New Marketing Ideas

Week 47

This past week we added a few new marketing ideas. As the technology around us becomes more connected we have to keep up on the information that can help and hurt us. The conventional business is no longer conventional. It’s high tech, and if you are not feeding information into the system you will lose valuable advertising. Below I will list the areas we have expanded on and why.

Google business listings:
You must obey Google and participate with everything they offer. The more data Google stores about you and your company the better. The business listing will offer all internet users the ability to view detailed information about your company.

Photos:
Every photo you have on the internet should have specific names. For example, if you have an online photo gallery each photo is given the opportunity to be named. So, use keywords in the name. We have an image name “San Diego Landscape Construction – Stamped Concrete”. This image can be view when someone searches “Stamped Concrete San Diego” online in the search engine. Remember every bit of info counts.

Video:
Videos are no different. Post as many as you can on all video hosting sites and name the video’s using the keywords that are useful for you business. Check out these sites for video hosting.

  • Google Video
  • YouTube
  • Face Book
  • Yahoo Video
  • Vidilife
Email Signature:
Many companies fail to use there current technology to its maximum potential. An email signature is a tag line that is added to any new or relied email. It’s positioned at the bottom of the email and may included salutations and contact information. It may also contain marketing or promo information as well. Check out our new email signature for Emerald.

Invoicing and Statements:
This is another great place to sell your service to existing customers. Add new promotional services or products information to your monthly billing. We added Holiday lighting information to this months billing and plan on adding more items that are holiday specific as the year ends. It’s important to share with your customers all the work your do, they may not know.

Truck Signage:
This is a golden opportunity to advertise for free every day and all day. Vinyl signage for vehicles is cheap and easy to put on your company vehicles. Check out your local sign shop and ask them for ideas.

Email Marketing
This is the most powerful tool you can use. Sending bulk email to your customer base is the best way to offer services that target specific customers. We use the email services in our Elandia.com account. It makes us lots of money with little effort.

I will add more on Email Marketing later this month and share with you more in detail about what, how and why. I will give you a list of Do’s and Don’t. You can learn from my mistakes.

Good luck this week and I will see you in the trenches.




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Posted by Ken Paddock Tuesday, November 17, 2009 0 comments

New sales strategy begins

Week 46:

This week we are going to start a new sales campaign. I have hired a new business development salesperson and we are going after some new markets. We have been getting quite a few calls for our maintenance department from Property Management companies regarding small commercial accounts. We have been primarily a residential maintenance company but recently have felt to urge to cross over into the small commercial business.

I think with the down size of the economy a lot of companies have lost that competitive edge, level of service or motivation. In these tough times it’s important to remember not to panic. If you are losing account quickly take a look why and fix the challenge immediately.

With the loss of maintenance customers comes the reduction in extra work. I found that 40% of our total maintenance income is generated by extra projects. It’s very important to protect your client base. It will produce more than just the monthly service fees.

Our Strategy:

Residential Accounts: We are going to work within our current client base. We have set up a 12 month program for the year where we are going to perform specific task like fertilizing lawns, fruit tree pruning and winterizing roses. Our Elandia.com program has the ability to automate the process. We will set up a schedule and notify our customers via email when the time comes to perform a specific event. We believe that offering a list of services scheduled through out the year our customers will most likely agree and give us a guarantee that 40% in extra revenue will come true. We have found most customer want proactive services, the challenge is the system to offer them consistently.

Small Commercial: We are going start cold calling a list of property management companies and offer water audits to get our foot into the door. In California where we operate our business the water shortage has created quite an opportunity. We believe water conservation is the hook to our sales pitch. If you have not yet jumped on the band wagon you should do so right away.

There are quite a few irrigation companies offering products and services to help. Here are just a few we have used. Smartline Controllers from Weathermatic, Rain Bird sprinkler nozzles and Hunter nozzles. Drip systems are very popular and easy for your crews to install. Every yard has an old spray system that can easily be converted to a drip system and a timer that could be upgraded.

Good luck this week and I will see you in the trenches.

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Posted by Ken Paddock Monday, November 9, 2009 0 comments

Welcome to the Elandia Network.

We are excited to share with you our vision and to expose you to a new way of doing business. We know it may be a challenge to change the way you run your business so that's we created Elandia.com and The Elandia Network. Our goal is to guide and provide you with the tools you need to make this change and start using technology to save time and make more profits. Please join us in our journey to the next generation of business. This blog will give you a diary of how we our Landscape Construction and Maintenance company Emerald Landscape is growing in a failing economy. We are going to share our successes and failures so you can use this information to make better decisions. We will update the site once a week with new solutions and ideas to help you. Thanks for making us part of your team.

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Posted by Ken Paddock Sunday, November 8, 2009 0 comments