what you can do to grow your business, figure out what you need to say to answer that question. If you can do this consistently, you’ll find that it doesn’t matter what your competition is saying or how crazy the financial markets are.

If you’re not sure how to create marketing materials that help your prospects answer the question of “So What?”, then I encourage you to check out the Lawn Care Champion’s Circle. It’s a member’s only resource that contains dozens of usable marketing materials that are ready made.

All you need to do is spend 10min or so customizing things for your business and you’ve got in your hands powerful, magnetic marketing materials that convey to your customers the benefits they get from your services and there’s never any question of “So What?”

These materials definitely answer that question for them.

Also included each month is a ready-made customer newsletter template, an invitation to the member’s only tele-seminar as well as a downloadable mp3 of the call, and new templates you can use to prospect for customers, create joint venture relationships with non-competing businesses, and stimulate referrals from your customers.

For only $59.95/mo, it really is a steal of a deal. Especially if you’re struggling to answer your prospect’s and customer’s question of “So What?”

You can get all the details and sign-up for the Champion’s Circle right here:

www.LawnCareChampionsCircle.com

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic weekend and I’ve got a bunch of great stuff planned for you starting next week so….

Stay tuned!

I wanted to share a quick thought with you before the weekend got underway.

Marketing by itself is difficult enough process. If it weren’t, EVERYONE would have rock solid businesses that throw off tons of cash. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Plus, throw in the economic mayhem taking place these days and sales and marketing is pretty much a nightmare. Big time.

And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like things are going to be getting any better any time soon.

So, as you look for new ways to cost effectively market your business, keep these two thoughts in mind:

1. People do things for their reasons, not yours.
2. Imagine your prospects have a sign permanently tattooed in the forehead that says, ‘So What?”

Think about it, people don’t care one lick about who you are, how long you’ve been in business, what kind of equipment you use, or the fact you desperately need to feed your family.

They have their own problems and concerns they’re trying to deal with so if you really want to sell them your services, your job to translate everything you offer into benefits that answer their question, “So What?”

So as you’re thinking about what you can do to grow your business, figure out what you need to say to answer that question. If you can do this consistently, you’ll find that it doesn’t matter what your competition is saying or how crazy the financial markets are.

If you’re not sure how to create marketing materials that help your prospects answer the question of “So What?”, then I encourage you to check out the Lawn Care Champion’s Circle. It’s a member’s only resource that contains dozens of usable marketing materials that are ready made.

All you need to do is spend 10min or so customizing things for your business and you’ve got in your hands powerful, magnetic marketing materials that convey to your customers the benefits they get from your services and there’s never any question of “So What?”

These materials definitely answer that question for them.

Also included each month is a ready-made customer newsletter template, an invitation to the member’s only tele-seminar as well as a downloadable mp3 of the call, and new templates you can use to prospect for customers, create joint venture relationships with non-competing businesses, and stimulate referrals from your customers.

For only $59.95/mo, it really is a steal of a deal. Especially if you’re struggling to answer your prospect’s and customer’s question of “So What?”

You can get all the details and sign-up for the Champion’s Circle right here:

www.LawnCareChampionsCircle.com

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic weekend and I’ve got a bunch of great stuff planned for you starting next week so….

Stay tuned!

If you’ll remember, I hosted a special tele-seminar about 10 days ago where I answered the questions I’d received from dozens of fellow business owners.  In fact, I had a heck of a time distilling down all the questions into just 10 of them that I could answer on a 1 hour tele-seminar.

Fortunately, I was able to distill it down, but unfortunately, the tele-seminar did not go as well as I’d have liked.  Although I got quite a bit of positive feedback from it, there was just a lot that went wrong with it.  And one of the biggest problems was that the recording didn’t make it out of the event.

See, I’d planned to take the recording and post it online for you to go listen to, but with no recording from the live event, there’s no recording to post online.

As a result, I’ve actually been working on a redo of the event, but this time it’s going to be even bigger and better than ever.  So, at this point, the only thing I can say is ‘Stay Tuned’ cuz what I’ve got coming will be well worth the wait.  

Now, one of the things I did want to address immediately was a common question I received.  In a nutshell, the question asks “what’s the best way to get new customers?”

And my answer to that question is, “it depends.”  You see, there is no silver bullet when it comes to getting tons of new customers.  I know, I know.  You might need to pick yourself off the floor after reading that, especially since I talk so much about the power of a good marketing system and how it can create steady streams of interested qualified prospects.

Well, if I haven’t made this clear before, let me be crystal clear now.  There isn’t one particular marketing technique that can guarantee a certain result.  I just ain’t gonna happen!

I’ve heard numerous times before, “I need to generate 50 new customers, what method should I do?”  To be completely honest, I don’t know of 1 method that will generate 50 new customers.  But, I do know of 50 methods that will generate at least 1 new customer.

And that’s how you should approach your marketing.  Don’t expect to be able to do one simple thing and have it produce a flood of new business.  To generate tons of new business, you have to employ NUMEROUS marketing methods simultaneously.

That means you need to be sending out sales letters at the same time you’re running ads in the newspaper while you’re encouraging your existing customers to refer you, and simultaneously you should be developing joint venture relationships with similar non-competing businesses.  And don’t forget about all the countless ways to generate traffic to your website.

See, there are TONS of ways to get new clients and you should be using AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

And to be perfectly honest, that’s the point of this project I’m working on.  I want to give you a truckload of tools and resources to help you implement multiple marketing systems simultaneously so you can really catapult your business to the top of your marketplace.

So as I said, stay tuned because I’ll be giving you more details in the near future.  And in the meantime, get out there and market your business.  Every single day.

One of the most common complaints I hear these days from small businesses struggling to grow is that they can’t get anymore customers because they’re up against others that are willing to sell the exact same service at a cheaper price. 

For example, what one hard working lawn care operator charges for a typical cut, edging, and blow, a potential customer might be able to get the exact same service for almost half the price from the kid down the street that’s simply trying to earn a few extra bucks.

So what can a serious-about-growth business owner do to overcome this challenge without resorting to low-ball pricing tactics?

Well, the first thing that needs to happen is they need to understand that if the only differentiating factor is the price, then prospects will ALWAYS go with the cheaper service.  Again referring to the previous example, because there’s nothing that separates the two options the prospect has to choose from, they will almost always select the cheaper option.

Do you really expect to spend more for the exact same service?

So, the key to overcoming this pricing challenge and eliminating the discussion of price is to differentiate your products and services in the eyes of your potential customers.

Now, there are countless ways you can differentiate your business from your competition, but here are 7 specific ways you can very quickly set yourself apart from your competition and eliminate the need to compete on price:

1.       Add more value to your products or services.

Adding additional services such as free mulch or pine straw in flower beds, free shrub trimmings, or free lawn stripping is a great way to differentiate you from your competition.  While these services do add to your overhead, the cost should be minimal and the amount of new business you gain because of them should more than outweigh the additional expenses you incur.

2.       Exceptional customer service

In today’s marketplace, customer service is severely lacking.  So by going above and beyond by providing post service summaries, or by walking your customers property once a month, or by returning customer phone calls within 1 hour will go a long way towards differentiating you from your competition.

3.