Marketing idea for the year.

[Steve]

An idea I was thinking of this year to help you better market your business and get your name out is to partner up with a local pizzeria or eatery. If you could find a local pizzeria that would be willing to pay for printing of door hangers and you could distribute or the reverse. I think it might be a good idea to have something like this with coupons on the one side for the pizzeria and then seasonal services you offer on the other. These door hangers could be distributed multiple times through out the year. This would help keep your name out in the area. They would be including useful information, coupons as well as your seasonal services. It could be done with flyers too but I think might look better with door hangers. What are your thoughts on this?

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[maelawncare]

Lawn care business tips

well i tried this last year. i went through a local pizza hut that i knew the manager of. did not work out too well. i beleave we did about 1k flyers/coupons and didnt get one call or customer. oh and i used the flyers that was made by you guys.

[LawncareMarketingMagic]

Another way to do this would be to let the pizza company deliver your flyers for you. Instead of creating door hangers, create a flyer that would get attached to the top of the pizza box so it gets delivered everytime a pizza gets delivered. That way, you're not out spending time delivering flyers, the pizza company's doing it when they do what they do anyway.

A couple of things to keep in mind to make this a successful campaign though:

Start off with a powerful, attention grabbing headline. It should say something like, 'XYZ Lawn Care Wants to Buy Your Next Pizza For You!', then go on to explain your offer that would include a free pizza at some point. You would of course need conditions attached to the free pizza but you wouldn't necessarily want to explain those conditions in detail on the flyer. The whole purpose is just to get them to pick up the phone and call you. When they do call, you can explain the offer in greater detail and any conditions associated with it.

You would also want to incentivize the pizza company. Tell them you'll pay them $XX or XX% of every service call you get from the flyers. Make it worthwhile for them to want to partner with you. Perhaps you could offer to distribute one of their special coupons or offers to your customers.

Something to keep in mind with this type of promotion though. A lot of pizza gets delivered to apartments, which make horrible prospects for lawn care companies. As a result, you'd want to see if there's anyway to limit the distribution of the flyers to homes instead of apartments or condos. This could be a little tricky and with as cheaply as you can print a flyer it might not be worth worrying about, but definitely something to keep in mind.

[Two_Dogs]

I've thought about this also, I'm well accquainted with the owner of the local pizza place and its main market is delivery. I don't think he'd be willing to pony up for the printing though.

I thought I could pay for the printing, likely even print the fliers myself in order to help defray the cost. I figured if I was going to spend any money on this sort of piggyback promotion I would rather spend it in the form of a discount for a menu item. I figured the cost of this could be absorbed, for the most part in the service provided (thought of tieing it to chemical applications).

This is in a town only about 4 miles from my home/shop, I realized at the end of season I kind of dropped the ball on this one as I largely ignored this market because I thought it to small (pop 2000). I want to target this area in a limited fashion if thats possible, this year.

Still thinking about this and trying to refine this promotion. Question? What are your thoughts on offering a free menu item with a chemical application? i.e. dessert pizza is a relatively inexpensive item, $5 to be exact, in your experience would a customer response be stronger towards an otem that is free or discounted? I would suspect the free item would generate more response.
any thoughts?

[Steve]

Thanks maelawncare, for the insight into your last year's marketing.

Thanks LawncareMarketingMagic for your continuing thoughts and insight.

Hi Two_Dogs,

I think this post is now dealing with two pizza marketing ideas. One is to distribute flyers to promote a lawn cut and a free pizza, similar to the flyer design here.
What I was suggesting was adding something you know most everyone could use "pizzeria coupons" on one side of the door hanger / flyer. To have fresh new content when you are handing out your flyer/doorhangers. It also may help keep your flyer on the refrigerator longer until they use the coupons instead of it being thrown out.
As Chestin mentioned, maybe you could use a catchy title like 'XYZ Lawn Care Wants to Buy Your Next Pizza For You!' and the coupon could be a buy one get one free, compliments of your lawn company. You don't pay for anything but the flyer printing and maybe the distribution. The pizza owner may be into it because they are getting exposure from you.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]What are your thoughts on offering a free menu item with a chemical application?

First I want to say that no one knows what will work until it is tried. It couldn't hurt to try this on a specific group of customers in a certain geographic area so you can track it.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I would suspect the free item would generate more response. any thoughts?

It very well could. I think that would be very interesting if you could find some offers you could make for people and suggest them to the local pizza owner. Then maybe you could pay for the printing and distribute them the first time. If they are a hit, maybe in the future the pizza owner would be more into taking part of some of the expense.

[mowboy]

I think sharing the costs of advertising with other businesses is a great idea. I have used it successfully in the past although never with a pizza company. Not to say that the pizza idea isn't a good one. Team Gopher brought out a good point in that the doorhanger is likely to be around for at least as long as they use the pizza coupon.

As for putting your flyer on the pizza box I think that LawncareMarketingMagic hit the nail on the head with the comment about reaching the correct market. Apartments are useless to us. Even houses... how do we know they don't rent? I think the key when partering with 'Buddy Businesses' in this manner is trying to find companies with similar markets as you. How about pool cleaners, home cleaning service, exterior house services (gutters, window washing, pressure washing, painting). These types of companies are also looking for middle to high income home owners... just like you.

Doing some re*****cal marketing projects with each other (i.e. envelope stuffers in each other's bills) and sharing each others customer lists could be very profitable for both parties!