Let's TalkLet's TalkAn account where 'lawn mowing near me' and 'patio installation' fight over one budget in the same six spring weeks, and the cheaper click wins every time.
Give us read access to the account. We come back with how your spend splits between maintenance, lawn treatment and design-build, where your ads show against where your routes actually run, what DIY and job-seeker searches cost you, and the three changes worth making first. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
A search for weekly lawn mowing and a search for a patio or retaining wall are worth completely different amounts and convert on completely different timelines. In one campaign at one target, the algorithm buys the cheap, fast maintenance enquiries and starves the design-build searches where the margin is.
Most landscaping accounts switch on or ramp up when the phones start ringing in spring, which is exactly when every competitor does the same and clicks cost the most. Design-build searches start earlier, as homeowners plan, and an account that waits for spring misses the cheaper weeks when projects are being considered.
A maintenance customer across town costs more to serve than one on a street you already visit. Accounts that target a whole city or a wide radius buy maintenance enquiries that scatter the routes, while the neighbourhoods around existing customers - where each new stop is most profitable - get no special attention.
Landscaping keywords attract people buying plants, mulch and pavers, people looking for how-to guides, and people looking for landscaping jobs. None of them will book, all of them click, and broad match finds them eagerly - particularly in spring when searches spike.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Project searches convert slowly and are worth many times a mowing contract. An account run to cost per lead will always move money away from them. We give design-build its own budget, landing pages built from your portfolio, and targets based on project value - which is the only way an account grows the project side of the business.
Homeowners plan gardens before they call anyone. We run design-build campaigns while they are planning, when clicks are cheaper and competitors are quiet, and ramp maintenance campaigns just ahead of the season - so the spring rush fills with the work you want rather than whatever calls first.
Maintenance ads targeted across a whole city create scattered routes. We concentrate them on the neighbourhoods around your current customers and adjust bids by area, so new maintenance customers land where the crew already is.
A season of searches grouped into maintenance, lawn treatment, projects, DIY and job traffic.
Separate campaigns and targets for maintenance, lawn treatment, design-build and commercial.
Maintenance targeting redrawn around the neighbourhoods you already serve.
Design-build before spring, maintenance just ahead of the season, autumn clean-ups and off-season services.
Signed projects and maintenance contracts imported so bidding learns what pays.
Project value and recurring revenue by campaign, monthly.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Homeowners research patios, outdoor kitchens and garden redesigns weeks or months before they want the work done. Campaigns that start early reach them while they are choosing a company, at lower cost than the spring peak, and fill the schedule with projects rather than one-off jobs.
Someone clicking an ad for a patio or retaining wall wants to see finished work like theirs. Landing pages built from your own portfolio - with the materials and budget ranges - convert far better than a generic services page or a contact form.
Snow removal, leaf clean-ups and holiday lighting give the account something to do in quieter months and keep your business in front of local homeowners. They also keep the data flowing, so the account does not start from scratch each spring.
Property managers and homeowner associations searching for landscape maintenance want reliability, communication and contract terms, not a spring special. Their contracts are worth far more than a residential lawn, so they need separate copy, pages and conversion values.
The closest paid-media engagement we can point at is a home goods brand rather than a landscaping company, and we will not present it as a trade case study. It is relevant because it was a seasonal business: spend was diversified across Google Shopping and Meta and the offer rebuilt to smooth seasonal dips - $2.3M in revenue at 5.1x ROAS. The route targeting and project budgets on this page come from how landscaping accounts behave.
Read the full case studyEarlier than most do. Design-build campaigns should run while homeowners are planning, often well before spring. Maintenance and lawn campaigns can ramp just ahead of the season. Waiting for the rush means paying the highest prices when every competitor is also bidding.
Yes. They differ in value, decision time and competition. Separate campaigns let you fund design-build on its value and target maintenance around your routes, instead of letting the cheaper mowing clicks take the whole budget.
Build a negative keyword list from your own search terms - plants, mulch, pavers and materials, how-to searches, and landscaping jobs - and review it weekly at first, especially in spring when searches spike. Generic lists miss most of what a landscaping account attracts.
It depends on your project and contract values and your crew capacity in peak season, not on a fixed figure. A smaller budget works best concentrated on one line of business and your core neighbourhoods, planned across the year and judged on booked value rather than cost per click.
For maintenance, usually not. Target the neighbourhoods around your existing routes, where each new stop is most profitable. Design-build can reach wider, because project values justify a longer drive - but set that deliberately rather than by default.
A signed project or maintenance contract with its value, imported from your system. Form fills and calls are useful signals but poor targets on their own, because a quick mowing enquiry and a five-figure patio consultation look the same until you tell the account which is which.
Where they are available for landscaping services in your area, they can be worth testing for maintenance and smaller jobs. You pay per lead but get less control over job types. Measure them separately from search, and dispute leads that were not genuine.
In colder climates, usually yes, as a separate campaign that starts before the first snowfall. Many homeowners and most commercial clients arrange seasonal snow contracts in autumn, so advertising then fills the winter schedule before the first storm. It also keeps the account active through the quiet months, so it is not starting from nothing in spring.
For standard maintenance, a genuine starting price can filter out people looking for the cheapest possible service - as long as it is accurate for a typical property. For design-build, a price in the ad rarely helps; put realistic budget ranges on the landing page instead, next to examples of finished work at those budgets.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.