Are you considering starting a lawn care company? The future of lawn care looks great! Looking for a business you can start with a small amount of capital that you can grow into as large of a company as your imagination can take you?
Whether you are looking to lawn care because you love being outside, or have just gotten tired of working for someone else, tired of the corporate world, or lost your job, you are considering a great investment with a good chance of being successful.
Several sources have evaluated trends and believe that the lawn care industry will continue to grow. Some sources predict 10-15% growth in the demand for lawn care each year for the next few years. This is a great time to jump in. With some coaching and courses you should be able to open a new business with less than $100,000 and be profitable within a year.
Reasons Lawn Care Has A Great Future
Some of the reasons the lawn care industry is predicted to grow include customer demographics, customer expectations, rise of the millennials, and increase in entrepreneurs in the field.
Increased exposure of what backyards look like on social media and other sharing platforms adds to the pear pressure to have a nice looking lawn. Marketing’s message that a healthy lawn means a healthy family has defiantly helped the future outlook of the industry.
Consumer Demographics
Customer demographics are changing with millennials become more and more important. The majority of them have two incomes and value their spare time more than in past generations.
Less of them want to be out taking care of their lawns when they can be enjoying their families, or doing almost anything else. This large group of consumers has a high percentage of disposable income and is ready to spend it on lawn care to save themselves some time.
In the past, lawn care was preserved as a luxury service like sending your laundry out for someone else to do it. Now it is expected that a professional lawn care company will take care of the fertilization and weed control in a lawn.
Homeowners are able to go to the local big box retailer and buy what they need to do the lawn service themselves but usually don’t for a few reasons. One reason is that they have an aversion to being around chemicals and don’t want the exposure.
Another reason is that they don’t want extra left over products sitting around in their garage as a safety hazard to their children and children in the neighborhood.
Many don’t want to spend the time researching and learning about chemicals and weeds and fertilizers and what to do and not do. Paying someone fifty dollars a few times a year to keep their lawn looking good is a great value for those people.
Peer pressure and social media has influenced the increase in lawn care sales. More pictures of your lawn that will show up for the world to see means you need to take better care of it. Marketing campaigns have linked having a great looking lawn with health and happiness.
The happy people are perception having their party on a beautiful lawn. Healthy lawn, healthy family outside enjoying nature. The of healthy – clean lawn means healthy-clean family has helped the lawn care business tremendously.
Future Trends
Some other future trends in lawn care is the increased importance of social media marketing and customer reviews and referrals. A customer that likes you can spread the word of you to hundreds of people in a few seconds. The unhappy customer will send out the bad review to hundreds if not thousands of people on every platform they can find.
Successful lawn care businesses in the future will know how to use social media to promote their business and keep on top of reviews. Building trust and a good reputation that can withstand the occasional crazy customer that will leave a bad review for little or no reason is important.
Lawn Care Industry Trends
The “Natural” and “Green” trend has been going on for a long time and will be increasingly important. As millennials become the major purchasers the requests for natural and organic alternatives will rise.
For business owners, the trend towards riding applicators for servicing efficiency will rise. The newer riding applicators allow for applying multiple granular products at one time while spraying for weeds. These sprayers along with more elaborate methods to combine liquid products to spray on lawns will help the overhead to continue to go down.
Computer software programs are become more complex and increase the efficiency of business tremendously. In the old days, new customers were assigned a cardboard card and their services would be writing on their card. Making a route would involve maps and map code books.
Modern software makes routes based on square footage, days customers can be serviced, production value in money, and even take out as many left turns as possible. New software target markets to customers and keeps customer history and accounting. This makes it easier for a smaller amount of office personnel to keep up with customers and do scheduling.
The number of services in a program has continued to rise through the years. Increased services means less weeds and more cash flow which helps more marginal businesses stay in business. Newer weed control products that reduce weeds and fertilizers that have slow release continue to increase efficiency and profit.
Issues Affecting The Future
The major issue for the lawn care industry in the future is the number one issue currently, lack of labor force. Hourly rates for lawn technicians have 20 risen steadily, with $13-$20 per hour to start not uncommon. Bonuses and signing bonuses have increased wages for techs, yet there are always ads looking for lawn techs. The best, most experienced techs are earning $40-$60K per year treating lawns in major markets.
Conclusion
The future of lawn care services like fertilization and weed control is bright. As long as you can hire or train good employees and keep them, there is no reason that a new lawn care business would not be successful as long as the business is run properly and the marketing is successful.