If I were setting out to inspire and educate on matters such as getting the best out of the media, I would turn to Experts in the field! We have had several requests for advice of the subject, and turned to the Library Endorsers The Landscaper’s Circle with a request that they produce a helpful guide.
We all know that posting regularly on social media is important, but it can be time consuming. You may be of the opinion that as long as you post when you remember or when you are on a project it will help your business anyway.
The best way to build your business through utilising social media is to be consistent with posting, offer educational and interesting posts to your audience and engage with your followers i.e. be social!
You are probably well aware of the positive impact doing this on social media can have on your business, but after being on site all day or running around quoting projects, the LAST thing you want to do is spend time trying to think of an image to post, let alone what the caption should be (and let’s not mention the hashtags)!
This article is not going through what you should post but more about how you can save time by creating your social posts in batches and then using a scheduling app so you can schedule them to go live on a later date. This will enable you to create engaging, relevant content that is posted out consistently (win-win). It will then also leave you to be social with your followers, commenting, liking and engaging with their content (which all social platforms love, and they will reward you for it).
You can easily and simply spend 30 minutes once a week creating your posts (captions and images) for your social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and the like and then schedule them for the whole week. By running your social media marketing in this way, it will save you time from creating posts on the hop (when you remember or have time) and you can schedule the week and forget about it till the following week.
Now there are a LOT of scheduling apps out there but to help you decide on what will suit your business best, below are the top 3 we would recommend:
1. Later.com – this will let you schedule posts for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. Easy to use, using drag and drop. It has a great feature called ‘Link in Bio’ where you can create a link from a picture in your post to a relevant page on your website i.e. a post about a patio links to your patios page on your website. Has a free plan and more advanced paid for option.
2. Hootsuite – this includes LinkedIn and YouTube as well as all the platforms listed above. Hootsuite is a paid for only scheduler.
3. Facebook Creator Studio – is only for Facebook and Instagram but no other social media platforms. It is accessed within your Facebook page. However, the advantage of using this scheduler is that it will schedule IGTV’s for you which no other scheduler will do. It is completely free and a great place to start.
If you still think that it would be a better use of your time to outsource your social media, then we can help with that.
Social media is one way of generating more enquiries but how else do you get more customers?
Firstly, It is essential to think of and plan out your marketing strategy with this goal in mind. We have six basic steps to get more enquiries for your business at any time of the year and whenever you have a gap in the diary.
Here are our six steps to getting more enquiries:
- Get clear on your avatars. By this I mean look at your ideal customers, what are their interests, likes, income level, home etc. Get clear on your avatar (ideal client) and then adapt your marketing message to suit them. Be as specific as possible to ensure your message talks directly to them solving their problems.
- Plan! Have a marketing plan and schedule all your activities to this plan. Map out your social posts, blogs, website updates, gallery image updates, any sales you want to run etc. Map out all the activities that happen regularly and then add activities that are on a more ad hoc basis i.e. winter offer, email campaigns or a launch of a new service or product. Write everything into a calendar and to timeframes that suit your business. Then utilise free social media schedulers (later.com) and automated CRM systems (Mail Chimp or Active Campaign) that will make this easier for you to implement.
- Paid advertising. This is the quickest way to get leads into your business. The key here is to focus on your avatar when you are crafting the advert and choosing the best platform to advertise on. There are loads of social platforms to choose from as well as Google Ads and the more traditional methods of print advertising. Look at the platforms audience and relate back to your client avatar before spending your hard-earned cash.
- Organic search. This is when customers search for specific terms and your business is shown on the results (mostly on Google search). This is when you make sure that Google Analytics is active on your site so you can track how many users are visiting your website, where they are coming from and if they are converting. Then you ensure that the pages on your website talk directly to your ideal client (look at your avatars) and all pages of your site has relevant keywords and search terms they are using throughout the copy. Beware, it has to read well and be relevant to your audience. If you are running an advert, make sure it is directed to the right page on your website that is the most relevant to the ad copy. Do NOT send every ad to your home page.
- Track your marketing. This is key in order to keep track of what marketing strategies are working (so you can do more of it) and what isn’t working so you can tweak, amend or stop. If you don’t track your marketing efforts, you could end up spending money on things that are not working for you. In addition, you need to track return on investment (ROI). What do your leads/enquiries cost, what is the cost of a sale, what is the average sale value and lifetime customer worth? These are the important numbers to track in relation to marketing spend.
- Consistency. This is really about being consistent with your marketing. So, I would choose one campaign or marketing avenue (e.g. Facebook ad) and run for 90 days to see a true response rate and reflection of its success. If using a social media platform(s) then consistently posting content is key along with engaging with followers and commenting and liking other posts.
I hope this has given you a plan to follow for kick starting your marketing. If you need any further help or advice just get in touch.
Contact: Paula Warman, The Landscaper’s Circle, info@thelandscaperscircle.co.uk
Tel: 02381 800108