Real Green Systems hosts LCOs at conference

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Real Green Systems Management and Users Conference took place the first week in January, offering lawn care company owners, technicians and office staff the opportunity to learn about everything from search engine optimization to creating a call center.

About 350 LCOs from across the country attended the annual event hosted by Real Green Systems. The conference included three days of technical and management training, as well as time to network and have some fun. The nightly events included a vendor reception and magician and a casino night where the more attendees gambled (with fake money that had Real Green CEO Joe Kucik’s face on it), danced, sang and had fun, the greater their chance was of winning more money and end-of-the-night prizes. 

Real Green’s team showed attendees its custom marketing capabilities.

Jim Kucik, president of Synergetic Marketing Sales, gave several presentations on how companies can boost their use of the two main components of web marketing: search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. 

“The goals of social media are completely different than SEO,” he said. “SEO is about generating business immediately.” Whereas, social media is more customer based and offers education, building relationships and staying in touch with clients.

Kucik said time and again he sees companies put effort into providing a good service, but then when he goes online, the company doesn’t have a website or it has one that is poorly designed and offers little information. In today’s world, potential customers want instantaneous information. If they can’t find what they need on a website, they’ll just move to the next company, he said.

A good website should be well-designed and functional, should provide contact information and should make potential customers want to contact the company and buy from them. “Everything needs to make them want to call and buy,” he said. 

Also, websites need to be relevant and updated, which will help companies rank higher in search engines.

Vendors, including Synergetic Marketing Sales, were on hand to provide business development and product updates to LCOs.

There are multiple ways to be ranked higher in Google, Kucik said. One is pay-per click advertising where a company would spend money to be ranked at the top of the page. Second is Google places, which gives companies contact information and is based on location to the searcher and a company’s number of Google reviews. Third is the normal list of websites ranked. The algorithm for the listing is mainly based on a perceived relevance a company has and the key words used on a website. “The text that you use on your website can help you get ranked,” Kucik said.

When jumping into social media, companies need to define what applications they want to use (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), what they want to use them for and how they want to use them.

Kucik said it doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly time consuming. Scott’s Lawn Service in Lansing, Mich., which he’s worked with, posts an estimated 1.8 times a day on its Facebook page.

Another tip Kucik suggested was that companies vary how they interact with customers on social media sites. A balanced model is: 20 percent of the time give an offer, 20 percent ask a question, 20 percent provide tips and 20 percent post viral information from the Web, meaning anything that isn’t company specific.