The landscaping industry is highly saturated, so how do you make your landscaping business stand out from your competitors? When users search for a landscaper, they want to be sure they will be doing business with someone who is knowledgeable, reliable, and trustworthy. This means they will be reading reviews, which may be found on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other third-party sites. Keep reading to see why using reputation management matters as part of your digital marketing strategy for your landscaping business.
Monitor Feedback
It used to be that people would rely on word-of-mouth recommendations for landscaping services from friends, family, and neighbors. If customers were happy (or unhappy), they would go to the business owner or manager directly to share their feedback. Today, most customers turn to the internet to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. With reputation management, reviews across multiple platforms are monitored, which allows you to easily see what customers are saying about your business and employees. Seeing this feedback gives you the information you need to connect with your target audience, recognize areas that need development, or identify recurring concerns that may help you to provide additional training to avoid further issues.
Improve Brand Image
Monitoring feedback also means you can see what services your customers are most satisfied with, as well as which services your customers don’t love (or aren’t even aware of). Reputation management allows you to get insight and change up your marketing strategy, if necessary. If you are noticing comments from your landscaping customers about a specific service, you have an opportunity to bring positive attention to your brand with changes to your website or social media strategy. Brand image is especially important for landscaping companies, since your customers will want to know that their home or commercial property is in good hands.
Build Trust Through Engagement
It’s easy enough to engage with customers on social media posts, but how are you engaging with customers who leave negative reviews? What is the tone you are setting for potential customers who come across these reviews? Reputation management provides you with an opportunity to build credibility with your customers by allowing you the chance to resolve an issue and then turn that negative feedback into a positive review before it is published. Potential customers will take note of how you engage with negative reviews that do slip through and see your commitment to providing great service, showing them that they can trust you.
Improve Visibility
Did you know Google reviews can impact your ranking in search results? Google focuses on placing businesses that receive more positive reviews higher in the search results. Conversely, negative reviews can adversely impact where your landscaping business ranks when users are searching for “landscapers near me”. Engaging with reviewers, both negative and positive, also affects your ranking. Google likes to see businesses engaging with their customers. Businesses that respond to reviews are recognized as being more trustworthy than those that don’t.
Increase Reviews and Recommendations
As mentioned above, reviews are important for building trust with customers and increasing visibility through engagement, which means a dry spell can cause challenges. Users are looking for recent reviews. Reviews from a year ago are not going to be nearly as useful to users because they don’t know if the same employees are working with your business, or what other changes might have occurred. Reputation management can encourage customers to leave reviews, so that you’re always getting recent, relevant feedback about your business. Plus, with more reviews coming in, one or two negative reviews won’t have as strong of an impact on your star rating.
Recruitment
You may not realize it, but your landscaping business’s reputation doesn’t just impact customers, but also the type of applicants who approach you. Some applicants may not bother to read reviews or look at employee review sites like Glassdoor. But do you want to take the chance that there is a disgruntled employee sabotaging you from attracting a highly qualified landscaper to your company? Also, you run the risk of receiving applications from less qualified individuals who may identify your company as less than concerned about their performance, based on reviews from customers. You want to attract applicants who are not only qualified but who will positively represent your company.
If you’re ready to learn more about how Anchor Wave can help your landscaping company with reputation management and other components of your digital marketing strategy, contact us toll-free at (520) 622-3731.
