How to Get Lawn Care Customers: Your First & Most Important

If you’re new to the business, then you’ll need to explore effective ways to get your first lawn care customers fast.

Fortunately, getting new lawn care clients is a lot easier than you might think.

With the right expert insight, you can get your first lawn care clients with:

• Prompt responses to clients
• Proven marketing strategies
• An engaging social media presence
• Basic online SEO discoverability practices
• Seamless, automated client communications

Use the pro steps in this article to get lawn care clients flooding in to start your company off on the right foot!

Get 7 of our best performing flyers (tested over 8+ years), put into print-ready templates.

Get Your FREE Templates Today

1. Network in Your Local Market

When you’re just starting out, the easiest way to find lawn care clients is by making connections within your local market.

A great place to start is through your local Chamber of Commerce. Also, consider joining local and county business associations to get even more valuable local networking opportunities.

Starting With Residential Clients

Before we continue, it’s important to note that it’s easiest to start out with residential clients first.

Keep in mind, residential clients generally have:

• Quick, easy marketing with 9-arounds
• Similar pricing (e.g. cookie-cutter neighborhoods)
• Less bottlenecks (e.g. commercial equipment, specific insurance needs, additional staffing requirements, etc.)

Even though working with commercial clients can be a good experience, it’s not an ideal place for most new businesses to start. 

Pro Tip! Choose specific nearby neighborhoods to target to create the most condensed routes!

2. Maintain an Active, Engaging Social Media Presence

Since your lawn care clients are on social media, your business can’t afford to miss out on this lucrative opportunity.

Plus, managing your business’ social media presence isn’t as complex as you might think.

While having a social media manager is helpful for those with the budget, you don’t have to be a marketing expert to get started.

For example, you can have your administrative assistant or part-time intern begin managing your social media presence to start sharing some content.

Here are a few post ideas to inspire your content:

• Show before and after pictures of your best work
• Give your new clients tips on how to maintain their lawn
• Shoot a video with a quick “behind-the-scenes” introduction to your crew
• Highlight other non-competing local businesses for services you don’t offer (e.g. sprinkler repair)

Ultimately, social media establishes local authority, trust, credibility, and awareness.

Also, social media is a great way to grow your business with paid social media ads (e.g. Facebook Ads).

Get 90 Days of FREE Social Media 
Post Ideas!

Download Your FREE Templates!

3. Improve Online Discoverability

As you grow, it’s important to ensure new lawn care clients have the ability to find you online.

Here are some SEO tips you can use to build up your online presence…

Get Your Website to Rank in Search Engines

In order to get your website to rank higher in search engines, you’ll need to take advantage of SEO (i.e. search engine optimization).

Additionally, these are a few other things to keep in mind when building your website:

• Choose 3-5 specific keywords to target
• Showcase your best reviews and testimonials
• Use a professional design (e.g. hire a freelancer, if needed)
• Provide a clear, concise CTA (i.e. Call-to-Action) that’s highly visible

Utilize Google My Business and Ads

If you haven’t yet created a Google Business profile, then now is the time.

By adding your business to Google, you’ll make your business discoverable within the search engine, while also adding it to the map.

Plus, you can boost your business in the search engine using localized Google Ads.

Increase Referrals from Your Lawn Care Clients

Always ask for a referral when you’ve:

• Done an outstanding job
• Received a verbal or written compliment
• Gotten a positive review, survey, or social media comment

DON’T ask for a referral when you’ve:

• Made a mistake
• Gotten a recent complaint
• Received a negative review, survey, or social media comment

Even though it’s uncomfortable asking for client feedback, it’s a necessary aspect in encouraging referrals.

Plus, you can further entice reviews by implementing a referral program! This can be as simple as offering a free upsell or $15 off their next service for each successful referral.

4. Promptly Respond

So you’ve been doing a great job serving all of your new lawn care clients, but there was one that left you a bad review…

Getting negative feedback never feels good, but it’s still important to respond in a timely manner.

In fact, sometimes your response to negative reviews can be more impactful than positive reviews. After all, clients want to see businesses that care about the feedback they receive.

While you don’t want to host a public debate on a review site, you should always acknowledge and empathize with the client’s feedback—especially if you disagree with them.

Here are a few important pro steps to successfully reply to a negative (or lukewarm) review:

1. Identify the client, then ask your team for information about the situation before responding. If you can’t identify the client, then let them know in your response.
2. Promptly reply within 1 business day.
3. In your response, empathize with the client and attempt to draw the conversation offline as soon as possible. Either let them know you’ve contacted them, or tell them you can’t locate their contact information (in which case, give them your business contact information).
4. If you’re taking action to resolve the issue, then make that clear in your response.
5. End the response by thanking the client for their valuable feedback (even if you don’t find it valuable).

As always, NEVER argue with a client—even if they’re in the wrong. This is one of the biggest mistakes most small businesses make, and it’s a big turnoff for many leads.

After all, who wants to hire a business that blames their clients and unprofessionally points fingers?

Remember, even if the client relationship is unsalvageable, it’s still important to reply. Your response allows leads and clients to see how your business cares about feedback and resolves issues.

Pro Tip! If the client continues to reply after your initial response to the review, then leave the conversation alone. It’s better to allow the client to look foolish in arguing with themselves than to make your business look unprofessional in publicly arguing with a client.

5. Take Your Business to the Next Level

Generally, you’ll need to gain some experience working with residential accounts before you take on the next level - commercial lawn accounts.

There is one stepping stone you can take:

Many homeowners and community associations hire lawn and landscaping maintenance companies to keep residential properties looking well-cared for and uniform.

The key?

Did you know many HOAs (i.e. homeowner’s associations) sign contracts with lawn care businesses? This is a great way to instantly generate an entire neighborhood of clients! The key is to meet with the decision-maker of the HOA to create a contract that’s mutually beneficial.

Take a look at a few things to keep in mind when pitching to HOAs:

• Ensure your crew is adequately staffed and trained to handle the surplus of clients
• Be sure you have adequate equipment, trucks, and insurance to meet the HOAs needs
• Have a lawn care software already in place to automate payments and communications with your new group of clients

Pro Tip! Make your business stand out from the competition with uniforms, truck wraps, and a professional website.

Grow Your Lawn Care Business... Faster 
(and with Less Stress)​

Instant invoicing

Better scheduling

Manage your clients and employees all in one system

Start Software Tour

Starting Getting Lawn Care Clients Today

When you’re first starting out, you need to pound the pavement, both literally and online, to find your first new lawn care clients.

Once you’re on a roll, and your handiwork becomes well-known, you’ll see your client load will begin to grow too.

Your online presence is the key to finding your first lawn care clients. Use these expert steps to get started today!

Related: Market and Automate for Growth With Mike Callahan and Mediagistic

Originally published July 5, 2018 4:20 PM, updated August 4, 2023 1:29 PM