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By Matt Wacek
Published on: August 30, 2019
Last Updated: November 21, 2021
See how our digital marketing system drove traffic to Best Outdoor Services‘ website and they acquired 100s of hyper targeted residential and commercial lawn, landscaping, irrigation and snow removal leads which accounted to a MASSIVE increase in revenue from 2019 to 2020 allowing them to expand from operating out of a pole barn to a 5,000 sq. ft. facility on 4 acres.
We used to offer one-time website builds, and in late March 2019, Brandon (sales manager & landscape designer at Best Outdoor Services) reached out regarding getting their website completed. He gave it a valiant effort to start building their company website from scratch but realized he did not have the time to dedicate to the endeavor, so he reached out to us. At this point in time they just wanted to have something in existence, so we went with an MVP – minimum viable product. This included a homepage, dedicated “contact us” page with an in-depth contact form for prospects to fill out, and an employee application built on their website. We built the homepage, contact us, and online employee application within days and also optimized their Google My Business listing in the process.
What happened in the next couple weeks was incredible as spring had finally arrived to Minnesota…
Shown below are screenshots (excluding the private info of the prospects) that came through Best Outdoor Services’ website. Please note, this data does not include any phone calls or direct emails that were sent to the company.
Dozens upon dozens of inbound calls and web form leads came into their business. They already had a Google My Business listing in place, but when we combined it with a base website that allowed prospects to find the GMB listing and access their website – this lead to dramatic results. From the messages above, they closed one of the first prospects that filled out their form with a small landscape maintenance project that was completed and had made $700 profit on the job with 2 more that had already been scheduled and a formal bid & design on a $50,000 project.
About a month into the spring rush (May 2019), they decided to have us build out their entire website and optimize it for the search engines as they did not have the time to tackle this project in-house. So we built out pages containing information about the company, each service they offer, as well as 10 city+service pages optimized for landscaping services targeting many of the surrounding suburbs in their service area.
By June their website was completed and leads continued to flow through the completion of the 2019 lawn/landscape season as they switched gears to snow removal. We continued with SEO work through 2020 including additional content on their website, backlinking and more. Search engine optimization is a longer term strategy, but once executed – it’s worth the wait.
We continued our monthly SEO work as we watched the leads continue to roll in through their website. In the month of May we had a short discussion regarding their return on investment since it had been a little over a year of working with us.
Just from the website form submissions (prospects finding their website on the Google search, visiting their site and completing their contact form), they had closed $120,000 in revenue. This excludes the phone calls that came in as they did not want to utilize call tracking since their phone number is a well known part of their brand and they wanted to keep their phone number congruent.
Let that sink in. $120,000 from the form submissions alone. The average investment for our digital marketing program is $1,500 – $2,000 per month, so a 6x ROI directly off the contact form submissions. This also doesn’t include all the potential up-sells, referrals from these newly acquired clients, neighbors seeing the crews out working, etc.
This message was quick and to the point, stating, “Dude, our website is killing it this year!”
Seeing that put a smile on my face knowing that our hard work has helped their business so much. They were more than willing to be a part of a case study (that you are reading right now).
Brandon made sure to mention that another $50,000 must be added to the total ROI. So as of June 2020, $170,000 in new revenue just from website submissions.
Peak season treated them very well with leads coming into continually. Allowing their company to be in a place of abundance where they were able to raise their paver patio installation prices to an astounding $30-$40/sf with clients lining up to pay those prices – it helps that they do great work as well. At one point this spring, their estimator was booked out 3 weeks for meetings with prospects.
When we execute a search engine optimization campaign, our focus is on localized domination. This allows our clients to hone in and obtain more traffic, prospects and clients closer to their headquarters or shop and cities within their service area. This exactly what we did for Best Outdoor Services.
As you can see by the text conversation to the right, their goal was to have most of their landscape projects be near the northern Twin Cities suburbs and ideally north of a specific interstate highway (694) to avoid rush hour traffic. With our localized domination approach, the majority of their work was even further north than anticipated – allowing them to save 20-30 labor hours a week for their landscape install crew because they don’t have to sit in traffic as much.
That may not sound like a lot, but the math for a 3-4 person crew at loaded wages of $20/hr avg x 4 = $80, multiplied by 20 hours per week = $1,600/wk in payroll, multiplied by a 7 month season (approx. 28 weeks) = $44,800 in potential payroll expenses saved. In addition to bringing in more revenue, they are also saving 10s of 1000s of dollars every year.
Here are some excerpts of that conversation:
“We are double booked in July, and completely booked SOLID through mid-August, as well as the first 3 weeks of September with installation projects” (keep in mind, this conversation took place in early June).
“We raised prices and have had a 42% increase in Townhome turf maintenance contracts while only having to increase overhead by 1 lawn crew.” Bringing their total amount of maintenance crews from 3 to 4.
And on the subject of why they chose to work with us:
“You have the experience in the industry. You know how to build a paver patio or retaining wall, and how to cut grass commercially. You’ve been in our shoes, you know what we do and what to write.”
“We were about to hire an agency that has an office in downtown Minneapolis, but you know the industry and they do not…and that’s what sold me!” (Referring to a competitor who doesn’t specialize in the green industry).
And finally . . .
“…The best thing we ever did was have you do our website & SEO!”
In the world of digital marketing, there is nothing more fulfilling than seeing your clients get an insane return on their investment. Especially if a company already has great systems in place to handle growth, such as the case with Best Outdoor Services. Our marketing program is essentially the bridge that connects our clients to more prospects in their service area, allowing them to increase revenue and profit margin.
Landscape Marketing Pros is a digital marketing agency based in Florida that serves clients nationwide. Our mission is to help our clients wear one less hat while managing their business and deliver an astounding return on investment in the process.
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