5 Things you must be doing in 2017

Are you 100% of what you should be doing for internet marketing and promotion in 2017?

We’re going to go over a few things that you definitely should be doing so that you don’t get left behind and miss out on effective and even free promotion.

1: Using Instagram to promote your services

Whether you do lawn maintenance or hardscaping, your company’s services can be easily promoted on Instagram. It is free and effective.

What you need:

1. A smart phone
2. Creativity
3. A project/work worth photographing

You can spread the word of your work far and wide with Instagram, but the distance it travels, and the amount of exposure you get is directly related to how good your photo is. And that doesn’t simply mean the quality of the photo. In order to spread wide and far, and get lots of attention, the contents of the photo must either be:

• funny
• unique/rare
• very beautiful
• surprising/shocking

In addition to being very high quality, you must also make liberal use of hashtags, as that is one way for your post to gain further reach and be seen by people following those hashtags. Of course only put relevant hashtags.

2. Start Doing Native Advertising

It has been said time and time again: Web users ignore ads. While this isn’t entirely true as ads do result in sales, ads on the web definitely don’t have the impact they used to. And it is this dwindling effectiveness which is having marketers look for new solutions, and they have one. It is called Native Ads.

What is it? Marketers greatly complicate the definition. It is simply this: you make a piece of good content (such as an article) and you place this piece of content on someone else’s site, a site which gets lots of traffic (such as a local news site). Your piece of content also clearly states that it was written by you and your company, and usually provides a link to your site. This allows you to promote your company on other website, and allows you to establish yourself as a knowledgeable thought leader. Of course you will have to pay the website to feature your article.

There are many ways of doing this. The most traditional way would be to: find a local news publication, which has its articles online. You write an article for them, discussing a topic of interest and importance. You pay them, and you get traffic and exposure.

3. Live chat on your website

Ask yourself this: how many people visit your site and slip through the cracks and never end up calling you, or filling out a contact form? For most websites this is a considerably high percentage, 95% or more. What if you could reach out to that remaining 95%? Well you can.

By having a ‘live chat’ window on all pages of your website, you are making it far easier for your visitors to reach out to you with questions. This allows you to make a great first impression and establish a good relationship with your consumer base. Since we are in the Relationship Era of marketing this is crucial. It will help you differentiate yourself in the mind of the consumer, by having excellent customer care.

There are many companies that offer this service. Some are free and some have a nominal fee of say $15 a month.

4. Content Marketing

Anyone who has taken the time to study up and get educated on the topic of marketing knows that ‘content is king’. It has been true for decades, and has proven to continue to be true, even in this year of 2017. And with the current amount of business competition it is more true than ever!

For landscapers content marketing doesn’t mean writing some bland articles about gardening or driveway paving.

Here are some ideas:

1. A PDF consisting of all your most frequently asked questions
2. DIY guides for your simpler or more advanced services (in PDF)
3. DIY video guides
4. An encyclopedia of local and native trees, shrubs, plants, flowers
5. Guides for gardening/landscaping by season (one for each season)
6. A guide on how to have an environmentally friendly landscape (low impact on the surrounding environment)
7. A guide on energy conservation for your outdoor living area
8. A catalog with a spectrum of low budget suggestions for landscaping & hardscaping, complete with good ideas and photos

5. Facebook Ads and Retargeting

Posting pictures of your recent landscaping projects on Facebook is fine, but it’s not going to get you any increase in revenue. You’d need to have tens of thousands of fans/followers to reach the number of people necessary to get sales from such posts.

So what should you do with your Facebook? Simply this: Ads and Retargeting.

If you are advertising and not doing retargeting then you are losing money. It is utterly essential and greatly increases your ROI.

We have a whole article on that here, so you can learn how you can implement it.