Lawn care marketing in the off season: a winter checklist

Lawn care marketing in the off season mostly means fixing your website while you have the time. Do one or two jobs a month from November to February, each under an hour, and the site is ready before the phone starts ringing in March. Homeowners who call around in spring want to know two things fast: do you come to my street, and what does a weekly cut cost. The companies whose sites answer that get the signups.

You already know winter is for planning. The mowers go in for service and the books get caught up, but the website rarely makes the list, partly because "fix the website" is too vague to start on a Tuesday night. Below it's broken into months.

November: check what you've got

Pull your site up on your phone and go through it as if you'd never heard of your company. Put everything that's wrong in a note on your phone; that note is your to-do list until March.

Things to look for:

The phone number. Is it current, and does tapping it start a call? A number that only shows as text in a picture can't be tapped.
Prices. Are there any? If there are, are they this year's or from three seasons ago?
Photos. Are they your crew and your lawns, or stock pictures of a golf course? Is the truck in the photo one you still own?
The towns you serve. Can someone tell within a few seconds whether you come to their street?
The contact form. Fill it out and send it to yourself. Make sure it arrives, and check where it goes (an old email address nobody reads is common).
Fit on a phone. Text you have to pinch to read, or buttons too small for a thumb, lose people before they call.

If you want a second opinion, the free site check gives your site a score, and you can ask for a short written report on what to fix first.

Note anything that's hard to change, too. If updating a price means calling your nephew or a builder login you've forgotten, better to find out now.

December: write down this season's prices and plans

Before you touch the site, decide what you're selling next year and what it costs. Fuel, insurance and equipment costs move every year, and December is a calm time to decide whether your prices move with them.

Get these on paper:

Weekly mowing, per visit, for your most common lot size. Residential mowing is usually priced by the visit, and a "from" price for a typical lot is enough for the site.
Biweekly mowing, if you offer it, and whether it costs more per visit.
Season or monthly plans, if you sell them. Some customers like one fixed monthly amount from April to October better than a bill per cut.
One-time jobs: spring cleanup, fall leaf cleanup, mulch and beds, aeration and overseeding, each with a "from" price.
Your policies. What happens when it rains on their day, whether they can skip a week, whether there's a contract.

As an example, say you charge $50 a visit for a quarter-acre lot this year. The site would say "Weekly mowing from $50 a visit" and one line under it: "Bigger lots, hills or fenced back yards? We measure and text you a written price before the first cut." Swap in your own number. A homeowner sees a real figure and knows how the rest gets priced.

Write the rain policy in plain words too. Mowing wet grass tears it and ruts the lawn, and homeowners who don't know that will wonder why you skipped Tuesday. One sentence on the site heads off a lot of those calls in May.

January: build the spring signup page

January is when you put the prices from December somewhere people can act on them. A spring signup page lets a homeowner pick a plan and send you their address now, instead of calling in March when you're already behind on cleanups.

The page needs only a handful of things. Show your plans with their prices, the week you expect to start mowing, and what each visit includes (mow, edge, trim, blow off the drive and walks, or whatever yours is). Under that goes a short form asking for name, address, phone or email, and which plan they want. Four fields is plenty. You'll measure the lot and confirm the price before the first cut anyway.

Once it's up, send last year's customers the link. A short text works: "Hi [name], it's [you] from [company]. Spring signups are open for [year]. Your spot and your day are held if you sign up by [date]: [link]." Holding someone's route day is something you can offer without cutting a price, and route customers who already like their day tend to care about keeping it.

There's more on the page itself, the form and whether to take a deposit in the spring signup page post.

February: fresh photos, reviews and your service area

Photos first. February is a bad month to take lawn pictures, with the grass dormant or under snow. Scroll back through your camera roll to last May and June instead. Look for striped lawns, clean edges along a driveway, a spring cleanup before and after, the crew working, and the trucks with your name on the door. Swap out every stock photo you can. Pictures of real lawns in their area look like a company that shows up.

Then reviews. Your happiest customers from last season will usually leave one if you ask directly and make it easy. In your Google Business Profile you can copy a link that opens the review box straight away. Send it with a personal note:

Hi [name], [you] here from [company]. Thanks for another season with us. If you have a minute, a Google review would help us a lot this spring: [link]. No pressure either way, and see you in April.

Only ask people who'd genuinely say good things, and never offer anything in return for a review. Google's rules don't allow it.

Last, your service area. Look at last year's route and be honest about which towns made money. One lawn twenty minutes past your nearest customer costs you drive time every week all season. List the towns where you want more lawns, and drop the ones you'd rather not drive to. Someone who can see right away that you serve their town is more likely to fill in the form.

For everything else a homeowner looks for on the site, see what to put on a lawn care website.

March: answer fast

In March the calls come while you're in someone's back yard pulling leaves out of a hedge. You won't pick up most of them, and that's fine, as long as you get back to people the same day. A homeowner who called three companies will often go with whoever replies first with a straight answer.

Save a reply in your phone so you can send it from the truck between jobs. Change the brackets each time:

Hi [name], this is [you] with [company]. Sorry I missed you, I'm on a job. We mow in [town] on [day] and weekly mowing starts the week of [date]. It's from $[your price] a visit for a typical lot, and I'll measure yours and text you a written price. Can I come by [day] or [day] to take a look?

Putting their town and your route day in the reply shows you know where they are. Ending on two days to choose from gets a faster answer than "let me know."

Do the same for form signups. Text back within the day to say you got it and when you'll measure. Then update your voicemail greeting to point people to the signup page, so callers who don't leave a message still have somewhere to go.

FAQ: lawn care marketing in the off season

Is it worth working on the website when nobody's mowing?

Yes, because winter is the only time you have for it. Once the grass is growing you're mowing six days a week and the site stays however you left it in February. Some homeowners also book early, especially for spring cleanups, and they'll find whatever your site says in January.

Should I put prices on my lawn care website?

Put a "from" price for your common services and explain how bigger lots get priced. Homeowners want a rough number before they call, and a starting price with "we measure and write it down" gives them that without locking you into one price for every yard.

How long does all of this take?

If your site is easy to change, one or two short sessions a month is enough. If it isn't, the November check will show you that, and you'll still have three months to sort it out before spring.

What if I don't have a website yet?

Do the December and February work anyway. Prices you've settled, photos you've picked and reviews on your Google Business Profile all go straight onto a site when you have one.

If you'd rather hand this off, we build and look after lawn care websites with weekly prices on the page and a ZIP check for your route. See Pruitt Lawn Co., a sample design for a fictional business. It's $99 to start, refunded if you pass on the preview, and $399 all in at our founding price for the first 25 clients. Grow is $199 a month, or $1,990 paid yearly (12 months for the price of 10).