www.landscapeirrigation.com Landscape and Irrigation October 2016 33
questions can be a daunting
undertaking if you do not
have a full-time marketing
department in your company,
and can be daunting even for
companies with a full marketing
department. If you can afford it,
bringing in a consultant group
to help you understand your
market is the best way to go.
They can provide insights and
data that is mostly out of reach
for of us regular people, but
expect to pay around $8,000 to
$10,000 for a complete analysis.
Less expensive, but still valuable,
ways to gain insights on your clients is to conduct a survey either
online or by phone, and by taking a look at the data of who
follows you on Facebook and Google. Who follows you can give
you information on the ages and genders of your fans.
Free resources that you can fi nd online are also valuable
in understanding your market. There are many websites that
aggregate U.S. Census data into searchable information. The basic
would be to go right the source itself by visiting the Census Bureau's
I AM
A LANDSCAPE
PROFESSIONAL
Visit bit.ly/landscapeprofessionals to learn more.
EDUCATION | PROFESSIONALISM | ADVOCACY
" Membership
in NALP
takes the
professionalism of your
organization to a whole
new level."
— Jim Campanella, Lawn Dawg, Inc.
offi cial search page at factfi nder.
census.gov. Enter the location,
and instantly get the population,
age, income, education levels,
etc., about that area. Another site
that can provide great baseline
demographic information for
a given area is www.city-data.
com. Here you can get info
(with graphs) about the market
with additional data divided up
by race or age. The web is chock
full of resources that can help
you defi ne a customer, but the
real value is what you do with
that information.
Our tree care service company, based in Minneapolis, Minn.,
decided a few years ago to invest in an outside consultant to
help defi ne our ideal customer. Much of what they came up
reinforced what we already suspected. Our company has always
held itself to a high professional standard, thus we are often
not the least expensive option. We have long seen our best
customers as wealthier people with higher levels of education.
The demographic market data helped cement that assertion by
ALL PHOTOS PROVIDED BY RAINBOW TREECARE SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENTS
