Ezra McCarthy
Welcome back to the Lawn Care Blueprint. We got another great episode for you today. Today we’re going to be tackling something that a lot of people struggle with, businesses of all different shapes, sizes and revenue levels. It’s the feast and famine cycle. Too many businesses are just riding the business roller coaster. One month, they’re slammed with work, they’re starved the next, especially in our industry with there is some seasonality to it. But this feast and famine cycle can be normally really stressful, but it can be avoided so in this episode we’re gonna break down how consistent marketing can help with steady lead flow. Ultimately leading to stable income and growth that you can plan on so let’s hop into it. Today We’ve got Wema here to help us explore the topic.
Wena
Hi Ezra, so let’s start at the root of the problem. Why does this happen in the first place?
Ezra McCarthy
Well, part of the problem is many business owners only market when they’re slow. So spring times come and they’ve got this huge business peak, you might say, and there’s leads coming in and they can hardly answer the phone. And so they think, Hey, I’m slammed with work. Why would I market? So they don’t market. Then the other thing I hear this all the time. I talk to people and I, and I ask them, I always ask when I talk to myself, how are you getting leads right now? And one of the main things in our industry, they say, is that I get everything by word of mouth. But the problem is if you don’t have control over that, so you can’t ramp it up. You can’t really ramp it down. And then also there’s the seasonal nature. There is some seasonality to it. So because a lot of people aren’t marketing consistently, these gaps can worsen if you’re not marketing steadily.
Wena
So, once it happens, what actually costs a business?
Ezra McCarthy
So it costs the business a lot, one is a big headache. It’s very stressful to have all this work and then have no work and then have all this work and then have no work and you’re losing revenue because of the inconsistency so then what happens and we’ve all done this if. Everyone is listening and probably shaking their head right now when I say this is we’re busy and then we get real slow and then we say hey I’m just gonna take whatever comes and so you start to kind of cut out your own prices because you’re like, I got to keep the team members busy. I’ve got to keep working. So we take on low margin or poor profit jobs just to stay busy. This ends up putting stress on our cash flow, which affects our payroll. And this begins to snowball in a negative sense, but we could have solved a lot of this and gotten out of that feast and famine cycle with just some consistent marketing.
Wena
Why do owners often stop marketing when they get busy?
Ezra McCarthy
Well, one thing is they think well I don’t need more work right now and this is something that is really easy to do you get buried in operations you get busy with putting in the work and then you don’t schedule time for marketing because you’re like I’ve got all this to do how can I, I don’t need more work why would I take time to get my work but you forget that today’s marketing is feeding next month next couple months even thinking it to next spring at the time this comes out. We’re affecting next spring whether that be through SEO, whether that be getting your website in order, all these things, we’re planning for ahead, not necessarily right now.
Wena
So looking into this, how much is the problem caused by planning versus execution?
Ezra McCarthy
This is a good question, Wena. I think it’s really a mix. So breaking it down, a lot of people just don’t think of a plan. So they don’t have a strategy. They don’t have a marketing calendar. And so they’re just not. And then a lot of it is maybe some people are the proverbial dreamers. They like to get this great old plan and then nothing happens. So that’s another problem. So failure to stick with what you have planned. And so, planning and execution are so important when you begin to put together these calendars for marketing.
Wena
Let’s shift from what’s going wrong to how owners can think differently about marketing. What does it take to view marketing as non-negotiable?
Ezra McCarthy
This is something that’s really helpful as you change how you look at it. When you start to look at it like, hey This isn’t just an expense and this is what I see their budget starts to get tight. So what do they do? They cut what’s helping them get business? And internally I’m thinking what are you doing? Marketing should be the last thing to cut, think of it like this. You wouldn’t cut your insurance or I hope you wouldn’t for your business for your vehicle This is just something that’s needed or you won’t cut your rent because then you get kicked out of your shop So we got to think at marketing like okay, this is something that’s non-negotiable.
We’re looking to grow. We’re looking to keep great quality business in. We need to build our marketing into our budget, into our business model so that it’s something that we’re going to expect because we know and you should be tracking this and we’ll probably get into this here. You need to be tracking it so you realize we’re getting a return on our investment here. What we’re putting in, we’re getting out. Think of it this way, if I were to say, hey, Wena, you give me one dollar, I’m to give you back three. Then I say, OK, Wena how much money you’re going to get, you’re going to be looking under every single cushion of your couch, you’re gonna be looking in your closet because you realize every dollar I’m putting in, I’m getting $3 back. And if marketing is done right, this is how it works. We’re putting money in, we’re getting high quality jobs back that we’re able to execute on and have a healthy profit margin.
