Marketing for landscapers: what to spend, and what an agency should do for the money.
Plan for two numbers: an agency fee and an ad budget. Tekton's landscaping marketing programs run $1,250, $3,500, or $6,500 a month, plus a one-time $1,500 setup, and each tier includes some ad spend. The right tier depends on your revenue, the jobs you want more of, and what one signed job is worth to you. Below is how to set the budget, what an agency should do every month, and what the report should prove.
Spring is packed. August and winter are thin.
The phone rings off the hook in April, then the calendar goes quiet by late summer and stays that way until the snow melts. Marketplace leads get sent to three other companies, and the homeowner picks whoever is cheapest. The website and Google profile show a few lawn photos and nothing that sells a patio, a wall, or an outdoor kitchen.
A lot of owners we talk to have already paid an agency. They got a nice-looking report every month and could not tell whether any of it turned into a signed job. That makes it hard to know what to spend next, or whether to spend anything at all.
A crew that does careful work should not lose a big install to the company with the better website and the faster callback. Good marketing fixes that part.
Landscape, lawn care, and hardscape owners
- Roughly $500K to $3M in revenue, 3 to 25 people
- Want steadier work and more of the bigger jobs
- Tired of riding referrals and the spring rush
- Want a monthly number they can trust
We came from the trade.
Tekton was started by a contractor. Nick Conley ran a landscaping and hardscape company for 10 years before he built the agency, so the slow season, the price shoppers, and the crew you have to keep busy are not abstract to us.
I started Tekton Design Build as Nicholas Landscaping and ran it for 10 years. I grew it to $3 million. At one point I had 15 guys, a full-time salesperson, operations managers, office assistants, and a designer.
And every winter, I had no work. Come January and February, before spring, I was sweating bullets, worried I'd have to send my guys home. It took a real toll on me.
That only changed once I learned to build a marketing machine and run it consistently. It took work, effort, and investment. Marketing can't be a one-trick pony. You have to show up consistently, day after day, month after month, year over year. That's the only way out of the feast-or-famine cycle.
Nick Conley, founder
"Nick being a former contractor knows our pain points, what we should be doing."
Rick, outdoor-living contractor in Maine
What landscaping marketing should cost
You will find percent-of-revenue rules of thumb online. We don't quote one here, because we haven't found a landscaping survey we would stand behind, and your margins are not the average anyway. Set the budget from cost per signed job instead.
- Pick the work you want more of. Patios and walls, design-build projects, or maintenance contracts. Each one has its own job value and margin.
- Work out what a signed job is worth. Average job value times gross margin is the profit you have to work with.
- Use your real close rate. If you sign one out of every four estimates, you need four good leads for each job.
- Decide what you will pay to win one job. That is your ceiling for cost per signed job. Stay under it and the marketing pays for itself.
- Check capacity. Multiply by the number of extra jobs your crews can actually take on each month. That is your monthly budget.
Run it with your own numbers before you talk to any agency, including us. If the math only works at a cost per signed job you have never seen, the budget is too low or the job mix is wrong.
Tekton's tiers
These are the same programs and prices listed in our pricing section.
| Tier | Monthly fee | Term | Setup | Ad spend included | Recommended size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility Starter | $1,250/mo | Month-to-month | $1,500 | First $500/mo in LSA ad spend | $500K - $1.5M revenue |
| Growth Engine | $3,500/mo | 12-month growth build | $1,500 | First $1K/mo in LSA + Meta ad spend | $1M - $3M revenue |
| Market Expansion | $6,500/mo | 12-month market build | $1,500 | First $2K/mo in LSA + Meta + Google Ads spend | $3M+ revenue |
Ad spend above the included amount is billed separately. You set it.
Visibility Starter: Google Business Profile, map visibility, citations, review basics, website trust fixes, lead tracking and reporting, Local Service Ads management.
Growth Engine: Everything in Starter, plus Core 30 SEO, website SEO and content, ongoing profile work, review system, call tracking, Facebook and Instagram ads.
Market Expansion: Everything in Growth Engine, plus multi-market strategy, more profile strategy, service area and location pages, advanced SEO plan, lead-source reporting, Google Ads.
What a landscaping marketing agency should do every month
Whoever you hire, this is the work you are paying for. If most of it isn't happening, the fee is buying a report.
- Google Business Profile. Real job photos, accurate services and service area, review requests after finished jobs, and replies to reviews. Want to check yours first? This 15-minute profile audit on Blue Collar Techy walks you through it.
- Local Service Ads, if you run them. Budget and job types checked, every lead reviewed, and bad leads disputed through Google's feedback process.
- Call tracking. Calls and forms tagged by source, and someone actually listening to calls to see which ones were real jobs.
- Website pages for the work you want. A real page for patios, walls, or outdoor living that shows your projects and explains your process.
- SEO as a long-term build. Pages, local signals, and content added on a plan. Expect the first months to be groundwork. Results usually take six to 12 months or longer, depending on your market and competition.
- Ads, if they are in scope. Seasonal offers, tight geography, and a fast lead form, adjusted when the calendar fills or thins.
- A monthly report and a call. What came in, what got signed, and what changes next month.
Month 1 vs month 12
Months 1 to 2: tracking set up, Google profile cleaned up, LSA set up or tightened, and a baseline of where leads come from today. Months 3 to 6: service pages built, review requests running, ads tuned to the season. Months 6 to 12: SEO content keeps getting added, winter design-build campaigns go out before spring, and the plan shifts toward whatever is producing signed jobs.
