Once you’ve established an arboriculture company, you might start thinking about the next steps for growing your company and attracting more customers. The tree care industry is a thriving sector that’s projected to continue growing. The growing demand for tree care services means more opportunities for arborists and tree care contractors to grow and market their companies.
1) Expand From a Strong Foundation
Make sure your arboriculture company has strong foundations before you plan for growth and expansion. Take the time to review or create a business plan and budget. Make sure all your legal bases are covered with licenses, permits, etc. Craft a strong brand image with a recognizable name and logo for your marketing materials, company vehicles, and employee uniforms.
As you start expanding, keep consistent with the tree care brand you’ve already established. You’re building on an established business, not starting something totally new. For example, you probably won’t want to jump from tree care to lawn care as you start to expand. But if you specialize in tree removal, you might expand into tree trimming, pruning, or planting.
Also, consider expanding your customer base. If most of your customers are residential clients, expand your marketing efforts to include commercial properties like golf courses, university campuses, and businesses. If most of your clients are commercial, try marketing to local residents as well.
2) Retain Current Customers
Often, efforts to grow a green industry business focus on attracting new clients. But it’s just as important to keep the clients you currently have and to plan for retaining the new clients. You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to keep coming back to your company.
Providing outstanding customer service is the best thing you can do to retain clients. This includes providing quality tree care service as well as pleasant interactions with employees. Offering features that make it easy for clients to work with you—like easy online bill pay options and the ability to opt-in to auto-renewal—also go a long way toward ensuring customers will want to stick with your company.
3) Optimize Your Online Presence
There are a ton of different things you can do to market your company online. All the options can get overwhelming, but you don’t have to be on every social media platform or constantly update the platforms you do have. You just need to pick the most important online things to focus on and keep them up to date.
Make sure you claim your Google business profile, and that the hours of operation and contact info are up to date. Add photos to help make the profile stand out in local searches and encourage your customers to upload their own photos and reviews. Good reviews help new customers see that you’re a business you can trust, so don’t be afraid to ask people to review your company after you’ve finished a job for them.
You’ll also want to make sure that your company info is consistent across platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc. You don’t have to post regularly on all those sites but do keep them up to date so customers won’t find confusing or contradictory information.
4) Prioritize Effective Marketing
In addition to keeping online business profiles up to date and asking customers to review your tree care services, you’ll also want to maintain a company website and link to it from your profiles. Make sure the website is up to date, both in content and with a mobile-friendly design that’s easy to navigate. It also provides a good platform for directing customers to your online bill-pay system if you choose to set one up.
Building an email list is an essential step for marketing in the modern world. You’ll use this list to keep in touch with clients by sharing things like educational content, promotions, referral codes, and other relevant information.
At the same time, don’t forget about offline marketing. Branding on your trucks and work uniforms can catch potential customers’ eyes and make sure customers view your crew as professionals. Lawn signs and mailed flyers in your service area can also be effective at attracting new customers.
5) Invest In Your Team
For a growing tree care business to thrive, your arborist team also needs to be growing. That means finding the right people to hire, training new and existing employees, and working to retain talent. Finding and retaining employees is one of the big challenges facing companies today, in the green industry as well as other sectors.
According to Green Industry Pros, some of the best things you can do to hire and retain top talent include offering a career advancement path, developing a healthy company culture, and having a “why?” behind your company to make the work more meaningful. In addition, offer competitive pay and benefits, including time off to support employees’ work/life balance.
The happier your team is, the better the service will be that they provide customers. Your customers also directly benefit from the training you provide for employees. From onboarding to continuing education, investing in employee training is vital for growing your tree care company.
Get Commercial Grade Equipment from Richardson Saw
As your arboriculture company grows and the years pass, you’ll need to purchase additional equipment and replace worn-out equipment. You can do all that right here at Richardson Saw & Lawnmower. We carry top-quality commercial lawn, landscaping, and arborist equipment.
Whether you’re looking for a STIHL chainsaw or Samson ropes, we’ve got you covered. Richardson Saw is your one-stop shop for all your arborist needs as well as commercial lawn and landscaping equipment. Contact us if you have questions, or stop by to chat with our equipment experts and take a look at our inventory.