Wena
That is so true. Marketing is like this indispensable maintenance that business owners have to really look into and get involved with. It should never stop. So how can owners grasp that marketing today that brings work in like 30 to 90 days?
Ezra McCarthy
From the time we get a lead to a job completed, it can take a while. So yes, we may be marketing down now in the busy season, but you got to remember, let’s just walk through quickly the process, the customer journey. So we’ve got a lead, they contact us, then we follow up, of course, then we close the job, hopefully, or they move on to someone else. Then we schedule a job, depending if it’s a lawn care or landscaping, then we start. So our time from lead to close can be depending especially if it’s commercial, it can be a long period of time. So keeping your pipeline full because what we’re talking about that feast and famine, it’s very easy. We’re just like, I can’t take any more. Not realizing that a month from now when we have to restart that engine that it’s going to take a while for things to get going.
Wena
Is there ever a time to pull back on marketing?
Ezra McCarthy
Here’s something that I would recommend is seeing what’s working. And in our industry there’s a lot of seasonality and unless you’re like in Florida, you probably don’t want to be running lawn care for taking care of lawns in the Midwest in winter. Now this is where you’re going to transition to maybe you’re doing Christmas lights or maybe you’re doing fall cleanups or aeration and overseeing, all of these things you might transition to, but you’re not going to want to completely stop marketing, you’re just going to change your focus to what the season is. And so a lot of people that just say, well, it’s not the spring rush. So I’m just going to quit. And they don’t realize that pulling back, you’re hurting yourself months ahead of time.
Wena
So when that happens and marketing stops for a few months, what will be the consequence?
Ezra McCarthy
Well, this is really easy to think about. Your leads are going to dry out. Your competitors are going to step in and take their place in customers’ minds because you’re not front of mind. And then it’s going to take time for you to begin to start building momentum again, because just like if you’ve ever had to push a car that stopped that first inertia getting past the initial push is very difficult. But once you get it rolling again in marketing, you could think of it kind of like that way. Getting it going takes a little bit of work. But once you get it rolling, you don’t want to stop that momentum. You don’t want to stop getting your business in front of the right customers because it’s really valuable.
So a couple of channels that I would recommend all year round to be working on is local SEO. This is one of the best ways to market. And let me step back and say what that stands for is search engine optimization. So you want to consistently be year round, be optimizing so that people find you when they search without you paying Google or the other platform to be found first. This could be your Google business profile. Consistently working on that, consistently getting customer reviews, especially with pictures. Pictures in a Google review rank longer and they do affect your SEO. So local SEO, you need to be doing this all year long. And another one that according to the time of year, Google has literally you can pay Google to get to the top of the search results. This is very important. And then depending on the season, direct mail, door hangers, all of these things you want to consistently be working on.
And I would recommend picking at least two channels and saying, okay, I’m going to be doing this all year long. Now you may transition what you’re working on. You may adjust the budget accordingly, but we want to look at it like, this isn’t just a one and done. This is something we’re going to work on to grow the business all year round.
Wena
How do you know if that marketing channel is worth keeping?
Ezra McCarthy
The way to know if this is worth keeping is you need to know what is your customer acquisition cost or how much money does it take to get a customer? For example, I always recommend when you’re pre-qualifying your leads, you say, hey, how did you hear about us? If you’re talking to them on the phone and then have your office staff or yourself market down in your CRM, your customer relationship management, like jobber, et cetera, and market down. Then say at the end of the month, we actually hear a green frog do this internally.
We say, okay, how many leads did we get? How much do we spend on marketing? Then I can see, okay, this month, what is my customer acquisition cost? How much did it take to get one customer? Then I can look and I can say, okay, we converted X amount. So I can divide that and say, okay, I’m just gonna throw out a number, say for your lawn care business. You said, okay, it took me $84 to get a customer. Now what did they spend? And we can say, okay, what’s working, what’s not? And this way we can say, okay, and the average customer, say stay three years spending $1,500 a year, that’s $4,500. So if we can say the average customer lifetime value is $4,500, I can get it for 85, we need to keep doing that. So tracking what works and that helps, it really helps to see what works.
