Improve lead quality from online marketing

Published June 13, 2023

Are you generating low-quality leads from your website, SEO, Google Ads, and other online marketing efforts? This is a common painpoint we see during consultations with new clients at Lawnline Marketing, and we’ll give you some tips to turn things around!

Bad leads not only waste your time and money, but they also frustrate your team. Luckily for lawn and landscape companies, this can be resolved quickly by doing the following three things:

Aligning your presentation with your target audience
Ensuring you’re reaching your target audience
Streamlining your systems and processes

Aligning Your Presentation With Your Target Audience

First, define your target audience. Do you target high-end affluent homeowners? Are you building a customer base of working-class families? Think about how these ideal customers live their lives, the hobbies they enjoy, places they visit, and many other aspects to build a buyer avatar.

Now, look at your presentation. How does your visual appearance relate to your ideal customer? Does it push them away or pull them in closer?

I like using a restaurant analogy. If your lawn care or landscaping company were a restaurant, would it be fast-food, sit-down, or fine dining? A customer looking for fine dining will immediately know they’re in the wrong place if they walk into a fast-food restaurant and vice-versa.

Your website is the first impression much like the decor of the restaurant in the analogy above. The design and layout of your website will immediately communicate if you’re a high-end lawn/landscape provider, or if you’re going to be one that competes on price.

All of the following presentation items should be evaluated to ensure they communicate that you’re experienced in servicing your ideal customers:

Website design and content
Social media presence
Phone greeting and communication etiquette
Attire/uniforms and vehicle wraps
Knowledgable staff and streamlined experience

Rate yourself on a scale from 1-10 for each of those 5 items. The number you choose should not be based on how well you’re doing them, but on how well their presentation aligns with your ideal customer.

Matching your presentation to your ideal customer is the first step to solving the problem of low-quality leads. If this doesn’t solve the problem, the next step is to ensure your marketing efforts are reaching your ideal customer.

Ensuring You’re Reaching Your Target Audience

Once your presentation is aligned, you have to ensure you’re getting in front of your ideal audience. When it comes to online marketing, there are a few main sources that generate the bulk of new lawn and landscape leads. Here are the top sources, along with some additional tips:

SEO: Your website content should be geographically targeted toward your ideal service areas. If you’re a landscape company, publish project case studies that showcase the type of work you perform. If you’re a lawn care company, use imagery that highlights the types of properties you maintain or care for.
Google Ads: For higher-end services, be very selective with your keywords and avoid bidding on general keywords like “landscapers near me”. Instead, target keywords like “landscape construction near me”. These more specific keywords will have less volume, but much higher quality traffic.
Social Media Ads: Audience targeting and ad creatives are critical to successful social media campaigns. Using the exercise above, show your ads to an audience that matches your ideal buyer avatar, not necessarily everyone that Facebook thinks is interested in your services.

Once you start getting in front of your ideal audience and your presentation is aligned, this almost always solves the problem of bad leads. If your problem still isn’t solved, it’s time to look to your processes and systems.

Streamlining Your Systems & Processes

Your systems and processes can improve your lead quality by automating qualification and providing convenience. On the flip side, they can turn a good lead into a lost opportunity.

You can use automated qualification to collect detailed information. For example, if a lead submits a quote request form on your website, fire off automated SMS messages asking for additional information. This can include service/project details, budgets, timelines, pictures of the property, and more to better qualify the lead.

Also consider convenience and what that means to your ideal customer.

If your target audience is elderly homeowners, then using technology and automated SMS messages may not be the best approach.

If you’re a lawn care company and your competition does pricing over the phone, don’t require a site visit to give a quote.

Making their experience convenient will ensure a 40%-60% close rate for internet leads.

Improve Lead Quality by Hiring a Lawn/Landscape Specific Marketing Agency

If you have the budget, hiring a lawn/landscape marketing agency like Lawnline Marketing is the best way to resolve your lead quality problem. We have ample experience working with multi-million dollar design/build companies and lawn care companies to deliver high-quality leads that enable high closing rates. Contact us at (813) 944-3400 for a free consultation.