5 tree service marketing tips to cultivate success

Key takeaways

• Attract new tree service customers by optimizing your online presence and creating website landing pages that cater to their specific needs
• Offer rewards and incentives in exchange for customer referrals to grow your tree care business through word of mouth
• Strengthen customer loyalty by engaging clients with email marketing and responding quickly to positive and critical online reviews

Healthy trees boost the curb appeal of any property, provide shade and privacy, and clean the surrounding air. But like all living things, trees inevitably develop problems. Not everyone has the know-how, equipment, or time required to diagnose and deal with them, but that’s where professional tree service providers come in. 

Plus, tree servicing is a growth industry. Residential and commercial development means more trees that require regular care. When you become the go-to tree care specialist in your area, you can achieve long-term success in an industry that’s growing by 2.5% each year. 

To achieve sustainable growth in the tree care industry, you need a combination of marketing tactics that help you win new customers and ensure that your current clients keep coming back whenever they need you. Get noticed by your target market and reward existing clients for their loyalty with these affordable tree service marketing strategies for small business owners.

5 low-cost tree service marketing strategies

Spreading the word about your tree care company doesn’t require costly advertising or hiring a pricey marketing company. Often, you can take the lead in your local market by using smart but low-cost strategies that keep your business at the top of current and potential customers’ minds. Here are five affordable tree service marketing ideas you can implement on your own.

1. Create targeted landing pages

When property owners need tree care, they often start looking for solutions by searching online. Building landing pages—web pages designed to win traffic from relevant search engine results pages (SERPs)—can help you attract a niche audience and turn tree service website visitors into sales leads.

Effective landing pages cater to specific customer needs. For example, you can create a landing page for a particular service area—like the Lower East Side in New York—or a specific service, like tree removal, tree trimming, or tree pest control to personalize your sales pitch for your audience. 

If you or someone on your staff is a certified arborist or has other specialized credentials or skills, such as eco-friendly tree care, be sure to state that clearly on your landing page and all your promotional materials. 

Choose your focus, then use keyword research tools to identify what (and where) your potential customers might be looking for when they type queries into a search engine—for example, “eco-friendly tree care Austin,” “arborist Portland,” or “emergency tree removal East Los Angeles.” Including these keywords in your copy is a search engine optimization (SEO) practice that can help you show up higher on the right SERPs.

Make sure each landing page includes a form that lets you collect visitors’ contact information so you can follow up. If you want to encourage more visitors to fill in the form—which acts as a lead generation tool—offer a freebie like a complimentary quote, discount, or tree care checklist in exchange for their email or phone number.

2. Optimize your online business profiles and listings

Your online presence is more than your website. Many shoppers research tree service companies on digital marketing channels, like social media and Yelp, where they can view business pages to learn more about what local service providers have to offer. Make sure the information on your business pages—from your company name to your business hours—is accurate, up-to-date, and consistent across platforms.

Claim your Yelp Business Page to update your local business information, like your service area and specialities, and include eye-catching photos of past services, such as before-and-after tree trimming pictures. You can also take advantage of the Request-a-Quote feature to get inbound leads from high-quality leads who are actively looking for tree care services. They’ll be able to fill out a short, industry-specific questionnaire with details on their tree service project, and you’ll receive the request in your Yelp inbox where you can directly communicate with them. 

If you want to drive leads to your business even faster, consider running Yelp Ads that will display your business listing above relevant search results and on competitors’ pages. You can customize your target audience and budget, and you’ll only pay when you get a click.

3. Leverage your customer base

When you receive a business recommendation from someone you trust, there’s a good chance you’ll take their word for it. This shows the power of word of mouth as a marketing technique. While you can promote your business on many channels, build trust faster by turning happy customers into your biggest advocates.

To encourage clients to recommend your tree service company, create a referral program that incentivizes them to send friends and family members your way. For example, when a customer helps you win a new client, you can reward them with a gift card, tree trimming discount, or free tree health inspection.

Referral programs also increase your chances of turning a profit. Since you’ll only need to reward customers if a referral is successful, you won’t risk overspending on your tree service marketing efforts. Plus, even when you don’t win a new customer immediately, your clients will be spreading the word about your business and helping you gain leads. This can improve your brand recognition—making your brand more familiar to consumers—so you can become a tree service industry leader that locals trust.

4. Re-engage customers with email marketing

Cultivating positive, long-term relationships with your existing clients is just as important as winning new business. When your tree service marketing efforts keep your customers engaged, you can drive repeat purchases and reduce your churn rate, which measures the number of people who stop shopping with your brand.

Email marketing allows you to build a happy customer base by regularly adding value to clients’ lives. Consider sending email subscribers a newsletter filled with helpful information—like lawn care tips and seasonal tree care recommendations—on a weekly or monthly basis. You can also use these emails to spread the word about sales promotions.

On top of sending newsletters to your entire email list, you can offer incentives to win back disengaged customers. Use a customer relationship management tool (CRM) to identify which customers haven’t interacted with or purchased from your brand in a certain time frame—for instance, the past 90 days—and email them offers that encourage them to return.

5. Respond promptly to online reviews

When business owners respond to reviews, including those that are critical, about half of consumers feel more positively about the brand. Making online review responses your priority is a tree service marketing tactic that can help you strengthen your relationships with reviewers while impressing potential clients who read reviews.

The best part is, it’s free to respond to reviews when you add or claim your Yelp Business Page. Plus, each time you receive a review, you can get a real-time notification so you can quickly respond and show just how attentive you are. 

Be sure to craft thoughtful responses to reviews that display your gratitude for clients—who have taken the time to provide feedback, whether or not it’s positive—and show your dedication to improving the customer experience.

Fine-tuning your tree service marketing plan to help your business grow

To grow your tree service business, take advantage of inexpensive marketing tactics that will attract new customers and help you retain existing ones. Start driving your ideal customers to your business by crafting targeted website landing pages and a social media online presence that makes a great impression and sets you apart from the competition. 

Then, build strong client relationships by responding to online reviews and using email marketing to offer customers tangible benefits. 

As your clients become more loyal to your tree service business, you can offer rewards when they refer new customers to your brand, helping you achieve more growth.

When you’re ready to increase your online marketing efforts to earn higher profits, learn about four types of digital advertising you can invest in to drive tree service leads to your business faster.