Every landscaping business wants to promote its online presence, generate leads, improve brand visibility, and secure more deals. 

But how do you do that? Do you hire a marketing agency to help, build an in-house team from scratch, or place a freelancer on retainer? Which option is best suited for your business?

This guide unpacks each option and how it stacks up to help you make the right decision. 

Why do landscaping businesses hire marketing agencies?

Landscaping businesses hire marketing agencies to help promote their company, improve online visibility, generate leads, attract new clients, and retain existing ones. 

Landscapers hire marketing firms because they understand digital promotion better and can suggest and implement strategies to help their clients’ businesses grow. 

Some of the channels marketing agencies handle include:

• Paid advertising

• Content marketing

• Social media marketing

• SEO

• Web development

And if the agency specializes in landscaping marketing? They not only understand marketing but are also familiar with the seasonal nature of landscaping, your company’s specific challenges, and proven tactics that work.   

Partnering with an agency to market your company means you can focus on the business while the agency handles the complexities of promoting your company.

What are the alternatives to hiring a marketing agency for your landscaping business?

Marketing agencies offer premium services; sometimes, that can be more than you can afford. 

Here are alternatives you can leverage to market your business:

• Build an in-house team: You can employ expert marketers or strategists responsible for all things marketing and promotion in the company. In-house marketing teams typically have an in-depth understanding of the brand and target audience, so their marketing activities are well-tailored to the company’s objectives.

• Work with a marketing freelancer: A freelance marketer is a budget-friendly option for your landscaping business. You can hire one when you need them, which means you only pay for a specific project or the time they’ve spent with you. Freelancers provide targeted help with low overhead.

• Do your own marketing: With the right resources and guidance, you can market your landscaping business yourself. You just need to upskill—learn the ropes of digital marketing to create campaigns relevant to your brand and audience. After all, you know them better than anyone.

Pros and cons of hiring a marketing agency for your landscaping business

So, why should you hire a marketing agency, and what should you keep in mind? 

Let's dive in.

Pros of hiring a marketing agency for a landscaping business

• Expertise and strategy: You get a whole team of marketing specialists focused on your company’s growth. Think strategists to content experts, SEO gurus, ad professionals, and more, all bringing a wealth of experience and diverse knowledge. 

• Saves you time: Landscaping is both time-consuming and physically demanding. While you can handle the marketing yourself, it might be stressful for just one person. Partnering with an agency means you get to focus on jobs, operations, and client management, while they handle marketing. 

• Access to premium tools and insights: You need the right digital tools—such as HubSpot, Semrush, an email marketing platform, etc.—to be effective in marketing. Marketing agencies have access to such software; hiring them means you don’t have to spend hours figuring out how these tools work and how best to use them.

• Scalable campaigns: Marketing agencies typically have experience running multiple campaigns. They understand what it takes to scale efforts efficiently and have access to automation tools, ad platforms, and testing frameworks. As such, this makes it easy for them to scale successful marketing campaigns across multiple platforms.

Cons of hiring a marketing agency for a landscaping business

• Cost: Hiring a marketing agency can be expensive, with monthly retainers ranging from a few hundred to thousands of dollars. This can put a financial strain on your landscaping business, increasing overhead and reducing profit margins. 

• Slow results: Getting results from marketing isn’t always instant. Sometimes, seeing a return on investment can take 6 months to a year, or longer. 

• Lacks personal touch: Marketing agencies are good. They understand the process and know what it takes to help you grow. However, they may not understand the local audience or your brand voice as well as you. If you’re not careful, your brand messaging might feel generic to clients instead of personal.

Pros and cons of building an in-house team for your landscaping business

What if you decide to build a marketing team from scratch? You could upskill loyal staff through paid courses or hire marketing experts to join the team. 

Would an in-house team be better for your business?

Find out below.

 Pros of building an in-house team for a landscaping business

• Better understanding of your brand: An in-house marketer knows your business better than a marketing agency. They better understand your values, voice, and audience, ensuring your messaging stays authentic and consistent. 

• More control and faster communication: With an in-house team, you have a more streamlined, faster approval process. You can quickly change direction, review content, and give instant feedback. 

• Aligned with your business goals: Having an in-house marketing team ensures your marketing efforts are fully aligned with your day-to-day business needs. The team can work with different departments, operations, sales, and client services—so they can really nail what clients are looking for. Marketing agencies don’t usually have access to such seamless collaboration. 

• Cost-effective over time: Got steady marketing needs? Hiring a full- or part-time marketer is typically more affordable than paying agency retainers. You’re investing in someone who gets to grow with your business, and that long-term focus leads to stronger, consistent marketing results.

Cons of building an in-house team for a landscaping business

• Hiring and training costs: Employing the right people can take time. You may have to contact a recruiter, incentivize existing employees, or offer additional financial benefits to attract candidates, all of which increase your overhead. And then there’s training cost, which could be high if you intend to upskill a team member.

• Limited skill set: An effective marketing team should have different specialists (SEO, paid ads, content, strategy, and social media). But hiring all of them can be expensive. As such, one person is required to wear many hats, leading to burnout and slow results.  

• Tools and resources cost: Your marketing team will need marketing software to be effective. The cost can quickly add up if they need multiple tools.

Pros and cons of working with a marketing freelancer for your landscaping business

Partnering with a freelancer is another alternative to hiring a landscaping marketing agency. 

