Seeding the Marketplace

In his book American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, author Ted Steinberg says that Americans spend more than $40 billion a year on water, fertilizers, maintenance and services to keep their yards looking good. In that kind of market, it’s no surprise that lawn care service company Lawn Doctor is doing well.

With hundreds of franchises nationwide, Lawn Doctor uses direct mail as a primary means of marketing, but finding the right target customers is like finding select strands of grass in a half-acre backyard. With the help of the GeoSelector tool from DirectMail.com, Lawn Doctor has learned to fine tune its marketing efforts to the rooftop level.

Weeding through profiles
Founded in 1967, Lawn Doctor has more than 500 locations in 40 states and Puerto Rico. The company’s residential and commercial services include lawn, yard and landscape care, pest control and lawn mower maintenance. One of its most popular services, Lawn Maintainer Care, helps homeowners keep their yards in top shape with fertilization, crabgrass and weed control and integrated pest management.

“When you look at lawn care services, you can throw a lot of things in there, from mowing to fertilization controls,” says Paul Mumm, Lawn Doctor’s director of marketing. “There were plenty of opportunities with the home improvement boom and we grew rapidly through franchising.”

Lawn Doctor has grown to be one of the only national chains of its kind in the category, and Mumm says direct mail has always been an important part of its marketing plan. With a clientele that can vary dramatically by location, however, Lawn Doctor can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach to national demographics. Mumm says he has seen annual household income targets ranging from $35,000 to $100,000 and target home values from $100,000 to $500,000. The ability to analyze demographics at a hyper-local level, breaking that down to ZIP codes and even to the street level, is key. Lawn Doctor uses demographics not just to prepare mailing lists, but also to gauge new franchise feasibility.

“Lawn care is a very local business,” Mumm says. “There isn’t a typical profile. The demographic for a lawn care service customer in New York is totally different than it is in Tyler, Texas.”

Pinpointing potential
Looking for new ways to increase market share and expand marketing efficiencies, Lawn Doctor recently adopted the GeoSelector tool from DirectMail.com. Combining Google mapping technology and a high-end geocoding program, it links the output of more than 200 million consumer records, pulling the most detailed demographic information. Users can input ZIP codes and make demographic selections to immediately see the area’s business potential.

DirectMail.com has been in business for more than 40 years and produces and mails upwards of 200 million pieces of mail annually. Price Anderson, vice president of sales and marketing for DirectMail.com, says that efficiencies are critical in direct marketing because of the expense of postage and printing.

With the GeoSelector program, marketers can draw their own shape on a map and whittle down the list to exactly what they want. The data is organized and broken down into 60 Mosaic groups comprised of some 200 data points — everything from the age of the head of household and the structure to income and employment. The Mosaic system was developed and is maintained by Experian.

Anderson says that the real potential of the GeoSelector tool is its ability to draw down to smallest details and narrowest set of characteristics. That, in turn, can narrow a set of more than 30,000 random households to a highly-targeted list of 300.

“You can use the tool on a macro scale, and even down to the micro scale, down to communities and streets,” he says. “We can even go down to the rooftop level.”

This has proved handy in validating new franchise locations, using what Mumm calls a “scalpel approach.” With the GeoSelector tool, Lawn Doctor can analyze market potential before adding a new location. And with the ability to draw any shape over a map, they can geographically center and base their operations around the target clientele.

Creating focus
Visualizing the potential with plot points has been helpful not only in developing franchise locations, but also in getting franchise owners off on the right foot.

“We do the analysis here and work through specific business plans that are in the franchise system,” Mumm says. “We do a road map 18 months out so that everyone understands how we’re going after the marketplace.”

Lawn Doctor also uses the GeoSelector tool to streamline existing customer databases and mailing lists. Mumm says that by obtaining the cost per sale, it can get the true ROI and get true quantitative values. And by analyzing closing ratios and response rates, they can focus on areas where things are working.

“You eliminate waste by cutting out the households that don’t fit your customer profile,” he says.