I’ll have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of Halloween.  I’ve just never understood the point of dressing up in a silly costume, going from door to door threatening some mischievous act if the home owner doesn’t fork over some candy. 

However, when viewed from a capitalist point of view, it really is the perfect storm.  Think about it.  Adults often times get into it even more than the kiddies do, which ultimately translates to TONS of potential revenue for those businesses that capitalize on it.

Unfortunately, I’ve been slow to heed my own advice about taking advantage of Holidays and other events to promote your business, and I didn’t do anything this year for Halloween.  Well, a big time ‘Shame On Me!’

Really, the only thing I can say is, ‘next year will be a much different story’.

Okay, now onto the big announcement I promised yesterday.  Well, unfortunately, I ended up having more bugs to work out than what I thought I did.  As a result it looks like I’m not going to be able to give you ALL the information today.

However, I didn’t want to leave you completely hanging, so I’ll give you just a little bit of information about what I’m getting ready to announce.  It’s something I’ve been working on for quite a while and am SUPER excited about what it will allow me to do.

What I’m referring to is something I’m calling the Lawn Care Champions Circle and my goal with this new program is to become your virtual marketing department.  It will be a monthly membership where you’ll have access to me almost as if I was your full-time employee working on campaigns, programs, and systems for marketing your business like a seasoned pro.

There will be 2 membership levels.  The first will be for those looking for a source of motivation, inspiration, and guidance on how to effectively marketing their business.  More so than what I’m able to provide in these frequent emails.

The second level will be for the LCO looking for some serious help growing their business.  This level will grant access to a vast collection of ready made sales letters, ad templates, marketing insight, new marketing campaigns every single month, a copy of my monthly customer newsletter, a weekly email newsletter template you can use to send to your own customers, and numerous opportunities to interact with me one-on-one to get my help on your specific marketing problems. 

As I already said, I’ll basically become your full-time marketing employee at a fraction of the actual cost.

Now, my plan is to invite a small number of serious business builders to join this Champions Circle between now and the end of the year.  You see, the site is still being built out and resources are being added daily and I need help making sure everything’s all buttoned up before I begin a huge marketing campaign around the 1^st of next year.

So, in addition to getting unlimited access to the huge library of resources that will be available, these early members will also get a significant discount on the monthly membership fee.

My plan is to charge $19.95/mo for the lower level access and $97/mo for the higher level access.  However, for those willing to be BETA testers for the site, I’m offering monthly memberships at $9.95/mo and $29.95 respectively.

Now, these prices will be available only to the first 25 members at each price level before they’ll start to go up.  In fact, I’m only allowing 75 members in at any type of reduced price before they’ll be gone forever.

On top of getting the significantly reduced monthly membership fee, you’ll also have the assurance that your fee will NEVER go up for as long as your remain an active member.  So as long as you maintain an active membership, the most you’ll ever pay is either $9.95 or $29.95.  And that’s even 5 years down the road when I’m charging $250/mo.

So, as much as I’d LOVE to give you all the details about what’s going to be included I have just a few more tweaks to make before I can do that.  So I guess I need to ask for just a little patience while I finalize thing and get them all ready to go.

I promise that once it’s ready to go it will be a HUGE asset to you as your work to grow your business.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about this Lawn Care Champions Circle, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I don’t say this enough, but thanks for the opportunity to help you grow your business and I sincerely do look forward to hearing about your successes.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Here’s a fantastic article from one of the few daily e-newsletters I read, Early To Rise. This one’s by Bob Bly, a very well known copywriter and business consultant. Even though this article refers to a real estate brokerage, the principles DEFINITELY apply to a lawn care or landscaping business.

Ding, Dong, Foxtons’ Dead

By Bob Bly

After eight years, Foxtons, the NJ-based discount real estate company, is planning to shut its doors forever, and is filing for bankruptcy. I couldn’t be happier.