See the pros and cons of working with one below. 

Pros of working with a marketing freelancer for your landscaping business

• Budget-friendly and flexible: For newly established landscaping businesses, hiring a freelancer helps you save funds. You can pay them on a project basis without entering into a long-term contract. 

• Quick turnaround time: Freelancers are known for working independently and quickly, so they’re ideal when you need specific tasks completed in a certain time.

• Specialized skills set: You don’t always need to hire a full marketing team for a project; there are freelancers with specialized skills that can handle any job. You could find freelance marketing strategists, paid ad experts, designers, video editors, and more. 

• Scalable support: Working with freelancers allows you to stay agile without committing to a full-time staff or agency. You can gradually build a freelance marketing team, adding one expert after another as your landscaping business grows.

Cons of working with a marketing freelancer for your landscaping business

• Inconsistent availability: Freelancers may not always be available when you need them, as they often juggle multiple clients simultaneously. This can be inconvenient when you have urgent marketing projects to finish.

• Limited industry and brand familiarity: Finding marketing freelancers who understand the landscaping industry and your brand’s voice, values, and audience will be difficult. You’ll need to provide clear briefs, context, and consistently follow up to ensure they’re on the same page. 

• Extra efforts required: Even though you’re outsourcing marketing, you still have to be heavily involved in the process. From overseeing timelines to quality assurance, assigning tasks, and providing feedback, you or a team member needs to dot every i and cross every t. This is extra work on your plate compared to hiring an agency. 

Pros and cons of marketing your landscaping business yourself 

Before deciding whether or not to market the landscaping business yourself, you must understand what that would mean for the business, good and bad. Here’s what you can expect:

Pros of marketing your landscaping business yourself

• Low cost: Marketing by yourself means saving money by not hiring freelancers, agencies, or in-house help. In fact, you’ll probably only spend on software subscriptions.  

• Complete control: You wouldn’t have to spend time explaining the brand tone of voice and positioning or waiting on others. You’ll control the message, timing, voice, and strategy.

• Authentic connection: Since you understand the audience and business better than any agency or freelancer, you can personalize the brand and form genuine connections with your prospects and clients.

• Deep learning: DIY helps you gain hands-on experience in marketing strategies and tools. This way, you can understand the complexities of marketing and make smarter decisions when you eventually outsource.

Cons of marketing your landscaping business yourself

• Time-consuming: Marketing takes time—you've got research, content creation, ad management, and tracking results. That's time you could spend running your landscaping business. 

• Steep learning curve: The marketing space is constantly changing. One day it’s about SEO, tomorrow it’s AI optimization. Learning the different trends can feel overwhelming, and any mistake can cost you time, money, and potential clients.

• Inconsistent execution: DIY marketing often gets neglected when business picks up. Instead of posting on social media or your website every day, for instance, you now post twice a month because business is booming. That inconsistency can hurt the brand’s visibility and lead flow.

What marketing actions are easier to do yourself?

Now, there are specific marketing activities that are relatively easy to handle yourself. These include:

• Social media posting, e.g., sharing before-and-after job photos, posting landscaping tips, or celebrating team members. 

• Google Business Profile optimization to boost your local search visibility. It involves adding a logo, previous project photos, and an address to your profile, as well as collecting and responding to reviews.

• Designing promo materials, including printing and distributing them.

• Asking satisfied clients for testimonials and referrals. 

• Networking with realtors or property managers to get referrals. 

• Basic website updates like editing contact or services info. 

But you might want to avoid more technical marketing activities, such as managing PPC campaigns. Slight errors might eat deep into your marketing budget without any positive effects on your business.

How to choose the best marketing agency for your landscaping business

To choose the best marketing agency for your landscaping business, consider the following:

• Digital marketing expertise: Confirm that the agency has a firm grasp of local SEO, paid advertising strategies, social media marketing, artificial intelligence optimization, web design, and email marketing. They need a proven track record of leveraging diverse strategies to grow field service businesses.

• Industry expertise: Partner with a marketing agency that understands the landscaping industry, clients, business pain points, and trends. Visit its testimonial page or read case studies to see whether or not it has worked in the landscaping space. 

• Focus on lead generation, growth, and sales: Beyond making things look aesthetically pleasing, ask what the company’s focus is. Are they concerned about generating leads, growing your business, and closing deals? After all, that’s why you want to market your brand.  

• Evaluate communication and transparency: Choose an agency that understands your challenges, responds to them, offers solutions, and keeps you updated throughout implementation. Do they have a dedicated account manager for you? How often do they send update reports? Ensure you can consider them partners before hiring them.

How can Aspire help with landscaping marketing?

Aspire is a field management software solution that enables landscapers to streamline operations. It offers features that let you complete landscaping projects efficiently and profitably.

Instead of juggling multiple tools for estimating, invoicing, project management, job costing, and reporting, Aspire lets you handle them all from one spot. 

Beyond managing operations, Aspire also offers Marketing Pro, a tool that helps you use client data to create highly targeted email marketing campaigns.

You know how launching an email campaign starts with building a subscriber list? Aspire lets you create one using the data you already have in the platform. You can segment your client lists, use email templates, and keep your customers happy by sharing upsell and renewal opportunities.

Plus, you can drill down into key metrics and get detailed insights into your campaigns to see which is performing best.

Book a live demo to see how Aspire’s Marketing Pro helps you build a target audience and automate email marketing campaigns.