Learn more at Artificial Turf Marketing

Brought to you by Jason Kirby

One out of every 3-4 artificial turf companies I speak to I hear that they are doing great and sales are up. Now for those other companies (in the same area, with the same customers that “aren’t buying) they are claiming the market has slown down and there is no business to be had. I find it fascinating how there can be one company saying that sales are up and other companies saying there are no sales to be had. Because of this I decided to do some research to get to the bottom of things. My findings are the rest of this post (I am not going to identify the area, nor the companies names because I do not have their consent to publicize their information, due to the fact the company doing well does not want to share his competitive advantage).

There are three companies that I research and they are all in the same market competing for the same customers.

Companies A & B both claimed to have had increasing sales year over year for the last 3 years. However, both claimed to be expected a decline of 15% or more for the year of 2009. When I asked them why they were expecting losses they both said is was due to the economy and that no one is buying turf in general. They also claimed that all turf companies were going to experience a decline in sales this year.

Now when I spoke to Company C they claimed that over that last 2 years they have had an increase in sales of 15% the first year and 25% last year and this year they are projecting around a 10% increase. Now I am sure you are thinking that 25% to 10% is a decrease, but in actuality the company is going to do 10% more in business than last year, which means in even this economy they are still growing. Well I am sure your first thought is how is Company C able to continue to grow and not Companies A or B?

I thought the same thing and continue to ask each company owner what they have done differently this year than last year. Here are their responses.

Company A claimed to have not change anything. They are doing the same things as always, marketing at tradeshows and through direct mailers.

Company B said they were forced to cut back on all marketing expenditures and relied on word of mouth to get the little amount of jobs they had this year. They use to advertise online, on TV, and direct mailers. Now they only focus on direct mailers, because they could not tell if TV ads or online ad were working.

Company C had a very different answer. Due to the success of the previous two years they decided to increase the marketing budget in 2009. They launched a new website and online marketing campaign to complement their TV and radio ads and their direct mailers. I had a long conversation with this company owner and asked them why they decided to increase spending when overall market sales were expected to go down. His answer astonished me in how ingenious it was, he said,

“Well I realized that most companies in our area, especially turf companies were cutting back on advertising, therefore the cost of advertising went down and I was able to buy more times slots on TV and bid for more keywords online at a lower rate. I also knew that if my competitors weren’t marketing that the few people that are buying turf will be more likely to buy from me because I will be the only running ads and out reaching to them.”

This made a lot of sense and explained why he was selling more turf. Company C was the only company to increase spending and because of it they are the only company that will have an increase in sales this year.

The lesson to take from this blog post is that by cutting your marketing spend you are more likely to lose the few customers that are looking to purchase turf. In a down economy it is the perfect time to come out as your market area leader by taking a chance and increase or maintain your marketing budget. When the economy turns around people will remember your name and how you were the only one they noticed when they did not have money. So when these people do have money they will come to you.

Please leave a comment explaining your current market and if people are buying turf or not. Also share with us if you have cut, maintained, or increased your marketing during this down economy.

Google Adwords is an advertising platform in which you create an ad, bid on specific keywords that you designate and then every time someone clicks on your ad, Google charges you a certain amount (no more than your max bid). Now that is Google Adwords explained in the most simple way possible. It is a lot more complex and takes a lot attention to detail and analysis to create an efficient campaign that does not waste your money and still produces results.

(Here is example of an ad being displayed when some searches for “artificial turf san diego”)

The 3 Biggest Mistakes Dealers Make When Using Google Adwords:

Mistake #1

Running Content Ads: This is by far one of the most costly and ineffective results of using Adwords. What happens is when you sign up for an account and input your 50-100 keywords you thought up and created your ad or two is Google automatically starts dispersing your ad on the content networks. (A content network is when your ad is placed on a random website that might be relevant to your ad or website.) This can be detrimental to your ad budget. The reason being is because most clicks from content networks are click fraud and are only clicked to drive revenue to that particular site. That means people who don’t care about your service or ad are costing you money. The worst part is you ad appears on hundreds of thousands of sites and lots of people are fraudently clicking your ads.

I have spoken to many turf dealers that are using Adwords and majority of their budget is spent on content ads and they are not producing any leads. It is just flat out costing you money.

Solution:

Login to your Adwords account, click on your campaign settings and disable content networks. This will save you tons of money and I recommend leaving it off until you get a better understanding of how to use content networks or if you hire a professional.

Mistake #2

Not using negative keywords. Negative keywords are keywords that you put in ad that you do not want to show up.  For example if you are bidding on the keyword “putting green” that will produce a lot of impressions if you select a broad match. It also means that people might be typing in “putting green sod” or “sod for putting greens” and your ad will show up and they will click on only to find out that you sell artificial putting greens and not sod for real grass putting greens. Not only is this frustrating to the visitor but it also cost you money and is a complete waste. By using negative keywords in your ad campaigns this problem will be eliminated.

Solution:

Researching negative keywords can be difficult and I recommend doing some research before using them. Here are some good links to get you started:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/senews/004980.html

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=63235

Mistake #3: The Biggest One

Not sending your visitors to an optimize landing page that is user friendly and is optimized for conversions. I know several turf dealers that are using Adwords, but are just wasting their money because the keywords they are bidding on are not relevant to the ad and website they send visitors to. Or even worst, they send visitors to a site that does not visibly display your phone number and a contact form on every page.

(Here is an example of a really poor site that a client of ours was sending visitors to before he signed up with us)

As you can see there is no contact info and is not very user friendly for visitors to guide through your site. Our client had a 0.5% conversion rate with this site (That is horrible).

Solution:

Put your phone number on every page in the top right so it is visible (try to make it big). From there add a small form on every page or at least your contact page because forms are easier to fill out rather than copy and pasting an email and then having your visitors not know what to put in the email. With a form asking for their contact info only it is very easy for a visitor to submit and just wait for you to contact them.

Another solution would be to make a landing page. A single page website that a visitor, after clicking you ad, lands on and finds all the information they will need  and then have a big form and your phone number clearly displayed. This has proven to be extremely effective for many turf dealers. It is also a lot easier than redoing your whole website.

This is a landing page we creating for the client I mentioned above. (His conversion rate is now above 4.0%, that is an 800% increase)

Conclusion

Adwords is a wonderful resource only if used properly and is optimized to produce you results. I highly recommend doing your research before investing in Adwords or hire someone else to do it for you. However, if you know what you are doing then I hope this post has been useful for you and will save you some advertising money.

Please leave a comment telling everyone about your Adwords experience and if you have maybe one of these mistakes.

So what is his big marketing technique?

Realtor Signs. Yep that is right, he takes old realtor signs and paints over them with his company’s information. He then puts them up during every installation he does. He asks his customer is they are okay with putting up the sign(which usually everyone is) and he claims that a majority of his phone calls come from people driving by the sign and seeing it in their neighbors’ lawn. Other than that he does not do much else for marketing.

So go out and make friends with a realtor and ask for some of their signs and do like this guy has and post them up every time you are doing installation if you are not already doing this.

If you are already doing this please leave a comment on this blog letting everyone know how effective it is for you.

I want nothing more than to share my expertise with all of you and answer any questions you may have. I am also open to input or suggestions that myself or your fellow dealers my benefit from as well. You can find out my contact info in the “About Your Turf Search” page