HOW WE DO IT: Customer Education at Wildrose Lawncare

Since we at Wildrose Lawncare, Tampa, Fla., were knowledgeable in horticulture, we wanted to share our expertise with others. We developed a Web site and began writing a monthly newsletter. Through the Carrollwood Area Business Association, we met Eloise Hurst, our local librarian, and with her help the concept of co-hosting a series of lawn and landscape workshops was born.

We recently hosted our third semi-annual Land and Landscape Workshop on April 9 and it was a success. We designed the workshops to offer education to the community in a nonintimidating atmosphere. Participants responded well to this and were open to schedule follow-up discussions about how to use our services in the future. The purpose of these events is to show prospective customers and community members that we’re passionate about what we do and that we are the experts with a brand they can trust.

To organize our events, we begin by securing a venue. So far, our local library has been excellent as it provides large spaces for group and keynote sessions, but also has classrooms available for breakout and small-group sessions. At no charge, we’re able to book the library rooms well in advance of our half-day workshops. Each workshop event runs from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Saturday with registration starting at 8 a.m. and includes five to eight 45-minute sessions on topics such as pest control, care of grasses, landscape design, fertilization, Koi ponds, invasive plants, care of trees and more.

To share information about all these topics, we solicit speakers from our local county extension service, a horticulture education technical center, the University of Florida horticulture department as well as other local green industry professionals. Currently, speakers volunteer their time and expertise for our workshops, though we show our appreciation to them with plaques highlighting their commitment to the industry and the community, and with local gift certificates of $25.

Another way we defer the costs of this type of event is by finding local sponsors, many of whom are industry friends. Sponsorships for the workshops are $150 and our recent sponsors have included local nurseries, lawn equipment dealers, landscape lighting companies, local churches and a special rose florist emphasizing our “Wildrose” brand. For our most recent event, our equipment dealer sponsor also was able to help us get sponsorship from Stihl, a hand-held power equipment company. Additionally, local food vendors have provided breakfast for attendees at a complimentary or deeply discounted rate in exchange for sponsorship perks. For their sponsorship fee, our sponsors are given a lot of recognition including a vendor table, a “word from our sponsors” segment at the beginning of the event, and their logo on the back of a Wildrose t-shirt, which all attendees receive.

Our Lawn and Landscape workshops take several months to plan. We like to have our speakers booked at least three to four months in advance so we can include their name, credentials and session information in our quarterly newsletters. Additionally, we book vendors early so we can share their information in the newsletter and we also send out postcard mailings to potential attendees a couple of month in advance of the event in order to bring in a good sized group. For advertising, we’re able to get free lists of local community residents from our library, which lets us target postcard mailings by specifying addresses in certain neighborhoods. The mailings cost about 87 cents per person to send, including postage, and our last event drew 100 attendees. We also contact local television and radio stations, as well as newspapers to spread word of our event to as many people as possible.

During the events, we set up stations for registration, vendors and food, as well as classrooms for each breakout session. Wildrose staff members help man these stations and we also get volunteers from the local FFA Organization (formerly known as the Future Farmers of America) to donate their time. FFA students get community service hours for their work. Another volunteer is our Web site designer who serves in a technical capacity for the events as our audio/visual troubleshooter. As our speakers come in with power point presentations, it’s important to make sure someone at the facility or with our staff is able to handle any issues with projectors, computers, etc.

As the workshops have gained more coverage over time and have gotten positive results, our cost as the host company has gone down considerably. For our first event, we spent about $1,000 on everything from mailings to securing venues, etc. Our second workshop cost us only $200 to $300 as a result of sponsor participation and our most recent event in April cost us nothing to produce. 

While the events take time and energy to plan, our financial return on investment (ROI) has been incredible, bringing in $20,000 to $25,000 in new business for the last two events. We’ve also gotten an excellent ROI for our brand. Between our workshops, newsletters and lettered red trucks, the brand recognition in our local community has skyrocketed. In fact, interest in our workshops has grown so much that we’re currently looking for larger venues to hold an anticipated 300 to 500 attendees. – Christine Collins