i was curious if anyone is familiar with marketing, bidding, and service calls for installing residential holiday lights. I’m thinking about adding it to an off season service. I’ve done lights in the past for a landscape company but I wouldn’t feel comfortable selling this service due to lack of knowledge. What are some of the cons? Do you receive service calls constantly? How is the bidding process? Storing the lights during the mow season?
Holiday lighting
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i was curious if anyone is familiar with marketing, bidding, and service calls for installing residential holiday lights. I’m thinking about adding it to an off season service. I’ve done lights in the past for a landscape company but I wouldn’t feel comfortable selling this service due to lack of knowledge. What are some of the cons? Do you receive service calls constantly? How is the bidding process? Storing the lights during the mow season?
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Holiday Bright Lights is a wholesale Christmas light supplier with educational materials and a program for learning the ropes. The holiday lighting guys I know or work with have been very happy. Not sure if any other wholesalers have education or marketing support as of yet. They mostly look to be straight suppliers, so I've not worked with their marketing support materials (stock photos and spec-related content).
Marketing-wise, not too different than the local battle you may already fight in the online world, however with much less competition. As you get your feet wet and start to think about targeting HOA's, commercial, and local municipality work, the effort is greater, as is the reward.
It's not an active segment on Lawnsite, but I know several guys on here that have added lighting and do very well. Maybe they'll pop in.
A good lighting vendor will have accompanying education, so definitely look for that.
With quality products (especially LED), and installation best practices, services calls should be minimal.
Re: storage, Holiday Bright Lights just posted a video on efficient storage techniques (dedicated client boxes and shelving plus some other tidbits). Not sure if it's on youtube, but I watched it on their Facebook page. They have two FB pages, one of which is a private group page for their customers, so I'm guessing it was on that one. When I have a sec, I'll take a look.
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Awesome! Thanks everyone for the information. It always helps to have more resources. Appreciate it.
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I started doing holiday decorating with live foliage in the off season from irrigation. I started dabbling in Lights about 9 years ago now, and I enjoy it. The only hard part is getting decent help because of the cold. Last year we were so busy, we worked 6 days a week, usually a good 10-14 hours a day from
November until the week before Xmas. A few things that I have learned:
1) Don’t take on more than you can handle. It may seem simple and easy hanging lights, but it can be time consuming. Especially for clients who want branch wrapping.
2) Google is your friend. Unlike with irrigation, Google Ads helps us get a good amount of leads for lighting.
3) Don’t underbid! I learned this the hard way. Lights, especially LED are expensive. When you start doing strands on top of strands, the cost adds up. HOA’s, just like with irrigation and lawn service, want the platinum package, but don’t want to pay even for a 1940’s Xmas light set.
4) Never give a “installation date”. I learned that the hard way too. Now I tell them that Installation is in November and take down is when weather permits.
5) Shop Multiple suppliers. There are many suppliers on the net. It may not seem like a lot when you are talking 25-50 cents a strand. But when you start buying 100’s of strands, it adds up quickly. I use two suppliers, one being Site One, and my guy there always gets me what I need when I need it. Granted, I go to him with quantities, part numbers, and if I can’t find what I need, he finds it for me.
6) Lifts most of the time cause more issues than they are worth. It’s very hard to get a lift where you need it on a residential property (at least where I am at). So make sure that you or whomever you work with are comfortable on ladders.
Hope this helps!
November until the week before Xmas. A few things that I have learned:
1) Don’t take on more than you can handle. It may seem simple and easy hanging lights, but it can be time consuming. Especially for clients who want branch wrapping.
2) Google is your friend. Unlike with irrigation, Google Ads helps us get a good amount of leads for lighting.
3) Don’t underbid! I learned this the hard way. Lights, especially LED are expensive. When you start doing strands on top of strands, the cost adds up. HOA’s, just like with irrigation and lawn service, want the platinum package, but don’t want to pay even for a 1940’s Xmas light set.
4) Never give a “installation date”. I learned that the hard way too. Now I tell them that Installation is in November and take down is when weather permits.
5) Shop Multiple suppliers. There are many suppliers on the net. It may not seem like a lot when you are talking 25-50 cents a strand. But when you start buying 100’s of strands, it adds up quickly. I use two suppliers, one being Site One, and my guy there always gets me what I need when I need it. Granted, I go to him with quantities, part numbers, and if I can’t find what I need, he finds it for me.
6) Lifts most of the time cause more issues than they are worth. It’s very hard to get a lift where you need it on a residential property (at least where I am at). So make sure that you or whomever you work with are comfortable on ladders.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks for that info!!
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We do around 100 install/take downs a season. Consistently get 55-60% gross margin and it helps extend the season for some employees by a month.
We use Holiday Bright Lights and have been happy with their product. The toughest part is getting people to commit early enough that they don't run out of product - about this time of year is when you need decisions from customers on new installs.
We use Holiday Bright Lights and have been happy with their product. The toughest part is getting people to commit early enough that they don't run out of product - about this time of year is when you need decisions from customers on new installs.
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It's christmas lights for me too. But holiday lights tend to cater towards more people
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Potato tomato
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