There are many landscape lighting leads out there waiting for you. The question is: do you have what it takes to generate them or more like bring them your way? Essentially, the idea of generating leads is based on having the right lead generation strategies in place and making sure they’re completely optimized to the point of working and not being a waste of resources + time.
Which strategies are best to reach this goal? There are many options available, including referral programs and networking. Also, traditional methods like the regular advertising you know about.
It is up to you to choose the best ones or, more like, test according to what can work for you based on the niche, location, and final goals.
Online options are just as effective for landscaping businesses as for others, so it isn’t a good idea to ignore them just because they don’t feel like the natural options people of a certain age are used to.
Overall, it can be difficult to manage lead generation, build a plan that includes multiple strategies, and ensure your efforts bring qualified leads and improve lead scoring.
We will be sharing the top lead generation strategies that you can use to grow your landscape lighting business.
First, Why Do You Need Online Marketing Above All Else?
Internet marketing can reach more people than traditional marketing strategies like newspapers, radio advertising, etc. As a result, it is only natural for landscaping companies like yours to be able to reach more people than any other marketing strategy we know about today.
However, you could be wasting time and money trying unsuccessfully to attract leads without a solid lead generation strategy. This involves both traditional and online marketing.
The main difference between both, whatsoever, is the fact that online lead generation allows you to concentrate on your business and attract the best prospects. You can also save time and money.
A strategy should allow you to limit the number of potential leads at each stage to ensure that you have only the best clients.
You can use digital channels such as email, search engines, and social media to generate qualified leads for your business.
There are risks. However, you will make the most of your money and effort.
Let’s move on to the tips and suggestions you can include in your strategy with that in mind.
Content Marketing Is Always Key
This is not content for social media platforms or similar ones since we will get there with the respective category. It refers to all you post on your website, including blog posts, infographics, videos, and some online guides you can offer based on your niche.
As long as the content is useful, it can result in many leads. Take the time to share your knowledge. Also, make sure you design content that can easily be found using specific keywords (SEO), which we will discuss later.
If someone searches online for landscape lightings like some tips or information and comes across your blog, it is more likely that they will remember you in the future when they need professional help.
This is a great opportunity to offer special content such as the ones we have mentioned or your most valuable content based on how each format performs. You can ask site visitors to submit their email addresses to gain access, so you start building your leads’ list.
This will enable you to increase your email list and provide information to people interested in your services.
You should also remember that consistency is the key to content marketing.
Consistently publishing content will help you build a relationship with your audience. Search engines will be looking for your updates and other relevant information. They will feel that you are open to help and friendly with the target audience or anyone on the Internet.
Regular content will increase your email list as well. If you don’t feel comfortable writing or have the time, you can hire professionals to assist you or focus on other formats. However, we recommend adding at least one or two blogs every month.
Do You Have a Logo?
You can be the best choice for your clients and leads by creating a professionally designed logo that is attractive and makes people believe they know what you’re doing. After all, visuals and your image are everything.
This is a common mistake that makes lead generation strategies perish when the problem isn’t even with them in specific. We can assure you that it is crucial for two reasons:
- To create a brand.
- To look professional and trustworthy.
A variety of promotional items can include professionally designed logos to enhance your company’s professionalism and brand. Yes, too much ‘professional’ in all this, but it quite makes sense.
People are attracted by how much a company works on its image as well. Besides, a logo is something simple you should have no matter what. Therefore, why delay it?
What you ought to remember is that designing a good logo takes time. You shouldn’t hurry this and make sure you are comfortable and happy with it. Otherwise, you will have to be stuck with it for a while after you’ve started your lead generation efforts unless it is the factor affecting your results.
Website + Effective Home Page = Big Killer
Websites are an integral part of any landscape lighting business since your company’s marketing strategy will revolve around it. You can’t send leads to them anywhere else than to your website.
Your website is the first place that people go to before making any purchases or other decisions. Therefore, it should be complete about the information they learn about:
- Who are you?
- What services are you offering?
- How can people get in touch with you?
- Your service area and geographic location.
Visitors will quickly leave if your website is unclear or takes way too long to load any single element on it.
The home page is, therefore, the most important and must be well-organized. All options should be easily visible, including the professional logo.
This page usually features special offers and savings to draw more people in and make sure you’re getting one lead out of 10.
Excellent Content with the Right Keywords
Remember what we mentioned about content not long ago? Well, you can’t just write or make anything randomly.
You can use your knowledge and create a list related to your services using keyword tools available for free online. This is the right move since you want to target specific keywords people are searching for, not only write content that is hard to find in the first place.
Surfer SEO or KeySearch are great alternatives if you have the budget for these services.
Keywords are only part of the task. You need to make sure it is optimized in terms of format when writing it. Are heading numbered? Are you adding enough external and internal links? (Don’t add way too many either).
With that being said, we can give you a few ideas so you know what type of content can be shared:
- Valuable resources: These can be either list of resources or tools checklists.
- Free eBooks and Reports: You’ll have useful educational content.
- Quizzes: You could offer a free quiz, but users will need their email addresses in order to receive the results. This will allow you to plan for your other strategies. Why quizzes? Because people love to answer questions as long as they are interesting.
- Mini-Course: This could be a series of emails that explains how to do something in the niche, like using specific lights for an outdoor event to exchange their landscapes.
Just remember that no strategy or skill can work if you don’t have engaging, organic content.
The power of content is as strong as its number of visitors or the number of clicks to your blogs. This is something we have already discussed, so why repeat it?
Blogging is the most important content marketing strategy of all, even when video content is more popular.
Regular blogging and high-quality images are crucial to improving your company’s Google ranking, and we won’t get tired of reminding you to focus on this type of content.
They add value to your website by providing useful, informative, and pertinent information. Google rewards websites that offer valuable content and follow up with it, so your lead generation process will be simplified and boosted thanks to it alone.
Blogging can be beneficial in many ways. It can increase conversion rates and create inbound links, which will also help to increase conversion rates.
You can also use blogs to boost your online presence for more businesses via social media.
Always Add “Fill-In” Forms
To be able to follow up with potential customers, you need to identify them. This can be the most difficult part of any business. Why? People won’t show it unless they are invited to.
A fill-in form is a great tool for this purpose, provided you are smart about it and can make it appealing enough to people to give it a try.
You can draw people to your site by offering them a special deal.
When they apply for the offer, make sure to get their email address as well as their number. Once they have completed it, you can call them or send an email asking if they are interested.
This is a great way for you to get leads and keep in touch with customers.
Optimize Your ‘About Us’ Page
Your business’s ‘About Us’ page must be up-to-date. Otherwise, others won’t actually know about you.
This page allows people to see you and your business, and it is also a good place to put a call to action. Visitors are encouraged to sign up for the newsletter or to take any other action you desire.
Your about page may be empty, unclear, or poorly written. This often happens.
Optimizing it will help strengthen that connection, that’s already clear, so the question now is: How do you do this?
- Include a clearly defined value proposition in your headline.
- Divide your text or copy into smaller, more attractive blocks.
- The concluding sentence is a powerful call to action.
- Add an eye-catching graphic or image to it.
Email Marketing Works for Your Niche
It is often overlooked that email has other options. Think about it: Who doesn’t use email for more information, contact formal companies, or just receive news?
Although people try to avoid using it for every piece of information by sharing documents on other platforms like Google Drive, everyone relies on it even as a notes pad.
A great way to get leads is to have an email subscription form for this same reason: everyone is using it.
This is especially true when you offer discounts and other useful content to your subscribers in return for their email addresses, which takes us to what you earn from the previous lead generation strategies and more to come.
If you are willing to send your emails consistently, these people could become customers for landscaping and lightning work without much effort.
It is easy to make mistakes and ruin all your efforts if you do not follow the steps below, so take the time to check them out:
- Selling is too difficult. Don’t try to sell services by email. Instead, give them useful information and invite readers to learn more about your website.
