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Green Industry Podcast
High-End Marketing Secrets: Getting Customers Who Value Quality Over Price
00:31:17
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- [00:00]
Paul Jamison
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
- [00:18]
Sponsor Representative
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com,
- [00:34]
Podcast Producer / Announcer
hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host Paul Jamison is the author of five best selling books including Cut that Grass and make that Cash and his latest Level up youp Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
- [01:11]
Paul Jamison
Welcome back to the Green Industry Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Jameson. Down here in beautiful, hot, hot, hot Florida. It's very hot down here. I lived in Atlanta, it was hot in Atlanta. You go south a little, you know, eight, 10 more hours, it gets even more hotter. But anyway, if you're tired of running around town chasing these cheapo customers and dealing with customers who haggle over every little nickel, hey, while you're here, you might be doing this real quick and pain in the rear end customers. And you're driving all around town between your mowing. Well, this episode is your wake up call that I wish I would have got earlier in life. You don't just need more customers, you need the right customers. See, I used to think I'll just go out and get more customers. And I would, and I would get more of the wrong customers and I would add more stress to my life. At one time I was in a doctor's office, the nurse was talking to me and she was explaining to me my nervous system and the stress. And she basically like, you shouldn't be this, you should, your health should be better than it is. She's like, do you have any stress? And I'm like laughing, I'm like, stress. And I started telling her about all these customers and she didn't want to hear about, you know, she didn't want to hear about all this. But I was like, yeah. And ultimately the nurse could piece together. Well, if you could get better customers, I think it would improve your Health coming from a nurse, okay? Not a business consultant. The nurse, she's like, your body is talking to you, Paul, and something's not right. And it was. My stress of my business was affecting my health. Well, anyway, here's a solution. Today we're gonna lay out the ultimate blueprint. These are the top 10 ways to market your business and attract your absolute ideal customer. So I'm not gonna share guesswork. I'm gonna talk about real strategies that I know work that will help you get premium accounts. Okay. I've done it time and time again. Premium accounts, customers that pay you a lot of money and they're easy to work with. They're out there. And let's talk about how to get into it. So, first of all, in order to attract your ideal customer, you need to identify with clarity who your ideal customer is. All right, so I personally, if you put me in your neck of the woods, I would find, okay, what's the nicest neighborhood? This is me personally. I would immediately identify, what's the nicest neighborhood in this neck of the woods in this city? And then I would say, how do I get a whole bunch of yards in that neighborhood? Because rich people spend money, especially on their lawn care and their landscaping part of it. Some of them just want their yard to look nice. Other ones, they care about what their neighbor thinks so much. They want it to look better than theirs, and they, you know, they want to be respected. Anyway, I got to go where the money is personally, so I would identify. Okay, well, I want to work in this neighborhood, on this street, serving these rich people. So now I know who I'm going to market to. And there's more to it than that. Like, there, you can get it way more dialed in. I think they call it demographics. You can. I mean, you can get really in the details on that. That's another topic for another day. But I wanted to share with you, once you have done that, that exercise and that that focused identifying who your ideal customer is, how do you actually get that customer paying you money? All right, let's get started. Number one. And you're going to hear so many people talk about this, because it's the. It's the truth right now. And I'm recording this podcast. Things are constantly changing. But at the time I'm recording this podcast, Google Business profile is still king, because that's where most sophisticated people are going to check out your ratings and your reviews. And if your Google Business profile shows, you know, you got 4.7 stars or 4.8 stars. And there's, there's reviews that don't say six months ago. Right. I, I recently had to get something embroidered and so I looked up an embroidery shop and there was one like three miles away from me and then there was one that was a half an hour away from me. Okay, which one do you think I went with? The one that's just a few minutes from me or the one that's 30 minutes away, which would be an hour drive time. I drive half hour there, drive a half hour back. Maybe there's traffic. It could be longer. Well, guess what I did. I actually went to the one that was farther away because their Google business profile was absolutely fire. They had all of these recent reviews, customers, you know, recently that were there. We didn't say two years ago on their, on their