I'm writing this on a Sunday. I woke up early and made breakfast for the family and decided that after the two weeks of rain the Mobile area just received that the lawn needed to be mowed. Normally when I'm away from my computer I have time to think about things. At times I get fixated on something and start to write a blog post in my head. Well, today I got fixated on Positioning. Specifically, I got fixated on positioning and services or products that lawn professionals or landscaping companies could provide.
For those of you that aren't familiar, positioning here is a working definition:
Positioning is the process of identifying an opportunity, and developing a solution based on research, segmentation and supporting data. Positioning refers to the angle of attack a business choses to carry out their marketing and business objectives. Positioning relates to strategy, increasing sales volume, brand recognition, or reach in advertising.
The more focused you can make your positioning the higher the likelihood that you are going to successfully convert someone into a user of your services or products. Let's use the Landscape Industry as an example since I am in the middle of mowing my lawn. Just being a landscape company is not good enough. What kind of services do you provide? Do you do hardscapes? Do you install landscaping? Are you an architect that can handle erosion issues and larger structural issues? Do you do lawn maintenance? Do you just provide fertilization? Do you offer tree trimming and removal? All of those services are just off the top of my head. I am sure if we dug around for some time we could find a whole slew of services that a landscape company can offer.
The next question would be, to whom are you offering the services? Are you targeting the busy executive, or the single mom, or the retiree that just does not have the ability to do the work? There may even be specific neighborhoods in your area that you should target. I live in Timbercreek on the Eastern shore of Mobile Bay. This neighborhood is mostly middle class folks. There are a lot of hard workers in this neighborhood but at the end of the day everyone has to decide what is important to them. Am I going to spend more time with my family? or am I going to mow the grass? Am I going to work on building my business? Or am I going to plant new plants? These are all things that a landscape Business Owner should take into consideration when positioning themselves.
Many landscape business owners position themselves by the service instead of by the target demographic. Judge me if you want but recently we spent upwards of $20,000 on re-landscaping our yard. We had some serious erosion issues and needed to do something about it. We had a bite it off in chunks but a year later we are finished and are now in maintenance mode. Part of the reason we had a problem is that I'm too busy with family and business responsibilities to spend the time necessary to maintain a yard. My suspicion is that the company that did the installation would be the best at understanding how to maintain the yard they installed.
To make matters worse I'm out mowing and I'm noticing that there are areas where there are still erosion issues. I'm also noticing that the sod that we planted is not spreading as it should. There are also a lot of weeds in the beds because the pine straw has not been replaced in six months. Not naming names but the landscaping company that provided me with the installation services has missed the mark on capitalizing on the relationship that they had with me. There was a good opportunity for them to come in and charge me for additional services. They probably could have gotten me to sign on for a maintenance contract that would have earned them recurring revenue. As many of you can imagine the landscaping business has seasonal ups and downs. If the business owner was to have maintenance agreements with all of his installation clients then he could spend the down months rectifying issues that many of his clients might have. And I would have monthly recurring revenue for doing additional work on their yards.
Now go back and replace landscape company with your industry in the article above. Are you positioning your company so that you can grow your business and ensure that you're around for another year?
Positioning and taking a look at services that you offer is important to any business whether you are a landscaping business, digital marketing company, lawyer, health food store, or restaurant. Building your business is not just about a single transaction or even a string of transactions. But rather it is about defining your target audience and positioning yourself in the eyes of those people. We love those kinds of problems. If you are working through these issues we can help.
