MARKETING TIPS & TECHNIQUES— LOOKING BACK By Suz Trusty Over the last nearly two years, the corona virus pandemic changed the business world, forcing adaptations in every aspect of your operations. Getting your message out in that chaotic situation became key to your company’s success—and that messaging is marketing. Marketing gave you the ability to inform your customers and potential customers that your company was still in business and to showcase the range of products and services you were offering. Marketing allowed you to provide them with the information they would need to connect with your company within the ever-evolving, covid-related safety protocols.
Online Presence The internet became the most effective marketing tool throughout the chaos and all indications are it will continue in that role. According to the statista.com data report from October 2020, almost 4.66 billion people were active internet users worldwide, encompassing 59 percent of the global population. While year-end 2021 data was not yet available, statista.com reported on August 4, 2021, “In 2021, an estimated 90.8 percent of the total U.S. population accessed the internet …” Their website became the primary marketing tool for many natural grass sod producers, a reliable, 24/7 avenue for communication with customers and potential customers. In many cases, it required significant upgrades to the existing website to convey all the information needed to adapt to the visit-less, paper-less, touch-less covid-related environment. Forced by covid to operate differently, most companies approached the upgrade process realizing the best way to provide the essential information was to “think like the customer.” For those serving multiple markets, that required analyzing the decision-making and purchasing processes from different perspectives. And those perspectives varied, even within a single category of customer. For example, a first-time homeowner’s “need to know information” was more basic than that of a longtime homeowner seeking to upgrade their landscaping. A potential new contractor customer’s information needs varied from that of a contractor with a well-established relationship with the company. The range of information needed was extensive, extending across the multiple grass varieties and cultivars, and the combination of monostands, mixes, and blends among a company’s offerings. It was important to explain the 40
growing conditions required for each of those offerings and guide the customers to the best match for the soil types, sun and shade factors, and climatic variables within the customers’ sites. Then the issues of potential uses and preferred levels of maintenance needed to be addressed. All of that also needed to be tailored to the anticipated pre-existing knowledge of the multiple types of customers within each category. The visual component of the website provided the opportunity to utilize a “show and tell” process to deliver the information. That raised more challenges—what to show and what to tell—and how to combine the two effectively. All the factors listed above concentrated on developing the tools customers would need to select the type of grass to order. For many sod producers, the middle segment of the typical purchase—determining how much sod would be needed for the area—was already posted on the website. Even if that had not been added previously, the company probably had compiled that information in an easy-tofollow format as a handout sheet or brochure. Members of Turfgrass Producers International (TPI) had access to an association-developed brochure, Turfgrass Area Calculations for New Sod, available in the Member-Only Store section of the website, www.TurfGrassSod.org. Those printed resources could be adapted or simply posted for use on the company’s website. If the post-purchase steps were not yet part of the sod producers’ website, TPI also offered brochures developed as member resources for those essential processes— installation, fertilization, and watering and care for new sod. Companies that had not been offering an order online option needed to develop one or connect with one of the industry providers of such programs. The final component for many companies was developing their nocontact pickup and delivery protocols, which were unique for each company, and incorporating that information into their website. Reflecting the resilience of this industry, most company’s websites are now consumer-friendly, highly informative, marketing tools.
Suz Trusty is co-editor of Turf News.
TPI Turf News January/February 2022
