for Oasis Turf & Tree, adds one of the benefits of working with a marketing firm is having a collective of different expertise. “You can probably find a great in-house marketing person but that they’re going to be the best at SEO, they’re going be the best at writing blogs, they’re going be the best at web development, video or any of those things, I would say is next to impossible to find one person that can do all of those things,” Zellner says. Storrs agrees that when you work with a marketing firm, you are able to access subject matter experts within each marketing channel rather than a generalist who is a jack of all trades. Zellner says by working with a marketing firm you can ensure you’re getting the most out the dollars you are spending towards these efforts. Aside from blogging, Oasis Tree & Turf also pays their marketing firm to help with pay-per-click ads.
“Over the last six years, they’ve helped us generate 30,492 leads,” Zellner says. “We’ve had 383 job applicants through our website and our web traffic is 4,700 percent up over the course of those six years.”
CHOOSING THE RIGHT MARKETING FIRM While Storrs, Schmitz and Mullin say it depends on the situation, whether it’s better to work with an industry-specific
marketing firm or a general one, Reindl prefers working with ones that specialize in the landscape industry. “One of the things that was im- portant to me was finding a company that focuses on landscape companies because I didn’t want to have to try to explain everything to them, especially when it came to blogging,” Reindl says. He says the first firm they hired, he ended up having to explain basic things like lawn care treatments, so they sought out another marketing firm. The new firm had writers with a great deal of industry knowledge so creating the blog content was not an issue. “Don’t feel like you’re handcuffed to a company,” Zellner says. “We made the wrong decision once and then we found a company that we love. It didn’t mean that because we found a compa- ny that didn’t work for us we decided marketing companies aren’t a solution for us.”
Storrs says while a marketing firm doesn’t have to have landscaping experience, they should have lead-gen marketing experience as this is dif- ferent from selling items directly from a website. Schmitz says it’s important to work with a marketing firm that focuses on the quality of your leads and sales, not just vanity metrics of unqualified leads or traffic. Schmitz also says they view their relationship with their marketing firm as a collaboration, so they chose their firm
Don’t settle for the answer, ‘We’re looking good; leads are up!’ Ask them where leads are coming from, if they’re seeing any shifts in certain channels or certain ads working better than others, and ask them what they want to try next. - Jamie Storrs, Chenmark
based on their landscape industry ex- pertise. She says they understood High Prairie positions themselves differently than the conventional landscaper. Some of the questions she suggests asking include: Do they understand your business and brand?
How are they uniquely positioned to help your business?
Do they have past success stories as social proof of performance?
Is their way of doing business and is their software compatible with yours?
Mullin also suggests looking at the firm’s previous work and finding one that is flexible with timing. They had a hard freeze that forced them to move the original dates for the shoot. “A key green flag is an agency that’s willing to provide references for you to call,” Storrs says. “If they’re not willing to do so, that can be worrying.” Storrs says they found their market- ing firm by asking for referrals from
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