What do you do to get fall calls?

[Clapper&company]

Well with mowing season coming to the end, I want to drum up alot more fall work, clean ups gutters Ect. What have you guys found works the best? Thanks

[Steve]

Are you marketing your fall services to your current client base?

Have you put ads in craigslist?

What about in the business section of your local paper?

[MikeO]

I dont know what it is with this tape measurer and feet. but, i know for a fact nobody wants to climb a ladder 2 stories up. so u can screw around all day long with a tape measurer I tell them what i want and 98% of the time i get it. i wont tell you my secret on here so if u want to know what i do to make alot of money then hit me up..Its all good Hoss

[Steve]

Here is a list of some Fall marketing ideas on my blog

http://lawnchat.com/?cat=35

[picframer]

A few things:

Drop off cards to homes that we see could use our service

Dropping off cards to homes that have a lot of hardwoods for our vacuum mulching service

Small newspaper ad in a community newspaper

Cards on those outdoor mail boxes

I start a month before hand changing the key word on my website, for example for fall I changed them in mid August, at the moment I am receiving two inquiries a day on average and they are right where I want them, the heart of the rich end of the city and the hits are leaf collection. I study key words, use a software to see how I rank against the competition then tweak it to get a higher ranking, works perfect and doesn't cost me anything other than my time.

At the moment we have 73 leaf jobs, I want 100+ but it's still early.

When I visit I am picking up a lot of other services, pressure washing, gutter cleaning if it's not too high, pruning, removing stumps, top dressing, a lot of spraying we are going straight out again.

Work will generally not come to you, you have to go find it, I think this and a few other things we did this summer made the company an amazing success in it's first year.

We are so busy I just ordered a four wheel drive all sheel steer John Deere tractor mower X729, 3 cyl diesel for leaf collection and spraying difficult lawns and a 3028SE full size tractor for cleaning farm work which is a new service that took off.

[Steve]

I start a month before hand changing the key word on my website, for example for fall I changed them in mid August, at the moment I am receiving two inquiries a day on average and they are right where I want them, the heart of the rich end of the city and the hits are leaf collection. I study key words, use a software to see how I rank against the competition then tweak it to get a higher ranking, works perfect and doesn't cost me anything other than my time.

How big of a deal is changing key words on a website? I think this is something that is often over looked.

Would this be considered changing the theme of the website to potentially a Fall theme now?

Should this be changed every season?

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

How big of a deal is changing key words on a website? I think this is something that is often over looked.

Would this be considered changing the theme of the website to potentially a Fall theme now?

Should this be changed every season?

Very, Very simple, you just change the Meta tags and sometimes I will change the page description just a little, because my site now has over 7,800 hits since April, it get's crawled every three or four days, I know this as I run software that emails me when a crawler has checked in on changes to my site.

I personally didn't change the theme per say as I don't have time but I have done that with my woodworking site in the fall changing it to a Christmas theme, not sure if that made a difference on hits.

What I do know is the changes I stay ahead of on my website make a major difference, within 48 hours of receiving an email from the software that I have been crawled I start getting inquiries, when I check to see what the person may have been searching I see the new keywords have been updated in the search engine. Then i run another software that tells me where I rank in our area for that keyword, if I am fourth or 5th, I run the other sites to see what keywords they are using and how much that word is in their home page contant, I adjust accordingly and within a week I am number 1 or 2, all of this takes less than 30 min of actual time, it's free.

I change a month ahead of a season, almost as bad as Costco, they have had Christmas stuff out for three weeks, should be summer by December

[Steve]

You are so on the ball with everything! This is fantastic!

How important do you feel it is to show the services you offer with some sort of discount being promoted vs no discount? How much of an effect do you think discounts have in getting customers to sign up with seasonal services?

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

You are so on the ball with everything! This is fantastic!

How important do you feel it is to show the services you offer with some sort of discount being promoted vs no discount? How much of an effect do you think discounts have in getting customers to sign up with seasonal services?

Discounts make the hair stand on the back of my neck most of the times, why did the company rip me off the first time???? No kidding....A few years ago I bought a set of tires for my car, forget what I paid but they were top of the line, around three weeks later I herd on the radio the company was having a sale, this is a national company, I went in and priced the same tires, almost two hundred less than I paid, handed them a receipt and asked about a partial refund, they said no.

This has happened to me at big box stores like Home Depot etc and it makes my blood boil, if someone is going out of business that is one thing and I have no issue with the big sales then, same as these friggin boxing day sales.

Anyhow my price is my price, I don't move, never have and never will, if someone pushes too hard for a discount, I simply walk and I do not turn back, I have more than enough work I don't need it and yes I have had clients call me back changing their mind, in those cases I will go back excapt for one case, the guy called me a prick because I would not take cash and give him a 25% discount because he knew people....that simply pissed me off, I have never in my life had a customer have such an attitude and I suspect the job although small would have been trouble.

I visited a customer this morning who found my website based on a new search word I did three weeks ago, I know because I asked, it ended up in a two hour visit and ten grand in work, no idea how in the heck I will get all this work done before snow. I hired 6 school bus drivers, they work for me between picking up the kids then after the afternoon run they come back and work until dark, I hired two people through social services, a friend works there and I thought this would help some people in need and Mike (friend who works there) knows me and how hard we work so he does the screening, last week in addition to this I had four temp staff from an agency.

Transportation is an issue as many either do not have or no longer have a vehicle but we are getting by.

[Steve]

--> Oh very interesting ok so then maybe it is better to simply have a list of seasonal services you offer. Some of these services, a home owner may not even be considering at the moment but when they see it listed, it might spark something and then they might say, 'hey that is something I should do.'

These are all great lessons!