Maintenance vs design-build: two different marketing jobs
Most landscape company marketing fails when one plan tries to sell both. They are different buyers on different clocks.
Fast-turn calls
- Homeowner wants someone this week
- Google profile, reviews, and LSA carry most of the load
- Answering fast decides who gets the job
- Route density matters more than reach: target the towns you already serve
Long-consideration projects
- Buyer researches for weeks or months
- Project photos, service pages, and process pages do the selling
- Follow-up over time matters more than speed alone
- Winter is when you book spring: run design consultations in the off-season
Hardscape marketing is where the money is for most of the owners we work with, and it is also the slowest to build. Plan for it to take longer and pay more per job.
"Last fall... we had multiple jobs come in and booked us through the winter. One of them was a 250,000 dollar large retaining wall project."
Rick, outdoor-living contractor in Maine
LSA, Google profile, SEO: what to start with at your size
Around $500K to $1.5M: start with the Google Business Profile and Local Service Ads. They are the closest thing to calls this month. Google charges LSA per valid lead, and you set a weekly budget with a monthly maximum (see Google's explanation of how LSA leads and charges work). Check which of your job types Google offers in LSA in your area before you plan around it. It varies by category and market.
Around $1M to $3M: keep the profile and LSA running and add SEO for the bigger jobs. Search is where homeowners look for patio and wall contractors, and those pages keep working after the ad budget runs out. Paid social helps fill seasonal gaps.
$3M and up, or more than one market: location and service-area pages, a profile strategy for each market, and Google Ads alongside LSA, with reporting by market so you can see which crew area is pulling its weight.
What you should see in a monthly report
The most important line is cost per signed job by channel. Everything else supports it.
- Leads by source: calls, forms, LSA, Google profile, ads
- Which leads were real jobs and which were spam, sales calls, or wrong services
- Estimates booked and jobs signed, with job value
- Cost per lead and cost per signed job for each channel
- What changed this month and what changes next month
Warning signs: a report that is all impressions and rankings, no call recordings, and no mention of signed jobs. If your current agency can't tell you what a signed job cost last month, start there. Before you fire anyone, it is worth checking whether the slowdown is the market, the agency, or something on your side.
Client stories we've published
Isaac, a Wyoming hardscape owner: zero winter work to $500K+
One winter Facebook campaign for pole barns, about $2,500 in total spend: 85 qualified leads at around $17 to $20 each, one project signed for about $120,000, and over $500,000 in work tied back to the campaign.
Read the case study →
Rick and Ricky, a Maine outdoor-living company: from seventh or eighth to top three on the map
After 20+ years on word-of-mouth, a new website, local SEO, and lead tracking took them from showing up seventh or eighth to top three across most of their core towns. Last fall, multiple jobs booked them through the winter, including a $250,000 retaining wall project. Now they consistently book four to six months out, and $20K to $30K projects come in from homeowners who apologize that the job might be too small.
Read the client story →
"We are consistently booking four to six months out and I attribute that to the website."
Rick, outdoor-living contractor in Maine
Three steps
- Get a free audit. We check your Google profile, LSA, website, and lead tracking and show you where calls are leaking.
- Pick a budget tier. Based on your revenue and the jobs you want more of, using the cost-per-signed-job math above.
- We build the system. Then we report cost per signed job every month, on a 12-month build.
Start with the free audit
See what your Google presence and website look like to a homeowner before you spend another dollar.
Questions landscapers ask before hiring
How much do landscaping companies spend on marketing?
It varies too much by market, season, and service mix for one number to be useful. Work it backward instead: what a signed job is worth to you, how many estimates you close, and how many more jobs your crews can handle. That tells you what you can afford to pay for a signed job, and the monthly budget follows from it.
Is lawn care marketing different from landscape marketing?
Yes. Lawn care and maintenance sell on speed, price, and route density, so the Google profile, reviews, Local Service Ads, and answering the phone fast do most of the work. Landscape construction and hardscape sell on trust and proof, so project photos, service pages, and a longer follow-up matter more. Many companies do both and need both handled.
Do I have to sign a 12-month contract?
Visibility Starter is month-to-month. Growth Engine and Market Expansion are 12-month builds because SEO takes time, and how much depends on your market and your competition. It usually takes six to 12 months, if not longer. Google runs on trust: if a competitor Google already trusts is in your market, it takes longer, and if not, it can move faster. For higher-ticket hardscape and landscape installers, SEO can pay for itself with three to four extra jobs a year.
Is ad spend included?
Part of it. Starter includes the first $500 a month in LSA spend, Growth Engine the first $1K in LSA and Meta spend, and Market Expansion the first $2K across LSA, Meta, and Google Ads. Anything above that is billed separately, and you decide how much.
Can you guarantee leads or rankings?
No, and you should be careful with anyone who does. Google decides rankings and lead prices. What we can commit to is the work, the tracking, and a monthly report that shows what each signed job cost.
Do you work with hardscape-only companies?
Yes. Both of the client stories we have published are landscape and hardscape companies. Hardscape buyers take longer to decide, so the plan leans on project proof, design consultations, and follow-up.
Get through next winter with a pipeline.
Skip it, and next year probably looks like this one: overbooked in spring, idle in winter, paying for shared leads that go to the lowest bid, and no idea which dollars produced jobs. Get it right, and the calendar fills with the work you want, the winter design-build pipeline is full before spring, and you get one number each month you can trust: what each signed job cost.