Old-school contractor marketing was largely limited to display ads in regionally focused, industry-specific magazines, and setting up booths at a home show or two. These marketing methods are referred to as “outbound marketing.” They still have their place in the world, but are often compared to “yelling” at prospects and hoping they’ll listen. Sometimes they do, but it’s more effective to gear your strategy more toward inbound marketing and effective content marketing.

Based out of Avon, CT, Starr Contracting offers high-end landscape architecture and installation services. Starr was in the market for an extremely high-end website that communicated their high-end work to homeowners looking for medium-complex projects. Starr wanted a website that was clean and simple - and stood out against competitors.

Around October 2016, we kicked off their Search Engine Optimization efforts. We began by identifying the most searched keywords in their service areas along with cities that had the best HHI (household income) and population combination. Weekly, professionally written articles targeting these keywords along with ongoing new local landing pages, and now high-quality backlinks, this landscape design/build company now has 45% of the keywords being tracked on the first page (first 10 spots). They began with only 5% of their tracked keywords on that page! 

Imagine promoting your business on a site that has over 25 million users each month… 90 percent of whom are homeowners. Sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it?

Halstead Media completely transformed the website to a less text heavy, image forward design. A layout that appeals to all the different customer audiences that GoldLeaf wants to attract. The homepage includes a rotating banner, a review section for peace of mind, as well as call-out to a financing program. See the new website

This design/build company reached out to Halstead to help improve their Facebook Advertising performance and generate leads. They had already been doing their own Facebook advertising for a couple of year, but were looking for some professional advertising help from someone who understood their design/build industry.

After presenting a Unilock Authorized Contractor Seminar, we met Northern Lights Landscaping. Since then, our relationship with them has allowed us to redesign their website, increase their search rankings, and help find qualified leads with Facebook Ads.

Halstead designed a brand new website to showcase outdoor lighting company’s profile and services. Our messaging and the images we selected aligned to the more affluent market in the company’s service area. The key messages were: solving problems as well as promoting luxury services (e.g. smartphone controls) that aren’t necessarily solving a problem. The style is sophisticated and professional.

A landscape lighting company based out of Fishkill, NY, was a brand-new entity that lacked a social media presence. Previously part of an established landscape design and build company, this lighting company was spun out to become a separate division with its own distinct brand. As part of this effort, a new website and Facebook presence were a must. However, while the landscape design and build parent company was known for installing outdoor lighting for years, the newly branded business was new to the space and had no community branding. The company needed to assert itself with homeowners in the region, to generate leads for high-end outdoor lighting projects.

For the 2018 FY, the cap for the first half was met on December 15, 2017 and the cap for the second half was met on February 28, 2018. This is the earliest these caps have ever been reached by a significant number of days, demonstrating the high demand for seasonal laborers. Prior to 2016, workers who had previously been employed via the H-2B Visa were exempt from this cap, but when the federal budget bill recently expired, the cap exemption expired as well.

In our fragmented world, brands must provide content that smoothly leads prospects through the buyer’s journey and ensure no gaps exist that will lead them to drop off.

What happens when you take something that seems (ok, it is) so complex and apply it towards your specific business? Or perhaps even towards your line of work? Today, Corey will talk about predictive analytics - to deeply understand your current and potential customers. How does it fit in? 

Want your events to last longer? The power is in your hands. In this intro-to-the-topic video, we introduce spreading the wildfire event approach with widgets that encourage people to take photos, using branded items, and share them on their social media. The return? People are posting images of themselves, happy, with your brand. Magic. Watch for more and tell us how you've done it!

Using Blackwood Group's inspiration website, Halstead created a highly image driven website. The new look placed each project into a separate case study - into what developed to be a true, high-end elegant digital portfolio. The projects are all accessible via the homepage - but city as well as by category. Awards and about the company are accessible via the menu.

Done with poor quality leads from home and garden shows and increasingly getting more leads from word of mouth and through their old website, Hummel's Landscape in Harrisburg, PA was ready for a new, sophisticated website that reflected their extremely high-end landscape work.

Capturing elements that were important to Gary Duff Designs in their new website and making sure the new website represented the brand, the new website offers a perfect combination of classic sophistication and company info.

As long as landscapers have been landscaping and hardscapers have been hardscaping, we have also been, in our own ways, marketing. Over the last score of years, however, the introduction into the “age of technology” has vastly warped design-build marketing. Businesses, regardless of industry, can barely function on simple word-of-mouth anymore. To show our design-build pros just how far we’ve come in the last decade-and-a-half, and our predictions of the next few years, we’ve developed an “evolution of design-build marketing” timeline.

As a design build professional, there is probably a specific skill set or passion you had that led you to start a business around it. But along the way, we know it’s easy to get swept up in all the other aspects of the business – probably the aspects you don’t know how to manage and aren’t very interested in. STOP TRYING TO DO IT ALL. Outsourcing is a great way to free up your time and produce quality work. Here's a list of some position that are totally worth it to outsource. 

Put that thing down! Don't do it! Don't you please still use the analytics from five - or even three years ago! People over the age of 50 aren't as non-web savvy as you think. Almost 3 out of 4 of them are on Facebook. That's just Facebook - think about how many of them search online (even on their smartphones!). Things have REALLY changed with marketing effectively to this age group. So don't get suckered into outdated traditional marketing techniques and then wonder why they're not working!

It's long past due for the hardscape industry at the showroom level. The kitchen/bath industry has been doing it for years with a ton of success. There are few hardscape dealers jumping on board and killing it. So how do you do it? How do use your concrete paver and natural stone showroom to bring more people in the door?