She Had a Budget Before She Had a Builder
Hi H Client!
On an August evening, Mrs. Jones opens up ChatGPT and types something like "what does a covered patio with an outdoor kitchen cost in my area." She receives a confident answer with a range in it. No site visit, no grade, no access, no idea what her slope or her soil looks like. She closes the app with a number in her head and six or so weeks later she calls you, and that number is what your proposal gets measured against. And you never knew it!
That's the part of the buying process that shifted this year... The early research, what should this cost, what's involved, what are my options, increasingly gets answered without a click. The "who do I hire" search still lands where it always has, search results, on the map, on your reviews, and now also via AI prompts of course. But by the time she is there, her budget expectation is already set.
What decides whether you're in those answers turns out to be unglamorous. These systems cite companies that publish real specifics: actual ranges, service areas, materials, what a project of that size genuinely involves. They skip the ones whose site say "quality craftsmanship you can trust". Right now, only about one percent of local companies get recommended in AI answers at all (most of our clients see visibility scores in excess of 30%), which is either a problem or an opening depending on how early you move. That's where a good share of our attention goes today: making your detail the thing her expectation gets built from.
Which runs straight into an old argument in this industry. The resistance to putting numbers on a website is real and it isn't unreasonable, landscape companies that we work with don't want to be shopped on price, or scare off a good prospect with a range that doesn't fit her job, or hand a competitor a look at the book. That held up when the alternative was silence, but it holds up less well now, because the number gets published either way, by something with no stake in your margin. Publishing a range isn't giving something away at this point. It's deciding who sets her expectation before she calls. Worth a second look, even if where you land is a starting-at figure rather than a price list.
You can't price a job from a photo. You'd never try, because too much depends on what you find when you walk it. A machine will do it anyway, in two seconds, and sound certain about it. They are in fact certain about everything, aren't they? :)
If more prospects are arriving already anchored to a number, that's worth talking through. Your Project Manager can look at whether your work is showing up in those answers, and what it would take to get there.
Until Tuesday,
Anna Halstead
Co-Owner, Halstead Media Group
Save the date: Kelsey Blomquist-Wright, our Director of MarTech, is hosting a HubSpot webinar for clients on Thursday, September 17 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Registration details are coming soon.