Google business profile, the customer is in there recently. And it was, no, I mean it's nothing but positive review after review after review after review. And the other one was like, you know, they could probably get the job done that I needed the embroidery for, but I would rather the peace of mind of taking it somewhere where I know I just have to drop off the stuff that needs embroidered. They're going to embroider it, I'm going to pick it up and it's going to be perfect. I trust them because their Google business profile is recent and loaded with reviews. And so I dropped off my stuff, I paid it. They're like, it's going to be 129 deposit. Here you go. That's another thing I learned from Dan Kennedy. Rich people get paid upfront. So broke people, poor people, they'll, they'll go do all the work and then they're waiting around for their payment for their money. Rich people and, and, and sharp business people, they get their money up front. Now this company, they did a deposit. I, I still have to pay more when I pick it up. But there, they understand cash flow. They're like, yeah, okay, well we'll gladly do this project. It's going to be $129 deposit. And I paid the $129 deposit. And I could tell they have professional people working there. But anyway, that's, that's, I don't want to digress into my thing about making sure you get paid up front where you're able to, it's, it's, it's the way to go. But anyway, dominate your Google business profile. I'm talking about if you put a, if you go to, if you go to the equip Expo that's got the, you know, 27, 28,000 lawn care landscaping professionals there. If you just pull randomly 100 of them out of the room, right? Say, hey, does anyone in here have a lawn care business? And 100, you know, 100 guys like, yeah, buddy, I do. I, I have a lawn business. What do you want, man? And you line them up, a hundred of these guys, okay? And I, I was like, all right, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give $10,000 to whoever has the best Google business profile. I would be hard pressed to find one or two of the hundred people that actually have a good business profile on Google. Most of them don't. They have, some of them don't even have a Google business profile. And then the ones that do, their latest review was, you know, seven months ago and they only have a few reviews. So anyway, the, the ideal customer I have, right, it's the, it's the multi million dollar house in the nicest neighborhood in the town. Those people are probably going because they value their time so much. They're probably going to go check out your Google business profile because they know if it's loaded with five star recent reviews, then they can like, oh yeah, I'll hire this company and I trust, you know, they, they know what they're doing and they'll just set it and forget it. So the other thing you can do other than being obsessed with asking for reviews all the time, is put high quality photos of your work. Like your work. They know if it's that raggedy. Not raggedy, but those, those fake custom photos that, that a lot of people put on their website and business profile. It's a joke to me because first of all, it's not even like the same grass and trees that you have in your town. Like, you want pictures of where the, the customer, potential customer, like, oh yeah, I actually recognize that neighborhood. Actually know where they took that picture. That's, that's Susan's neighbor, right? Like, you know, the trees, they tell the house, you know, I'm saying it's native to their city. Oh, man. Mr. Producer, what are we going to do? I'm hung up on point number one and it's already time for our commercial. I sense A Part 2 coming up. All right, we're going to hear a quick word from today's show sponsors and then I'm going to work. My, these are so juicy and good because this is the stuff that attracts your ideal customer. I'm passionate about every single point, so I'm gonna I'm gonna move on to the next one, which is the most important one actually on the list. Coming right up. Real quick. Before we move on, if you're tired of buying equipment blind or running your crew the same way, hoping something changes, get yourself to Equip Exposition this October in Louisville. Test drive the best equipment from every major manufacturer in one place. Come see me at the morning show. Check out Equips education sessions built for guys actually running crews. Use my code Paul at registration to save 50% on your pass. The link is in today's show Notes. Have you ever felt like you're drowning in scattered quotes, schedules and chasing payments that never come easy? I've been there with you. I used to be a chuck in the truck, completely disorganized and constantly chasing payments. But then I started using jobber back in 2019 and it was a complete game changer for my business. I'm still using it today. I love it and recommend it to all my coaching clients. Now Jobber is an all in one business app. Software where you can store customer information, send quotes and invoices, schedule your appointments, and even collect payments. Best of all, you know I talk about this a lot on the podcast. You can save a credit card on file for automatic and hassle free payments. No more awkward follow ups or lost money. You ready to simplify your business operations? Check the link in the show notes and use my special Jobber link and try it for free. You won't look back.
