Case Studies

66% Increase In Hardscape Jobs For Landscaper

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Case Studies

66% Increase In Hardscape Jobs For Landscaper

The Goals

Increase the volume of hardscape jobs and provide higher quality profitable leads.

The Results

66% Increase in hardscape installations, client confirms higher profit per job.

Overall 294% more leads than predicted.

"It’s nice to know we are saving money and time by placing our company only in front of people that are actually shopping for our services. We like that LE can show us proof and track the data to show us if the efforts are working or not. We learn a lot by working with them," - Chris Gutzmer, Cofounder of G&R Contracting

In 2018, this landscaping company went from 12 hardscaping installation jobs in a year to 20; a 66% increase compared to the previous year. They also gained customers for many of their other core services. During their last review meeting of 2018, they said, “We had one of our most profitable years in the company’s 20-year history.”

We stress the importance of underpromising and overdelivering when it comes to the results we predict. This landscaping client was no exception. Below are the company’s 2018 results from August – November, which typically tends to be slower months for landscapers.

Lead Generation

This landscaping company received 294% more leads than expected from online search results. The chart below shows the actual results compared to the projected baseline (shown as 100%).

Expected Leads vs Actual Leads

Average Leads Per Month

Conversion Rate

Through a combination of paid search campaigns (PPC) and SEO, we achieved an average lead rate of 25% during their slow season. That is over 6X higher than the industry average conversion rate of 3.37%.

Avg. Cost Per Lead

The average cost-per-lead (new phone call or website form submission) from the pay-per-click Google Search campaigns was 63% less than expected. Even better, these cost-per-lead values do not include organic (free) search leads, which in some months brought in the same volume of leads as PPC. The chart below shows the actual results compared to the projected baseline (shown as 100%).

Avg. Cost Per Lead from PPC Search Expected vs Leads Actual

Paid Expected

Paid Actual

New Customers and Return On Investment

With an average close rate (acquisition rate) of 50%, this landscaping client gained about 4X as many new customers with profits much higher than the originally projected 100% ROI.

Our Approach

Research suggests that landscaping services – especially hardscapes – are typically well thought out purchases and not impulse buys. The reason these purchases are usually thought out before homeowners make a decision is because large landscaping projects tend to be expensive and take several days, or in some cases, weeks to complete.

As a result, it was decided to limit marketing efforts to online searches instead of social media. The reason being potential customers will already be in the act of shopping for landscaping services. Additionally, it was decided to focus the majority of our marketing efforts on leads who are in the “purchase” phase of the buying journey. These are shoppers who are 90% of the way through their buying process and are now ready to make a purchase decision. In order to get the most efficient use of our client’s marketing budget, we wanted to make sure their brand shows up when potential customers are already ready to hire a contractor, as opposed to interrupting them on social media, or in a buying phase earlier than the purchase decision.

Run Our Proprietary Profit Prediction Report

We started by completing our proprietary profit prediction report we call the MOA (Market Opportunity Analysis). For each service the company wanted to advertise, we broke down our expectations for monthly results. This included the amount of leads, amount of new client acquisitions, average cost-per-acquisition, total revenue, and even total profit. This information allowed the business to make an educated decision as to which services to market.

Design A Website That Generates Leads

Before driving potential customers to their website, it was critical to make sure visitors take the main action desired: contacting the landscaping company to request service. To that end, we designed a new mobile responsive website with a clear call-to-action (CTA). This was done by combining enticing and informative content in a simple user-friendly layout.

Create Ads That Drive Traffic To The Website

Next, we developed a highly targeted search marketing campaign focused on the most relevant and profitable terms people search for using Google. We then developed ads that were highly correlated to those searches. Finally, those ads lead to web pages (landing pages) that were created with information that answered the initial Google search.

Improve SEO For Free Lead Generation

Finally, we invested in long term lead generation growth by completing various on-page and off-page search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. This enables the landscaping company’s website to show the organic (free) results on Google and Bing.