Glenn Cohen made a splash when he founded Foxtons in 1999, promising to save home buyers and sellers money. How? By cutting the company’s commission for its agents from the traditional 5 or 6 percent to just 2 percent. And its collapse is a much-needed reminder that discounting - competing based on price - is a lousy long-term business strategy.

The average real estate agent working at a brokerage that charges a traditional commission has a modest income - around $47,000 a year. So what kind of professional do you think you can hire by paying him just one-third of the commission his colleagues are getting?

Discounting stinks as a business strategy, because the more you lower your price, the less money you make. Eventually, you end up working for peanuts - a terrible way to live - for customers that don’t value your service, experience, or knowledge.

Also, if low price is your only selling point, what happens when the guy across the street undercuts you in a price war?

Low-priced vendors and their employees resent working for so little, which translates into crappy service for the customer.

Nobody wins.

So instead of being the low-priced bidder, think about how you can add value to your service - and, by doing so, command premium rates. You’ll make more money and attract a better class of clientele that will respect you more and be happier with what you’re doing for them.

Everyone wins.

Ironically, Glenn Cohen was honored in 2002 as one of 10 New Jersey Entrepreneurs of the Year - apparently by a committee that doesn’t know squat about business in the real world.

(Source: The Record)

Thanks to a few people that let me know yesterday, but the links I sent out with the supposed discounts for both the Fall Aeration letter and October’s customer newsletter weren’t showing the proper discounts.

So, to eliminate the whole ‘discount’ thing, I’ve gone back and created a special page where you can order the packages at the promised prices. So no having to deal with lame-o discount links and stuff. Here’s the new page:

October Lawn Care Marketing Special

Anyway, I can’t send you something without at least offering one small bit of marketing insight. It just wouldn’t be right, so here you go.

Anytime you communicate with your customers or prospects, present them with some type of offer. It doesn’t matter what services you’re already providing them, what offers you’ve already made to them, or what services you’ve already provided them. Present them with an opportunity to buy regardless.

If you do it in a way that positions the offer as adding value, it shouldn’t come across as to ‘salesy’ so if that’s a concern, don’t worry about it. Besides, you’re in the business of making money and to do that you have to make sales. Right?

Now, since I wouldn’t be a very good teacher if I didn’t practice what I preach, here’s my opportunity to make you an offer.

If you don’t already have a website, seriously now, what are you waiting for? I can’t say it enough, but a website will do more to help grow your business in the coming years than anything else you could invest your money in. I have absolutely no doubt about that.

So if you’ve been sitting on the fence, it’s time to get off. For the next 7 days, I’ll give anyone that wants to add a website to their marketing mix 10% off the total price. Just shoot me an email and let me know you’re interested in getting a new website and I’ll take care of the discount for you.

If you want a website, but aren’t convinced I can provide you with a great one, don’t worry, you won’t hurt my feelings. There are plenty of fantastic providers out there. Just find one!

here’s today’s marketing thought for the day. With the growing season slowing down and the colder winter months on the very near horizon, it’s time to start thinking about reviewing the past year AND making plans for next year.

Just as a lawn needs a thorough end of season treatment to help it through the cold winter months and get it ready to be thick and rich next year, your business needs something similar. While there are many areas this ‘end of season treatment’ could cover (financial, HR, operations, etc.), I’m going to focus my comments on the marketing aspect of it.

When it comes to wrapping up the year and getting ready for next year, your biggest focus should be on setting up a few marketing systems for 2008. I promise you this, nothing will benefit your business more than a well planned out marketing system that keeps your pipeline full of qualified, interested prospects.

So, what should this marketing system entail?

Well, first and foremost it should be focused on finding interested prospects. Then, it should be able to weed through the prospects that aren’t a good fit for your business. Finally, your system should help move your qualified prospects to a paying customer.

Now, it is entirely possible to automate each one of these steps so that you’re not wasting any time on the phone or meeting with people that ‘might’ want your services. The key to this is creating materials that magnetically lead your prospects along the path.