- [11:53]
Podcast Producer / Announcer
Here's Megan Koberly from the Landscaping Bookkeeper.
- [11:56]
Sponsor Representative
The Landscaping Bookkeeper is a company for lawn care businesses under 300k. We like to onboard you under 300k so that we can educate you on your finances. Many bookkeepers love numbers, but we love the education behind the numbers. So each month we want to organize behind the scenes, but then we want to meet with you monthly to deliver your statement of cash flows, your profit and loss called the income statement and your balance sheet sheet. And our real goal is to help you to understand how each of those work together so that you can see the health of your business. And not just crunch numbers. It's about actually putting them inside a framework so you know when to purchase and what to do with each of those facets of business.
- [12:35]
Podcast Producer / Announcer
Schedule your free 15 minute call today at thelandscapingbookkeeper.com all right, number two, way
- [12:42]
Paul Jamison
to attract your ideal customer. And after you've picked hopefully the wealthiest, mostly tight like tight clustered subdivision, there might be like one big mansion out there that's you know, they got It's a way out. I've been to Shaq's house. Shaquille o'. Neal. When I lived in Atlanta, it was a really cool opportunity. Greg Wood, Greg Wittstock. Pardon me, Greg Wittstock. He built Shaq the. The. The big, tall B basketball player. He built him a epic pond. And he. Greg knew that I lived in Atlanta. So he's like, hey, I'm going to be a Shaq's house. If you want to come down, we got putt putt. Like, we built him a putt putt course and like a. Like a chipping. I mean, it was pretty cool. And he's like, come on down. So I went to Shaq's house, but it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, and it's not like he doesn't live in a neighborhood with tightly clustered yards. So anyway, Shaq would not be my ideal customer because he lived. Even though he lives in Atlanta, it'd be far away from where my shop was. I don't live in Atlanta anymore. But it. But that's not an ideal customer for me, even though it'd be cool to be like, yeah, I cut Shaq's grass. But he lives. He lives more, like, in rural.
- [13:54]
Podcast Producer / Announcer
Like a.
- [13:54]
Paul Jamison
Like, it's not a. It's not a subdivision. So I think it's better personally to be where there's tightly clustered houses in a subdivision there. You can just go from one to hit to the other to the other, to the other to the other, which my friend Naylor Taliaferro, he's the route density king, talking about this. But really what you want to do is you want to do what I call anchoring a neighborhood. So you want to pick one neighborhood that is your home base, that is your anchor. Now, I'm going to yell at you if you do the neighborhood across the street, the neighborhood down the road. And maybe you. You specialize in three or four neighborhoods, and you can literally put that on your website. Shout out to the footbridge media, if you guys need a website, they'll take care of that. But you, you know, if you go to the website and you, you know, it says you take care of, and it names three neighborhoods. Like, you know, within a city. You're actually marketing now to three neighborhoods with one of them as the anchor. That's the pro move. So you want to. To really identify and select what is your anchor neighborhood. And again, Shaq. And by the way, his house was epic. Like, it was really, really cool. But that's not. That's not an ideal customer because it's kind of out of the way and. And you'd have to drive a while to get there. And I mean, yeah, it'd be cool to put it on your social media that, you know, you know, you're mowing Shaq's house today, but I would rather have. Atlanta's loaded with these nice neighborhoods.
- [15:31]
Sponsor Representative
It's.
