If you’ve always had a hard time promoting your landscaping company, this could mean that you’ve been looking in the wrong place. Sure, companies selling services always have had to double their efforts to get new clients, but why do some thrive while others miserably fail?

The simple answer to this question is that successful landscapers focus on what matters: the quality of their services and the nature oftheir relationships with their clients. They don’t let themselves become sidetracked by vanity metrics, such as their number of likes or followers on social media. Instead, they have often realized long before others that customers are not numbers but people who need and expect value from the companies with which they interact.
These small businesses gave and gave, and they gave long before approaching prospects with offers. They focused on developing connections which were strong to cause prospects to feel bound to take action. Perhaps you should try this approach for your small landscaping business too? Here’s how.

1. Build Strategic Relationships with Suppliers

Not only can suppliers be a valuable source of information, but they can also help you grow your customer base. For example, glass fencing installers may interact with a customer who wants to enclose his deck and refer that client to your business. Furniture suppliers might have a customer who needs outdoor seating. You get the idea?

Your goal is to be the most helpful partner possible. Try to show how interested you are in a supplier’s business as a way to succeed through offering to mention its products whenever you can. Send clients their way or help them develop new products or services. Ask yourself what you would need if you were in their shoes and if you can offer it to them.

2. Partner with Design Professionals

Any professional who’s involved in one way or another in landscape design is someone you want to have on your friend list. Interior designers, architects, and landscape architects should be at the top of your list, but you should also push yourself to think outside the box. Try to build relationships with others through which you can offer constructive advice or help to evaluate the potential risks of a site. Again, ask yourself what they would need that you can provide?

3. Set up Industry Meetings

We live in an overly competitive world within which businesses are more interested in sabotaging the success of other companies in their industries than helping each other.

Why not set a different example and start organizing industry meetings?

In this way, you can establish yourself as a thoughtful leader, and you can also expand your network and, consequently, your customer base. For example, you could organize a seminar about some of the most common problems businesses in the landscaping industry regularly face and help to provide a few solutions. Don’t be disappointed if the room will be almost empty during the first meetings, but give your best to designing awesome agendas, and soon more people will join.

4. Sponsor a Sports Team

Take a second and think about the number of people who gather at local sports events. Have you done the math? The numbers are pretty compelling. From coaches, players, and volunteers to the friends, families, and acquaintances of the players, each event brings together a wide range of potential collaborators and customers. You can do more than just supporting the local team financially. For example, you could organize meetings where you talk about the players’ hopes and dreams for the future. You could use these occasions as opportunities to present your business and maybe even direct some of these individuals toward careers in landscaping.

5. Be an Active Member of the Community

One of the best ways to grow your small business is to build relationships within your community. For example, you can organize a meeting to help homeowners learn how to design a beautiful garden or how to prepare their yards for the cold season. You could also donate money for something like the renovation of a school’s basketball court.

Bottom line: let your prospects understand that you are a valuable community member who cares about its wellbeing.

6. Share Your Knowledge

Your experience is your greatest asset. That’s one of the reasons a lot of landscapers protect their knowledge as a valuable treasure. But, here’s the thing: when you share your knowledge, you are, in fact, building your reputation as an expert and trusted landscaping service provider.

Make sure that whatever marketing material comes out of your hands, it addresses a landscaping issue your prospects might face. Write an article for the local newspaper about how to build a pond, or share insights about a project you are working on currently.

Conclusion

Landscapers have it tough, but their challenges are not impossible. Use these tips to develop long-term relationships with your prospects. Sure, it will cost you time and resources, but it will all be worth it when you see your sales skyrocket.