In the coming days I’ll share with you some things to help create this magnetic system that leads your prospects down the path like they’re under the spell of the Pied Piper piping his merry tune.

But in the meantime, Halloween is just around the corner and it’s not too late to use it to create a special promotion. Put together a package of some of your services and offer it to your ‘farm’ as well as to your existing customers. Make it interesting and exciting, and present them with a great offer and I guarantee you’ll pick up a few extra jobs as a result.

More and more I’m realizing the value of having a clear cut plan of attack in place because if I didn’t, I’d wake up and find out I’m still trying to figure out what needs to get done 2 days ago.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. I want to touch briefly on the differences between Price and Value. Knowing what each of these are and how they’re different can make a HUGE difference in your business.

PRICE is what someone pays for something. Plain and simple. No fancy explanations needed to help you understand this one.

Value, on the other hand, may take a bit more explaining. You see, VALUE is a combination of both the price someone pays AND the total benefits derived from that ‘something’.

If the PRICE is way to high for the VALUE received, that business won’t be in business very long. I’m sure you get the picture.

So, how can you turn this knowledge to your advantage?

In many cases, especially the green industry, businesses try to compete on price alone. They think the only thing the customer’s worried about is the amount of the invoice you’re going to send. As a result, they’re willing to undercut their prices simply to try and land new customers.

Well, I’m here to tell you that that’s a HORRIBLE way to run your business and it’s not always necessary. If you do happen to have customers that are only worried about price, then I suggest you start looking for more customers that aren’t.

You see, instead of competing just on PRICE, you should position yourself to compete on VALUE. That way, you can provide basically the same services, but not have to worry yourself to sleep at night thinking your customer will vanish the next time some low ball scrub comes knocking on their door.

Aside from looking for customers that are more interested in VALUE than PRICE, you should constantly be educating your customers on why you do provide the best VALUE.

Go the ‘extra mile’ for them and demonstrate a willingness to do things other LCO’s aren’t willing to do and you’ll soon find you have a business filled with loyal, VALUE conscious customers instead of wishy-washy, price checkers.

I know I’ve mentioned this numerous times lately, but the more I watch trends in the world of marketing, the more they point to one simple fact:

In today’s competitive marketplace, if you DON’T have a website, you’re a sitting duck.

The truth is, over 60% of all consumers are going online to find and research service providers before they ever pick up a phone.  So, if you don’t have a website, they’ll never find you and give you an opportunity.

Another fact.  Google and Yahoo! are replacing the good ol’ yellow pages.  Now, whenever someone wants to find a service provider, instead of picking up the yellow pages, they go online to one of the many search engines.

How are you going to compete if you’re not there when they’re looking for you?

And, just because you have a listing in either Google or Yahoo with your phone number attached, if you don’t have a website they can check out, they’ll check out your competitor that DOES have a website and chances are, they’ll get the business.

In a nutshell, YOU NEED TO HAVE A WEBSITE.

Sorry to ‘shout’, but it’s true.  

If you already have a website, fantastic.  The rest of this probably won’t apply to you, so you can stop reading here.  Otherwise, keep reading.

To help push you off the fence about getting a website for your business, and not just some site that looks like it was put together as a high school home room project, but one that looks professionally done and most importantly, ranks well in the search engines, I’ve come up with a killer deal.

Beginning right now, I’m offering up to $1K worth of bonuses when you purchase one of my website packages. 

In addition to a powerful, customer catching website, you’ll also get one of my turn-key marketing packages that can help you put your marketing on auto-pilot in no time. 

To get all the details, go to www.lawncarewebsitemagic.com. 

To recap, you get 1) a search engine friendly website that works as your 24/7 salesforce, 2) up to $1K in bonus marketing tools and resources to help you turn your marketing on auto-pilot.

Now, I told you it was a limited time offer and it is.  It all ends on Friday night at 11:59pm, so DON’T DELAY.

Grab your spot on the information superhighway today!  Go to:

www.LawnCareWebsiteMagic.com