- [15:32]
Paul Jamison
It's more of picking. Here's where my shop is. Or maybe you just keep all your equipment at your house. Here's where my house is. And maybe you don't live in the. The rich street like the rich part of town. Well, it's worth driving if the rich part of town is 20 minutes away. Drive your rear end to 20 minutes away and then just be there all day long in that anchored neighborhood. See, when I started, I didn't know this. And so I'm driving all around Atlanta. Let's go out to Winder and do a couple. Let's go to Lawrenceville and do a couple. Hey, John's Creek. Why not 45 minutes away, do a few. Go out to Suwanee, over to Duluth. We're driving all around town. And then this guy named Scotty, he all. He did. No, I fished a lot, but all I did was grind stumps. That's it. And he. And he did a lot of work for me grinding stumps. And he had all the most sophisticated stump grinding machines and so much experience. He did a really great job. He's pleasant to work with. And he pulled me aside one day and he's asking me how much money I make, and. Real nosy guy. But he was trying to help me. And he's like, hey, if I were you, he said I would come through the gate of this neighborhood 8am because they open 8am and he's like, I wouldn't leave all day. Pack your lunch and. And just work all day. So you guys are done. 3, 4, 5pm Pack it up, head home. And. And his point was. And he told me numbers. He's like, you'll make this X amount of money. Your. Your expenses should be around this. You. You personally, as the business owner, you should profit that. I mean, he's very like, the guy was genius. And that stuck with me because at the time, I had a few in that nice neighborhood, but then I had a way more outside of that neighborhood, all over the place. And he caught. He casted a vision for me that I'm trying to cast for you. What would it look like to go into your anchor neighborhood? And get started in the morning, and then you're in that anchor neighborhood all day long. All your houses are in that neighborhood. Now maybe you only got one day or two day or three day in that neighborhood. You got to go around that neighborhood to supplemental neighborhoods that are, that are in the same kind of ballpark. And obviously you don't just start out with all your yards are all in the premium neighborhood with the premium client. But at least have a vision that that's what you're working for. You want to pick the wealthiest, most tightly clustered subdivision in your target zip code, and then with aggression, start marketing that neighborhood. So how do you, once you got that dialed in, how do you actually get their attention? Well, one way is to learn how to take pictures and, and do little short form videos. They could be time lapses. You can just set your phone up. Let's say you're cleaning up a mulch bed. You just set your phone on a tripod. There's a time lapse button. You make sure that the work is centered in the video. Like it's in, it's in this on the screen. You're not off to the side. You might have to move the tripod every now and again. And you just capture your work and you throw those on your Facebook page, on your Instagram page. You do this every day. Or if you, maybe you don't have time to get a video, you're just swamped that day. You get a picture and you get in the habit of uploading content every day to your Facebook page and to your Instagram page. Those rich people, they're on Facebook and they're on Instagram. I know they are. At least the women are. The husband, he might not be as much, but his wife, who's probably making the decision on who's going to be the landscaper. In most of these, like really fancy neighborhoods, the husband works. Not all of them. I'm not stereotyping. I'm just telling you what I've noticed. Most of them, the husband's working, typically a lot, right? Because they gotta afford that big old lifestyle. And then the woman, right, she goes to Pilates and then they go and they get one of them the nasty drink. I don't think they're nasty, but you know, they get a little fancy drinks. What they call them, this producer matchas or smoothie. I don't know, they get their little drinky drink. Hey, their girlfriend, hey, you want to grab lunch? They go to Panera, they grab lunch. Hey, they live this crazy life, okay? I'm telling you, I met all kind of these people, but those are the ones who are just scrolling on social media. And if you're posting on your Instagram page and you're posting on your Facebook page every day, high impact, before and after videos, time lapse videos, pictures. It's going to help when that lady goes and she sees good social media. It's going to build your credibility. And then you can, she can discover you on social media. And then if you have highly branded trucks on the road, which you can start with a. I started with a cheap magnet, 30 buck magnet. Put them on the passenger side, on the driver's side, Jameson Landscaping. And my phone number. Then I upgraded to getting in my truck lettered, where they have like a stencil thing. And the guy, I don't know what the. If the guy