Dave Vojta became involved with Spring-Green Lawn Care when he purchased an existing franchise in Peoria, IL in 2005. Dave had plenty of experience in the green industry with three years running his own lawn service business and 13 years working at the largest national lawn care company in North America.
When Dave joined, he was most interested in the preexisting customers and revenue, but through his investigation of being associated with a franchise system, he began to see the value. “I did not believe that I needed a franchise to help me be successful. I had nearly 20 years in the business; what were they going to teach me?” Vojta said. “However, as the face of our customers continue to change, it is very difficult to keep up with the changing marketing channels. To provide a seamless customer experience that incorporates the digital channel to a business my size – I have warmed up to the help!”
“Even the Midwestern folks here in Peoria are buying services and products online. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are determining how my business is found online and they change the rules every day to ensure a level playing field. This means someone in my organization has to pay attention all of the time. With the franchise partnership at Spring-Green, I am essentially outsourcing that specialty.”
“Google, Yahoo, and Bing are determining how my business is found online and they change the rules every day to ensure a level playing field. This means someone in my organization has to pay attention all of the time. With the franchise partnership at Spring-Green, I am essentially outsourcing that specialty.”
In order to ensure his business remains in front of his customers, Vojta has adapted his advertising and marketing efforts to become more digital. He recognizes the reality that most customers perform their research and shopping online and that while he must first be seen, he also needs to be providing relevant and meaningful content based on what the customer is searching. The digital channel allows for this level of personalization.
“The way a consumer searches can be an entirely different than the way we speak in the business,” says Vojta, “Customers are also shopping on multiple devices, so your information needs to be mobile friendly and easy to navigate. If you are absent from the digital realm, you are also absent from your potential customers’ minds.” An average of 35% of Spring-Green’s website traffic comes from mobile users.
To continue growing his business, Vojta takes advantage of the Spring-Green Support Center’s many digital marketing offerings, such as complete social media and reputation management, local listing management, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. This year, Spring-Green Lawn Care of Peoria implemented site re-targeting which serves reminder advertisements to those who have visited the website but not yet purchased.
The Support Center manages all of their franchise owners’ webpages, local listings, PPC campaigns, social media pages, and more. They also provide the tracking and analytics that are invaluable to the business owners when making future marketing decisions. This is Vojta’s first year participating in some of these campaigns and he has become very involved in the process of tracking and analytics. “I find that I can track impressions much better through digital marketing rather than print marketing,” says Vojta.
Vojta has seen continued growth in his business each year, and this year he credits a big part of his success to his digital marketing campaigns. Compared to this time last year, Vojta has increased the number of new sales by 22% and the number of customers by 6%.
