“I’m stuck”, growled Megan. She was showing me her sales figures for the quarter. They looked a lot like last year. “I really thought we would be doing better by this time of year. We have great service and we can do pretty much anything you could want in landscaping, but I just can’t get the phone to ring!”
Megan had contacted me to help. Her shiny new trucks were sitting in the parking lot with nowhere to go. “Can you do SEO for me?” She asked “I want to get more business from the internet’.
Megan sounded like many small business owners I speak with. She was correct of course in thinking that she should be looking to the Internet for more business. Most people go to the internet when they are shopping for services like landscaping. Where she was off course was thinking that there is a silver bullet she could buy that would on its own get her more business.
“Would you just decide to buy another mower and think it would grow your business?” I asked “Of course not” she snapped. “I would need a truck to haul it, someone to run it, and a host of other tools and equipment to make that work. It is a whole process.”
“Well, getting business from the internet is the same thing. It is a whole process.” I smiled, hoping for one in return. No luck. “The first thing we need to do is decide what you are selling.“
“Landscaping!” she cried. “Look at our website! It’s all right there. Speedking 2610 zero-turn mowers, 56-inch decks on those things! Laser sight edge trimmers, Experienced crews! The best of everything!”
“So you are a landscaping company that has… Mowers” I said.
“Well…That is not the point” she said starting to slow down a bit. “Exactly!” I smiled again, “You are saying on your website that you have the same things everyone else does, I would hope that when I shop for a landscaping company they would have the equipment they need. Have any of your customers asked about what brand of mower you use?” “Well… no, not really” she mused.
“So why do people hire you?” I asked.
From there we started to make progress. She talked about customers wanting a beautiful yard but not knowing how to make one. She talked about people wanting to save time and do other things with their Saturdays than work in the yard. She talked about customers wanting to do projects that were beyond their skills. She talked about customers coming to her from other landscapers unhappy with the reliability of their service.
She started to see that she was selling a feeling and a service and that her customers were paying her to solve a problem or to make them feel proud of their yard rather than mowing their lawn or planting some flowers in the spring. The process of identifying your true product or service is Step 1 in any marketing process.
“OK, so I can see that selling solutions to customer problems is a lot better than selling…. Mowers” said Megan, finally smiling. “So what is the rest of this process?”
Well, the good news is that you just finished Step 1.
I outlined the 5 steps of marketing any business.
Step 1. What do you sell? Define your product or service.
Step 2. Who do you want to sell it to? Your Ideal Customer
Step 3. Why should anyone buy from you? Your value proposition
Step 4. Where do they hang out? What is the best place to reach them online? Your Online Presence
Step 5. How do you help them? Your Pain Points and Benefits. https://www.tagwyo.com/post/definingyourproduct
Once we have this process complete we can set a strategy based on what we know. Who knows, maybe we might even want to do SEO.
Watch this space for the rest of the story.
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