Jake Wolf started his landscape business by accident after posting “Landscape design student needs your home for portfolio development� on a local yahoo group he belonged to. Back then the group had about 2000 members.
Within one week of his post, he had received over 30 calls and had lined up enough work to give 2 weeks notice to his boss.
By April of 2007, Wolf would like to have 100 customers signed up for his monthly fertilizing and pesticide program. Here are his plans for signing up 100 new customers by spring:
- Send out a thank you email to all existing customers and alert them to my plans for next year.
- Join as many local online groups as possible. Many allow new members to introduce themselves.
- Call up landscapers who don’t have pesticide licenses and work out an affiliate deal with them to take care of their fertilizing and pesticide applications.
- Start writing an email gardening newsletter and heavily focus on local needs and resources.
- Offer free gardening classes just like a Tupperware party with someone hosting and bringing several friends over. Trust me, this beats giving free estimates.
- Film educational gardening clips using local people and host them on youtube.com. Include links to the most recent one in every email signature.
- Forget the website, almost no one visits the current one. Get listed in free local directories instead.
- Say hi to every neighbor of existing and new clients. Pesticide laws require neighbor notification. Why not knock on their door and say hi?
- Offer a travel savings discount to your customers if they help you get more work on their block.
- Say something new and always include a call to action. Everyone already knows landscapers cut lawns, mulch, top soil, prune, snow removal, etc.
Editor note: You could use these same ideas for practically any business.
Photo by MontanaRaven.
Building My Empire » Lists… Lists… Lists on October 18th, 2006 at 10:39 am
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identity theft protection on October 18th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
interesting ideas, thanks for sharing them with every body.
Rajan Sodhi on October 18th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
I ask this question to myself everyday, “How can I market my products for $0?” This drives you to be more creative and enterprising with your marketing, and do activities that inspire word-of-mouth and viral behavior. Ultimately, the best form of marketing. Jack Wolf’s plans to get 100 customers by April 2007 are bang on!