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32 October 2016 Landscape and Irrigation www.landscapeirrigation.com TREE CARE Who's Buying? Understanding the demographics of your customers ■ BY BRANDON M. GALLAGHER WATSON "How can I get started with offering plant health care and tree care services?" We get this question frequently from landscape and lawn companies looking to add additional value to their business, and expand their service portfolio. Often, it is tempting to answer this inquiry with a specific problem, product, or treatment method that is an easy one to sell and provides quick results. However, a bigger question is whether adding these services to your existing offerings fits with your current customer base. This is because it is far easier to grow a new line of services with a client bank that already understands and trusts your business. So, are your customers ready for another service from you? How can you tell? Well, unfortunately, predicting the behavior of your customers is a tricky and fickle business, but there are some steps you can easily take to at least determine who your customers are. When we talk about "defining your customer," we don't just mean pulling up your database and seeing a list of names. We are interested in who these people are. What are their buying habits? Do they shop discount stores to save money, or are they the type to buy the best no matter the price? Assuming the customer had a number of companies from which to choose, why did they choose you? Some may have just called you by default, like the type of buyer who just calls the first name on a list. Remember the days of printed Yellow Pages directories? Many companies would call themselves things like "A-1 Landscaping" just to be listed first, hoping to grab that type of "call the top of the list first" shopper. In the day and age of Google, having a name with an alphabetical advantage doesn't help you. "How to get your page to pop up first on Google" is an article for another time, so, for now, let's focus on what a customer sees when they first happen upon your business: How are they perceiving your brand? Brand recognition There are as many definitions of branding as there are branding agencies these days, but most contain some version of "a brand is any mark, symbol or feature that differentiates one seller's products from those of others." As this definition is alluding, we often think of branding in terms of something we can see, the creative design like logos, colors, and graphic design. Partly this is because, well, it is the easiest to see and also because, if done correctly, the creative design should tell you much of what the company wants to convey to you. But branding has evolved far past being simply a visual communication. In fact, if you were to hire a branding agency to revamp your company's brand, they would spend most of the time trying to understand your values and what characteristics define your "ideal customer." The last step would be designing a brand identity to convey those values to your ideal customer. A corporate logo is a part of that brand identity, but it also includes every other consumer touch point you can think of. Business cards, letterheads, proposals, invoices, envelopes, vehicles, vehicle graphics, fact sheets, employee uniforms, ads, website, fonts, and images all make up your visual identity. Your brand is also defined by those non-visual touches such as how your employees speak to customers about your products and services. One definition of branding is that it "is the big idea about your company that exists in your customer's mind." This definition reminds us that what you think about your brand is irrelevant; it is what your customers think about your brand that matters. Brands often develop by default. If you do nothing to create a brand message and do not employ any of the techniques to get your brand message out there, then the brand that develops in the consumer's minds may not be the one you want. Good branding should serve as a sort of visual shorthand, a quick way to determine if this product or service fits with their current needs. Branding not only informs customers who you are and what you do, it also helps define what type of customer seeks you out and reassures them that they found the right company for them. The "ideal customer" So let's assume for now that you have defined your brand, now how do you define your ideal customer? The questions that make up the three-legged stool of marketing are "Who are you trying to reach? What data are you capturing? How are you following up?" The first question of "Who?" can be assessed by defining your target market. Define your target market in terms of geographic (where they are located), demographic/socioeconomic (gender, age, wage, career, education level), psychographic (attitudes, values, religion, and lifestyles), behavioral segmentation (degree of loyalty to a product), and product-related segmentation (other types of products your customers buy). Answering these