This article gives average customer acquisition costs (CACs) of lawn care businesses of various sizes, price points, and geographic areas. Generally, we recommend lawn care businesses spend roughly ⅓ of the first-year contract revenue to acquire a customer, but this can vary based on a variety of factors. Below, we present the average CAC for lawn care businesses broken down by:

• Contract Size
• Service
• Marketing Strategy
• Competition Level
• Years in Business
• Company Size

 

Calculating Customer Acquisition Cost

When comparing your current CACs to our benchmarks, use the following formula to ensure the CACs are measured the same way:

CAC = Spend on Marketing ÷ # of New Customers Acquired 

We recommend breaking down your analysis by the first three breakdwons we listed above. This will allow you to make a direct comparison to understand if your CAC is too high or too low (if your CAC is too far below the benchmark, it is a signal you could increase marketing spend and acquire far more customers). Once you have measured your CACs, read on to compare to our benchmarks followed by ideas for lowering CAC at the bottom of the page. 

 

Organic vs Paid CAC

You’ll notice we have split our CAC metrics into organic and paid. This is to provide further granularity and allow you to compare your own metrics more precisely. The difference between organic and paid is as follows:

• Organic: Organic advertising includes any advertising method in which traffic and impressions is earned via producing content (email marketing, SEO, organic social media).
• Paid: Paid advertising includes advertising methods where dollars are traded for impressions on the ad (Google Ads, door hangers, Yelp Ads). 

As a general rule, organic advertising will always acquire customers more cheaply than paid advertising but does not have the same amount of predictability or scale. 

 

Average CAC by Contract Size

Logically, the higher the value a contract is, the more expensive it will be to acquire a customer. The only exception to this rule is if you significantly underbid competitors, in which your CAC will be lower, but your profit will also be lower. 

 

Average CAC by Service

Each common lawn care service will come with a different CAC, generally based on demand and cost. 

 

Average CAC by Marketing Strategy

Organic methods such as SEO and email marketing outperform traditional forms of advertising for lawn care businesses such as door hangers and lawn signs. Generally, SEO can generate higher-value contracts due to the authoritative nature of ranking highly on Google. 

 

Average CAC by Competition Level

CAC raises with a higher competition level, assuming a linear amount of demand. There is an exception: if your company creates a new advertising message that conveys you are of a higher quality and better value and this is backed up by customer reviews on Google, Yelp, Nextdoor, etc. 

 

Average CAC by Years in Business

With years in business comes brand recognition, and brand recognition bolsters advertising effectiveness.

 

Average CAC by Company Size

A byproduct of years in business, your company size also affects how many people are aware of your brand as a “household name”. 

 

Our Recommended Marketing Strategies for Lawn Care Companies

If you want to generate more customers for your lawn care business, consider the following marketing strategies. They are underutilized in the lawn care industry, so by doing them you will be ahead of 99% of your competition. We are including one organic method, Search Engine Optimization, and one paid method, Google Ads. 

For Short-Term Lead Generation: Google Ads (Paid)

If you need leads in the short term, we recommend Google Ads. With Google Ads, you can place your company at the top of the search listings immediately when potential customers search for keywords like “lawn care company near me”. With this strategy, you know that every person that sees your ads will be interested in your services (sounds better than door-hangers, right?)

For Long Term, Sustainable Lead Generation: Search Engine Optimization (Organic)

The crown jewel of marketing for lawn care businesses is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is the art of designing your website in such a way that it ranks highly on Google for keywords such as “lawn care company Detroit, MI”. A majority of consumers trust the organic Google search listings implicitley, and will skip the ads to browse the organic listings. While SEO takes months to see results, it will massively scale a business once it begins to work consistently.

 

Next Steps: Implementation

Focus Digital offers consulting and implementation services for the previous marketing strategies mentioned. If you are interested in speaking with us or a copy of this report, please reach out to us on our Contact Us page.