Country Marketing Tactics?

[Rivervalleylawns]

first of I recently moved to a town of about ten thousand from phoenix. we have a larger 100,000 city less than twenty miles away that secures my commercial contracts. I am trying to find some good marketing ideas. obviously face to face is the
best but should I ad a billboard on the way to the large city. its only 300 to put up and 300 a month. I already have a few annual commercial contracts so I have a stable gross. really I just want to ad some more residential accounts. any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Marvelous Gardens]

I live in a town of 12,000 and I only market to my town. I have both commercial and residential accounts. I put out doorhangers in all the neighborhoods, and visit all the businesses annualy offering our services. I have numerous signs throughout the small town, and run an ad in the local paper and on the local tv station, I also send out post cards every two months to the higher income neigborhoods offering different discounts with each mailing. I do this year round. A lot of the commercial accounts have come from the owner getting a doorhanger on his residence and seeing that we also service commercial properties so you end up with the business and the residence. I also put up real estate signs for a local realtor, I put the signs up for free but add a small sign of my own at the bottom of the sign. Here are is few examples below. NOTE:THE number on the real estate sign is wrong this was just a proof, its suppose to be 552-YARD. Hope this helped.
By the way plant-it graphics did my postcards.

[Rivervalleylawns]

Thank you for all the ideas. I def. will get started on mailings. Also here they only charge 75 bucks a month for the newspaper ad and it generates good business. The residentials are always easy to get, im really shooting for more annual commercial accounts. So in a town of 12,000 how many accounts are you looking at this year?

[Marvelous Gardens]

Being that we are in a smaller town we do 60/40 res. to commercial . I am looking to pick up enough to make it 50/50. I have one crew of three that does everything, so right now we are really busy doing landscaping. Door to door is the best thing for commercial properties. But managers and owners also have houses so besure to include that you do service commerical poperties in all your ads. If your name and logo are stay in front of people you will get calls from both sides. This is just my personal opinion, so I try to put my company name and logo in front of everyone and everything that I can.

[Tommy Boy]

Study your demographics, who would most likely buy from you? Get several areas where you want to work and farm the area, so they see you and your message on a regular basis. Start branding now. Take time to really grow the business not just work the business. Post cards work well for me with door hangers and bandit signs. Ensure all your trucks and trailers are marked and logo'd