How to Grow a Gardening Business

by Team Tradify, September 5, 2024

Starting a gardening business is a whirlwind; discovering how to find new customers, manage your finances and keep the wheels spinning. However, to grow your gardening business you'll also need to explore new ways to market your services and make sure your operations can scale to handle more work — without sacrificing quality.

Need help with planning? Download our free Business Plan Template for Gardeners!

Looking for advice specific to your trade? Check out our other articles:

Low on time? Skip ahead!

Lead generation through digital marketing & reviews
Finding quality admin solutions
Making good financial choices
Hiring & team decisions
Continuous training and researching industry trends

1. Lead generation through digital marketing & reviews

Growing a gardening business means finding reliable ways to generate new business and customers. Repeat word of mouth and reviews are great, but to scale into different markets and have a flow of new customers, you’ll need to develop an online presence.

Social media

Even if you don’t want to dance your way into becoming the next TikTok superstar, social media is crucial for business, with a growing number of people turning to social media before traditional search to find local businesses. Providing images of finished jobs or before-and-after comparisons is an easy way to maintain your online presence and validate the quality of your work.

Looking for more tips? Check out:

Website

A website may be the most crucial tool for growing your gardening business. For customers, they’re a natural part of the purchasing process. Not only do websites pop up in Google searches, but they also offer customers instant access to all the information they need about your services. However, building your own website can be a daunting process. Luckily, Tradify gives you the option to build an easy, templated website to showcase your contact information and photos.

Need help? Check out:

Easy Website Design for Tradesmen

Online directory

Remember phonebooks? Neither do we. Instead, customers are turning to online directories to find reliable businesses in their areas. They’re a popular and affordable way to reach new customers online.

Find one near you in our resources below:

Reviews
Asking for reviews should be a routine part of your business management. Roughly 91% of people aged 18-34 trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 93% of consumers admit that online reviews helped influence their decisions.

Need some more help? Check out:

How To Get Good Reviews for Your Business

2. Finding quality admin solutions
It’s one thing doing an amazing job on the tools, and quite another learning how to manage a growing gardening business. Keeping on top of your business admin is as critical as what you do at the job site itself when it comes to growth. Luckily, there are tools and systems available to help manage the admin workload.

Quoting and invoicing

Gardening business owners often spend over 18 hours a week on administrative tasks. Tradify’s quoting and invoicing tools support you to quickly create and send professional invoices, quotes, and estimates. Let Tradify handle the admin work, so you can focus on what’s really important—securing more jobs and expanding your gardening services.

Keeping track of jobs

Landing more jobs is a clear indicator that your business is on the rise. However, if you struggle to meet the growing demand and begin missing appointments, you risk leaving your customers dissatisfied. With Tradify’s scheduling and job tracking features, you can easily stay on top of all your tasks, gaining a real-time overview of active, upcoming, and completed jobs.

Quick and professional enquiry process

Your first interaction with potential clients begins with an enquiry. To ensure it leads to more, it’s crucial to make a strong, positive impression. Tradify’s enquiries feature centralises messages from your email, website, and phone, allowing you to respond promptly and never miss a job opportunity.

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3. Making good financial choices

The love of gardening is all well and good, but chances are you started your gardening business for the promise of financial freedom. To ensure this dream is a reality, you need an accurate view of your financial health.

Cash flow

Your ability to purchase tools and supplies, pay staff, and keep your vehicles running, relies on having cash in the bank. Making sure you’re on top of your Cash Flow Forecast means you’re less likely to get trapped in the future.

Charge out rate

How can you make sure you get your charge-out rate right? The trick is coming up with a rate that matches the market, will cover you and your team's costs, and above all — improve your profitability.

Time to review your charge-out rate? Use our free calculator!

Profit margin

It's easy to overlook the hidden costs that can impact your gardening business's bottom line. When calculating your average profit margin for each job, it's crucial to account for not only the basics like materials and labour but also operational expenses such as insurance, staff training, and travel.

Make sure you're making a profit on every job with our free profit margin calculator!

Accounting software

When it comes to tracking your finances, accounting software a must-have tool. Tradify integrates with some of the most loved systems from all over the world including:

a graphic of tradify and its accounting integrations QuickBooks, xero, sage, myob, and stripe

4. Hiring & team decisions

No matter who you hire, some training will be necessary to get them up to speed. You need to evaluate if you'll have the time, resources, and patience to go through this process. Bringing in employees also means deciding what type of work culture you'll build and what processes you'll employ to make employees want to stay.

Check out this episode of our Behind the Tools Podcast to learn how to keep long-term staff in your trade business!

Apprentices

Willingness to train and invest in the next generation of handypeople comes with risks and rewards and may be a cheaper alternative to hiring someone fully qualified, while still allowing you to grow your business.

How To Hire an Apprentice - A Guide for Trade Business Owners

Subcontractors

Subcontractors allow you to bring on temporary help, during busy seasons or large contracts or ongoing jobs.

Full-time employees

Full-time employees come with a range of responsibilities, including taxes, holiday pay, redundancy, and more. It's critical to evaluate your finances to ensure you’re prepared for these commitments. However, hiring reliable full-time staff is also a strong indication that your business is growing, and it offers the greatest potential for generating revenue.

How and When To Hire Your First Employee

Admin staff

Bringing on admin staff means taking on extra responsibilities like managing payroll, paperwork, and scheduling. It’s important to make sure your budget can handle these costs. But having reliable admin support is a sure sign your business is growing, and it helps you focus more on making money.

Hiring Administrative Staff for Your Trade Business

5. Continuous training and researching industry trends

Part of staying ahead of your competition involves continuously pushing yourself, and your team, to search for the best way to run your business. Whether that's innovative methods to get the jobs done on the tools, or faster ways to run your business, pushing yourself to try new things means that you'll: