Profitable Practices: 'Good' Marketing

Whenever Heather Denchfield drives past Walt Whitman Senior High School in Bethesda, Md., she makes sure to sneak a peek at the entrance to the school’s football stadium.

The stone walkway (formed in the shape of a large blue “W”) reminds her of Denchfield Landscaping’s volunteer work, which helped create the walkway in the fall of 2007. And it’s just one of the many local charitable projects that can be credited to Denchfield Landscaping.

Denchfield, human resource manager of the landscaping business and owner of the company’s nursery division, hopes that others also remember her company’s volunteer work when they see the blue “W”. Only she hopes that they then think of Denchfield Landscaping when it’s time to put new bushes, perennials and walkways in front of their own homes.

“Doing charitable work definitely does pay off for the business,” Denchfield says. “We do a lot of charitable work in the area in which we have our client base. Our clients really appreciate the fact that you aren’t always working with only profit in mind. They appreciate that you’re willing to give back to improve the community, and they remember when they’re looking for their own landscaping work. It’s a win-win situation.”

Denchfield is far from the only landscaping professional to realize this. But the company takes on several charity projects throughout the year, doing everything from installing flower beds on elementary school grounds to regularly shoring up the landscaping in front of the local Easter Seals building.

The firm does all this for the good of the community, but Denchfield also takes on volunteer work because it helps boost the company’s local name recognition and, as a result of the positive word-of-mouth advertising, its revenues for the year.

“We do a lot of work for the local schools,” she says. “A lot of our customer base comes from these schools. They greatly appreciate the work we do beautifying these locations. They then feel better about having us do their landscaping work. They know that we care, and they feel better about hiring us.”

The big event

Charitable work comes in many forms. Some companies, such as Denchfield, concentrate on installing community gardens at schools, government buildings or in local parks.

Others, such as Exterior Image, a landscaping company in Lothian, Md., take a different approach.

In late October, Exterior Image hosted “Rockin’ for a Reason” – a festival that benefited a local charity working with at-risk youths and substance abuse treatment. The event featured bands, food and an auction, which were all designed to raise funds for the charity.
“It’s always a good time to do something like this,” says Exterior Image owner Mark Childs. “But now, it’s really important. The economy is struggling and these charities need all the help they can get. The need is much greater than it has been. During these times, it’s imperative to help people who need it.”

Childs says the main reason for the event is obvious: He wanted to give back to the community that has supported his nursery and landscaping business. Holding the event and donating the funds it generates was the right thing to do, he says.

But there was another benefit, too. Because the event was held at Trent Hill Farm & Nursery (Exterior Image’s nursery division), it allowed Childs and his staff to show off their business. Extensive gardens dot the nursery grounds. These gardens, with their perennials, annuals, shrubs and flowering trees, can’t help but remind event attendees of the other good work that Childs and his landscapers do.

And when it’s time for festival attendees to hire a landscaper for their own homes and businesses, the odds are good that they’ll at least consider Exterior Image.

“By bringing people to our facility, where we are having the event, that is helpful,” Childs says. “People are reminded that the place up on the hill is not a house, but is actually a beautiful nursery. But that’s not the guiding force here. The guiding force is to help others. When you help others, help naturally comes back to you.”

Picking your projects

Both Denchfield and Childs agree that the biggest challenge in performing volunteer work is deciding which projects to take on.
There are several factors to consider: The visibility of a location and the landscaping that is eventually installed; the need of the organization or individual to be helped; and the ease of maintaining the project once it’s completed.

This last point is critical for Denchfield, who points to the fact that the “W” project at Walt Whitman High School does not include any flower beds or other live plantings in addition to the stonework. This is important because both the landscaping company and the school wanted the project to be simple to care for. A flower bed, for instance, isn’t really a gift if it requires its new owners to spend precious hours weeding every week.

“Whatever we do, we don’t want to create more work for the community,” Denchfield says. “We look carefully at our projects to make sure that it will be easy for the community to maintain it. Still, we do go back and maintain our community projects. We’ll go back and weed the flower beds we install and add fresh mulch, but we don’t want anything we do to be too labor-intensive.”

Scott Aanenson, landscape designer at Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Landscape Garden Center, says his firm makes regular donations to the area’s major hospitals and the local Good Samaritan Center, largely because those entities often have the largest needs.

The company also considered the question of need before embarking on one of its most ambitious volunteer projects – providing free landscaping for a Sioux Falls luxury charity home. Once completed, the home’s builder will offer tours of the luxury home for five weekends, donating all the money from the tickets purchased to a local children’s home.

Landscape Garden Center donated all the landscaping work for the show-home, planting several flowering plants and evergreen bushes along the home’s lawn, and choosing boxwood plants and knockout roses to match the home’s Mediterranean look. The landscaper also chose trees that are very narrow and tall so that the luxury house would not look overly large.

“These projects do benefit us as a business,” Aanenson says. “It promotes our company while we give back to the community. That in itself benefits us tremendously as far as future jobs go. You’d be surprised at how much good word-of-mouth advertising spreads when you’re acting as a positive part of the community.”

Even the firm’s low-profile projects – such as making financial donations every year to the area’s hospitals – have resulted in new business, Aanenson says.

“You go to the charity events of the organizations that you donate to and you meet more and more people,” he says. “Jobs spin off of that. It all works out pretty well.”

Denchfield says that before taking on a volunteer project, her firm also considers the likelihood of the project getting done if Denchfield doesn’t do the work for free.At Walt Whitman Senior High School, for instance, there was no guarantee that the entrance area to the football field would ever look like anything more than a neglected, weed-choked flower bed if Denchfield landscapers didn’t plan for the walkway.

“When you do a project for a school, it frees up the school’s budget to spend on academics,” Denchfield says. “We realize that school budgets are tight. We’d rather they’d be able to spend their dollars on the academic part. We like giving something that allows a school to free up its money to be applied in different areas.”

Denchfield, and other landscapers who routinely perform charity work, say scheduling volunteer jobs doesn’t have to be a hassle. Many landscapers do the work during slower times of the year. Others simply slot it into their workers’ schedules as if it were any other type of job.

But even if fitting the volunteer jobs into a busy schedule was a challenge, the work would be worth if for landscaping firms. Three years ago, Denchfield Landscaping installed several trees outside a local middle school. Denchfield says people still tell her how much they appreciate those trees.

“It’s honestly one of the best ways to let your clients know that you care,” she says.”