How We Do It June 2004: Placemat Marketing at Just Gardens Landscaping

My landscaping company of 10 years, Just Gardens Landscaping, does commercial and residential landscape design and installation. We don’t offer snowplowing, so I spend my winters thinking about new and better ways to market my business. Some of my favorite marketing approaches include landscape seminars, home shows, display gardens in malls and, this year, our first ever “Landscape Makeover” contest. All of these projects generate significant word-of-mouth marketing for the company. Another approach that has been highly successful is marketing with placemats.

While reading an issue of Lawn & Landscape a few years ago, I came across the idea of creating restaurant placemats as a type of advertising. I had placed an ad on a placemat the year before. The ad was the size of a small business card, poorly done and surrounded by 20 other small, poorly done ads. The idea of doing my own placemat intrigued me.

My first step to try the full-scale placemat approach was to find a printer. I knew I wanted high-quality graphic art and a color scheme that used my logo color of burgundy, as well as something catchy and attractive to look at. I shopped around a bit but ultimately chose a printer based on a rare service he provided. He would come to me for meetings and delivery of the finished placemats rather than leaving me with all the legwork.

Based on my objectives for the placemat marketing my printer and I decided to go with one run of 25,000 placemats the first year, which turned out beautifully. The cost to me was only $800, though this price can vary depending on the type and size of paper used, as well as the number of colors used in the design. To help pay for the placemats, I went to some of my better commercial clients and suppliers and offered them one quarter of the placemat to advertise their own businesses for a quarter of the printing cost (approximately $200). For the most part, that was the same price that they would pay for a small business-card-sized ad on a less professional-looking placemat.

All of the clients and suppliers I approached jumped at the opportunity when they saw the quality of the finished product. The ads ended up being good, inexpensive marketing methods for everyone involved, and many of the companies I’ve cooperated with still request space on my placemats well in advance. Most of my clients want ads on both runs and I request payment up front, which makes my printer happy and willing to take care of my needs quickly because he gets paid right away.

By charging suppliers to “rent” space on my placemats, the only cost to me is the time it takes to come up with a design and acquire digital pictures of my clients places of business for the placemat. I also distribute the placemats myself, which takes less than a week before the season starts, usually in late February or early March. When the printer delivers the placemats to me – about two weeks after placing the order – I deliver them to five or six preselected restaurants that have agreed to work with me. I try to choose sit-down family type restaurants where people will actually have the time to look at the placemats. The restaurants pay nothing for the placemats and are eager to get them. I now have restaurants that wait on my placemats and ask for as many as I can give them. I distribute them throughout the county to target all the areas of the businesses on the placemats.

Placemat marketing has been a highly successful method of getting my company’s name out. The work to create them requires my time and effort, but no cash output when my season is slow. I have received several new clients with this form of advertising, and my suppliers have been happy with the responses they get from their ads. With such a good response, we are considering increasing to a run of 75,000 placemats in 2005. – Julie Cole

The author is owner, Just Gardens Landscaping, Jefferson, Ohio and can be reached at 440/576-7711