Word of mouth is often one of the strongest sources of business for your landscape company, but you can take that one step further by soliciting positive reviews. These customer testimonials can then be utilized in multiple marketing methods.
Tapping into your base of loyal customers can help you establish credibility with new leads and impact their buying decisions.
Collecting Customer Feedback
You should be collecting feedback from your clients on a regular basis, but some of the best times to request a testimonial are after completing a project or at the end of your maintenance season.
If you want to ensure a better response rate, you need to make the process of providing feedback as easy as possible for your client. Provide a quick link or form they can fill out with specific guiding questions, such as ‘What did you enjoy most about working with us?’ or ‘What would you tell others about what we do best?’
You can also train your team to ask clients to leave a review if they’ve had a positive interaction with a customer on site or if they’ve expressed their satisfaction recently.
Sending out surveys regularly can also provide you with favorable feedback you can use in your marketing efforts.
If you’re still experiencing low engagement with your requests for testimonials or feedback, you can consider offering incentives, but be mindful that these may influence the response they provide.
While obviously, the goal is to gather complimentary feedback, receiving negative reviews are also helpful as they can let you know where your company needs to improve.
It’s best to thank these customers for voicing their concerns and work with them to resolve the issue. These clients can end up being even stronger advocates after you make things right.
Where to Share Testimonials
The sky’s the limit when it comes to your options for sharing positive customer feedback in your marketing efforts.
You can incorporate them onto your website’s homepage, service page or portfolio pages. Including a client’s firsthand experience along with before-and-after photos can help drive home your company’s capabilities to visitors.
Similarly, you can share quotes or client story highlights on social media organically or with paid ads to get in front of your ideal audience.
If you utilize direct mail or leave-behinds for prospective clients, including powerful quotes from current customers can cause leads to be more likely to consider hiring you over receiving a generic lawn care pitch.
You can also create email campaigns that spotlight a ‘Client of the Month’ that shares how you went about solving a specific pain point for a client. These are ideal to send to other leads who have contacted you in the past about a similar situation.
If you have the equipment and bandwidth, or work with a marketing firm, you can even create video testimonials that show the client on their property explaining their experience with your organization.
Taking Testimonials to the Next Level
No matter how you choose to share your client feedback, make sure to focus on testimonials that provide specific details versus vague praise. Look for those who say how you transformed their yard into their favorite entertaining space versus ‘They did a great job.’
Always get written permission from the client before using any of their feedback in your marketing.
With the client’s permission, include details like their name, picture or their general area to help add authenticity. Using anonymous reviews can end up coming across as fake.
If you opt to have your Google reviews flow onto your website, make sure you regularly request new reviews as only showing 5-star reviews from years ago will make visitors question if you’re still in business or if your quality has dropped since then.
Work to build out a library of client testimonials so you’re not having to use the same handful of quotes in all your marketing efforts.