And, another good marketing channel that I’ll mention as well as email newsletters. This is something that’s really helpful something as simple as Mailchimp and every customer that you should be getting even every lead you should be getting their email getting permission to email them and then at a minimum once a month because this is a great opportunity with our seasonality we can increase that lifetime value by offering them in the spring if you’re doing lawn mowing then you can do aeration and overseeding you can do snow removal or fertilization of weed control and sell within your own customer base to increase that value.
Wena
That’s really practical tips because knowing the problem is one thing and solving it is another thing. So let’s look into planning it. How can we structure it? How do you set up like marketing calendars and such?
Ezra McCarthy
I would always recommend just start thinking a season or two ahead. This point comes out here in the fall. We’re starting to look at, okay, what does our winter look like? What does our spring look like? And then start penciling in and saying, okay, this is what we’re going to send out a text campaign. This is our email campaign. This is our monthly task and begin to just go over everything that’s needed and pre-schedule it where possible. Then think about, okay, what are good seasonal offerings that I can include as it goes along?
Maybe in the spring that’s cleaning up some mulch, the summer, we could go on down the list and then we can think about keeping the lead flow coming in campaigns to launch. So we’re not kind of behind the eight ball when it’s November or December. We’re like, I want to do Christmas lights, but really the season’s over and we don’t want to fall into that. If you’re busy, if you’re having to be in the field sometimes just keeping this front of mind.
Wena
What about for those who do it solo, like those solo operators, how can they market consistently given that it’s such limited manpower?
Ezra McCarthy
What’s helpful there is to have someone help you. And if you’re not there, just try to schedule it as much as possible. And this is where automations, whatever size business you’re at can really help whether using a CRM, like personally, we recommend Jabber. There’s a link in the show notes for that. And then in the customer info, you can put notes. You can say, Hey, Mrs. Smith, she wants snow removal in the fall and then when you call or you put notes in there. Say you have a question you can go back and see your interactions with her. You can see the property details. Everything can be in one spot. You can put the follow-ups and all that in there. It’s really helpful.
You may ask yourself, well, how do you market when your schedule is full? Well, keeping the ads, the marketing’s going when you have enough work. And then this is what people say. They say, I have enough work. I don’t need to market more. But here’s what they don’t realize. As much as we try to keep the pain customers, the Karens in our business away, sometimes they just have a way of sneaking in. There’s probably always a few customers we would kindly refer away and then we can always bring in those premium, high paying customers.
And there’s something about it when someone calls and you say, well, we’re a little busy, but we can fit you in here rather than, oh, we can get there tomorrow. Because it’s kind of like when you drive by a restaurant at suppertime and there’s no one in the parking lot, there’s just something in the back of your mind that says, wait a second, this can’t be any good. Because no one’s there and as businesses there’s something about a full or almost full business that you’re as okay these they must have something here and so keeping your schedule full and keeping marketing is so vital.
Wena
So what’s the biggest mental hurdle to investing in marketing when you’re busy?
Ezra McCarthy
Well, some of the things we’ve talked about, but also just fear of being overwhelmed. But you have to realize, remember we’re marketing today for a month, two, three months in advance. And then realizing this extra demand will just be a better way to help you filter out your client. If you say, Hey, I want more consistent work. Here’s some first steps that I recommend for you.
Commit to two marketing channels, maybe that’s search engine optimization, and over the next 12 months commit to, I’m not gonna quit for the next 12 months, because sometimes it’s just like if you’ve ever tried to, I love running, and I remember the first time I ran six miles as an adult, and I thought, whew, that was so hard, or I thought it was then, and now it doesn’t bother me.
And so sometimes you get to kind of exercise that marketing muscle and realize, hey, we’re going to put this in our budget. Yes, it’s a lot, but we’re going to see the results and commit to it. Then track the results weekly, quarterly and yearly. So you can see how it’s doing because your marketing today fuels schedules for months from now. Don’t stop, only promote when you’re desperate for work. Choose those two channels, run them every month and watch the feast and famine cycle disappear. This will allow you to have more consistency, pick better jobs, grow your business and enjoy life again.
So, thank you each one for tuning into this episode of Lawn Care Blueprint. If you got value, be sure to subscribe, leave a rating and review, and we’ll catch you on the next one.