was drunk or what, but he put it on like slanted. I was like, I was standing there and I was like, hey, man, you sure that looks right? Like, it looks a little. Oh, yeah. Well, once I take it off, it'll look right. It takes it off, it's like, oh, it's like, it's like an incline. Oh, man. Maybe, maybe as there's only 200 bucks, maybe. Let me get a sip of this coffee here, Mr. Producer. Well, the, the. Oh, man, I got stories for days, guys. I just don't have the time to tell them because I got an appointment. Look, look at these muscles. Mr. Producer. You see that tricep? I've been working out. So I got an appointment at the gym here in a few minutes. So I gotta, I gotta run. But my point is you, you, you do all of this. You do the Instagram with fresh pictures, fresh videos, fresh transformations and that one piece of content. Let's say you take a picture. Let's say you mow the grass and the sun's looking just nice and it's striped yard. And I try to take pictures where I don't show too much of the house. And I definitely don't show like the mailbox or the address, but get the picture of the yard. Or if the customer is like, hey, Paul, I saw you put a picture of our yard on the Internet. Do you mind taking that? Oh, I'm so sorry. This has never happened to me. I'm trying to think. Never happened to me, actually. And I post thousands of social media posts. Never had a customer say, hey, I saw that you put our yard on Facebook. Do you mind taking it down? Never happened now. And I posted. I post. I haven't counted. I mean, I've posted on social media so much, it's crazy. Never once a customer complained that I took a picture of their fresh new sod and put on. On Facebook. Now if they were to say, can you take it down? I would. But my point is, some people get all this paralysis and analysis. I can't tell you how many times people have reached out to me, Paul, do you have like, a media waiver form for them to sign? So they're all like, they're all terrified of one possible Karen that might get mad that they took a picture. And I'm just like, you're procrastinating and you're lazy. Go take the picture. Post it on your Facebook page. Post it on your Instagram page. Post it on your Google business profile. Paul, what if. Okay, you're, You're. I don't call you a loser, but you don't have what it takes to attract the premium client. If you want to attract the premium client, get everywhere in front of them. Get them on, get them, because you don't know if they're going to find credibility for in their, in their soul where they, they have peace about you, they feel good about you because they saw your Google business profile. Or maybe they keep seeing you on Instagram because here's my point. I didn't make it earlier and I got to go to the gym. So I got to make this very clear. Instagram and Facebook, I've tested this. They. They seem to send your content locally more than, like, internationally. So if you post a picture of fresh sod that you just did, somehow the algorithm and I would tag the name of your city on every post. Absolutely. And hashtag names. Give Instagram and Facebook as much information as you can of your location of, of where your work is, because they know already. But you, you make sure you confirm it with them by taking it. They're going to start. When you make a post, they're going to start sending it to more random people in the area. It works. I'm telling you. I was at the grocery store last night. The guy recognized me. Hey, Paul sees my content. That guy works at the local grocery store, Publix, and he was asking. I mean, the guy knew all about me because he watched it, but he. I was like, wow. And it's because I'm. It's local. But my point is, you don't know if, if, if the decision maker, that rich lady that goes to Pilates and drinks her little machi machi thing or whatever, it's Called and. And drives her little Range Rover around town. You don't know if she's going to go to your Google business profile and be like, oh, wow, this company is legit, or she's going to see you on Instagram all the time. Your stuff's going to be popping up. And then maybe she sees on the Facebook page, and in part two, I'll get into Facebook groups and I'll give you some more Facebook strategy. Or, and. Or she sees a little bit here and a little bit there. And then your trucks, you don't have a raggedy truck that's inclined like me. What I mean by incline? Like, like the, the guy put the stencil. I don't know if he was drunk or just what was going on, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like, even with my bumper, it was like, all it was, it was slanted, which wasn't the best. But anyway, the point is, maybe she keeps seeing. And my point in all that I didn't mention this is the best thing to do with your vehicle, is get it wrapped. That is the pro move of all pro moves. Get it nicely designed and then wrapped. That is a rolling billboard. Because once you're in that anchored neighborhood, you got that truck parked right outside the street, and then you're going and doing the other yard. I'm telling you, a wrapped truck in your anchor