- You’re not using the correct tone most of the time. Emails, like all content, must be professionally written. They should be personal but not use clickbait headlines. This will cause customers to abandon you.
- Your lead generation information is not included. This is why you must worry about including a link to your website and an invitation to them to contact you with any questions.
You should include contact information, such as an email address and phone number, in addition to social media links.
It should contain an email sign-up form to ensure potential clients sign up for your emails. This will allow you to bring in potential clients if this is something you would like to do.
Once you are done with your service, gather contact information from customers to ask permission to send emails.
It is easy to send useful content once you have a list.
Local Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is easy to grasp for people who don’t have any prior knowledge (we will be covering both the general and local aspects).
This is the process companies and individuals use to optimize their websites in order to rank higher in search engines results for specific keywords and phrases. Although many factors can influence your rank, keywords are the most important.
What is local SEO? This is simply the option to focus on keywords and other aspects that are relevant to your area.
Imagine that you are a company in Sioux Falls. You can use keywords such as “landscape lightning service Sioux Falls SD” to ensure your business is found through relevant searches.
Local SEO can help you generate more leads for the business, and it has proven to be the reason for over 60% of the leads generated in a company to arrive there in the first place.
Market research is necessary to determine the most relevant keywords for your website and then optimize it accordingly.
It can be difficult to locate leads for your company, especially if there are not many serviced offices nearby.
You can still attract new customers quickly by staying in touch, expanding your services, and possibly joining a bidding website.
Start by claiming your Google My Business listing. Update your profile to make sure your business hours, phone numbers, and directions show up on Google Search and Maps. You can also add photos and respond to reviews.
It is possible to establish relationships with bloggers and other influencers in your area who can link to your site and share your content. This will allow you to attract qualified local traffic to your site to learn more about your services.
Invest in Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC ads are a great choice for those with a large budget and very limited ones that only want and can spend about $100 a month. These ads will immediately bring targeted traffic to your website and offer high-level targeted traffic, which is basically qualified leads and won’t be a waste of money.
But is it worth it? Absolutely. According to a recent study, PPC is the best marketing strategy for most local companies and considering that landscaping and lighting are all about going to the place, you’re definitely included in it.
It can turn out to be expensive because you have to bid for your ads to appear in sponsored results for queries that contain your keywords. However, you only pay for the clicks you receive. The problem starts when people bid for expensive keywords without needing to.
You will see the word “AD,” which is the paid ad in search engines, right next to the title. This allows you to check if your company or ads appear when you search for keywords that you have established.
PPC advertising is a great way to market small businesses, but it can also be used for large companies.
Don’t be confused about spending your marketing budget on SEO and PPC. You should make sure that you choose according to the plan for your company and have a full strategy combining both.
PPC campaigns can drive qualified traffic to your website immediately after they click to go online. This is a major advantage over search engine optimization (SEO), which can take months to show results.
You Must Make Your Site a Converting One
Individuals and landscaping companies often overlook the importance of a website that is high quality and offers the lowest priced options. Yes, we are back at your website, but for a bit of a different reason.
A well-designed website will increase your credibility. This is true for everyone, so besides the whole topic of SEO, PPC, and how you should optimize the pages we have mentioned so far, the truth is that your entire website needs attention.
Modern customers are more inclined to hire someone who has a user-friendly and attractive website. Ask your web developers to focus on lead generation, which includes such elements as the right calls to action for every page and action people are considering taking.
Some web design agencies offer marketing services, which eliminates the need to hire a marketing agency later when you are having a hard time working for more sales-qualified leads.
Two services will be provided at a fraction of the cost of hiring two agencies. This is an option to consider if you don’t plan on marketing your business in terms of not knowing how to do it properly.
Your website’s aesthetics are important for making it a destination for leads. It should look great. Don’t forget about the buttons. Instead, ensure that your designers are focusing only on the essentials and using great design.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Landscape Lightning Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers.Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Landscape Lightning Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Landscape Lightning Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.