neighborhood, they'll see that all day long on their way to Pilates, on their way back home. Then they go, they give their little dog a walk in a stroller. You know about this, Mr. Producer, these rich ladies, they walk their dogs. No, no, no. Not the baby and the dog. The dog is in the stroller. There's no baby. You know, I, I, you're out mowing, and here comes a lady pushing the stroller. And you, you peek in to see a little baby. And there's a little dog in there, little fluffy dog. That's what they do. But they see your, they see your truck wrapped up, looking good. The yard's looking good. It's time to dominate, baby. It's time to get in that premium neighborhood and get their money, get their s. By serving them at the highest level. But they're already paying all those people in that neighborhood. I would say 90% of them use lawn care guys. So they're already spending the money. The money is flowing out. It's crazy how many billions of dollars is spent on landscaping every year. It is. It's crazy. Why is it not ending up in your pocket? It's because the marketing is underwhelming. You want to be everywhere. Google business profile a plus, meaning just you got fresh pictures and fresh new reviews, Facebook page, fresh pictures, fresh videos, your work, your team, all over Facebook, all over Instagram, that truck all over the anchored neighborhood. I mean, it's not all over, but it's because they keep driving by. And it's always best when you identify the neighborhood. Start with the main street because there's little side streets right where there's less traffic. But if you can have that, if you can get a few yards on that main street in the anchored neighborhood, and, and you have car trucks parked out there as you're mowing, then it's like, it's, it's great advertising. I got to go to the gym and work on my arms. I'm doing arms and core today, Mr. Producer. So. No, no, no, no, no. I don't have a personal trainer, but I have a. I have a schedule now. I listen to Dan Kennedy's time management book on time management and he talked about you. A lot of people set start times for stuff, but they don't start. They don't have end times. So I've been doing a schedule. I have a start. I'm going to start this at this time, and I'm going to end it at this time, and I'm going to start this. So I know what time I have to be done with the gym to move on to my next meeting of the day. So I got to get to the gym now so I can get started, so I can get. I can stay on my schedule for my end time. So anyway, that book was life changing. Dan Kennedy's book about time management. So all his stuff's great. Marketing, wealth, attraction, time management. Dan Kennedy is one of my favorite authors, if not my favorite. I love that dude. Actually, he's. Daniel Lapin is my favorite. The Thou Shall Prosper author. That's. I don't know. They're both good. I got to go to the gym. Thanks for listening and I'm going to ask you a favor. Help your boy out. So, speaking of these reviews, we haven't been getting fresh new reviews on Apple podcasts, and that's because I haven't been asking. It's not like someone naturally gets done listening into a podcast. They're probably thinking, oh, I'm going to go get an ice cream cone, right? Or I don't know what you're thinking, but you ain't thinking. I really need to help Paul out. His podcast has Helped me so much. You know what I really need to do? I need to open up the Apple Podcast. I need to hit rating and review and I need to drop a sentence or two about how this podcast has helped my business. So anyway, I want to ask you, my friend, if you find value for me sitting down, sharing my thoughts on this big old microphone every morning, I want to ask you a favor. I want to ask you to please write me a Apple Podcast rating and review, preferably five stars and just drop a sentence or two of how this show has helped you and helped your business. And that would help us a lot freshen up our Apple Podcast review. So would really appreciate that. Again, that's on Apple Podcast. There's a little button there. You can leave a rating and review and then there's five stars. If you hit over on the fifth star, it will fill in all five stars. And then there's a little box where you can put the any comment you have. And those, those go a long way. I read 100 of them. 100 of them. You got some knuckleheads out there that, that, that are mean to me and they, they write mean things and I'm like, man, I need somebody to say something nice to level out the guy. And you know what, Mr. Producer, it's easier to tear someone down than actually work on improving yourself. So much easier to do that. Anyway, my friend, please leave me an Apple Podcast rating review. It would mean the world to me and I will read it and more than likely I'll actually shout it out on the future podcast. So thanks for listening. Hope to find you over there on Apple Podcast dropping a rating and review.
- [31:34]
Podcast Producer / Announcer
Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.
- [31:46]
Libsyn Ads Narrator
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