A Case Study: How a $33 Nextdoor Ad Brought in $525 for my Lawn Mowing Business
From lawn mower to lawn mowing business, the most important step is to move the needle by bringing in paying clients. Here is a case study on how to seek clients who need lawn service.
Let me save you the trouble. It’s always more fun to build the business. Imagine: constructing the restaurant or building the dental office.
Truth: It’s not the most important part.
The most important part is meeting someone you don’t really know, who does not know you and yet trusts you enough to exchange a medium of currency for service. That’s the magical part.
Why? It’s what brings in the money.
Let’s build the case study.
You have all the equipment, practice and convinced yourself that you can provide a service: in this case, mowing lawns for other people, so they don’t have to mow it themselves.
You asked people close to you, and even people further out like in a church setting, your gym group or knitting hobby group.
You’re looking to gain a few more lawns, a few more clients.
Paid Ads.
Welcome to the world of paid advertisement. You have to pay a little bit to get your name out there to people you do not know but would need your service.
Paid ads come in newspaper, radio accounts, television commercials, billboard signs, and bus benches to name a few.
But there’s an entire new world. The Internet
Because of the internet and our attention on the internet, advertisements can be on there too, and there’s a lot.
According to Statista, the online advertisement industry for 2022 is a whopping 600 Billion dollar revenue stream.
To put it into context, Pew Research puts newspaper advertisements at roughly 9 Billion in 2020 and it’s declining.
Okay, what’s Nextdoor and why should I care?
Let’s back up a bit. You’ve heard of social media? Online public forums with free accounts open to anyone? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to name a few.
These social media giants, unheard of in the early 2000s, now dominate…everything. I remember when these did not exist. That’s how old I am.
New crops of social media apps have been brewing up. Nextdoor is an online social site aimed at neighborhoods. A person signs up and tells what neighborhood they’re in.
People nearby talk about the upcoming local parade, the new traffic light installed, the dog walker who threw their pet waste in the bushes and so on.
Nextdoor sells online advertising space, and it’s pretty smart about it.
Without fail, because of the nature of Nextdoor, it’s very common to see postings on
- Can anyone recommend a good local landscaper?
- Looking for a good tree removal service.
- What’s a new restaurant nearby?
So how do I put up an ad on Nextdoor?
Honestly, it’s best to just YouTube since the interface changes so frequently, but I assure you that Nextdoor wants to make money from ads and really makes it an easy process.
You sign up for a business account through your personal account, post what services you are providing and for how long.
Nextdoor spits out a pricing for how long you want the ad to run making sure it reaches to the neighborhood you’re seeking in.
How my ad did.
I spent a little over $30 to run my simple ad post with 1 picture for 30 days.
Here is the picture I took from the analytics
It had over 53,000 impressions and 34 people clicked on the ad.
But more importantly I had 4 clients who directly messaged or emailed me ready to try my services!
I went to the first ad responder, did my trial, got paid with my lawn contract!
I had to decline the other three leads. I knew I was stretching myself thin with our other lawn contracts we’re already committed to. I just wanted to try the ad service.
Oh, if you want more information on how to even start an easy and profitable lawn mowing business, check my article here:
My thoughts on Nextdoor
It’s a gold mine! The people who are on Nextdoor, in my opinion, would be ideal clients who have extra disposable income to afford services.
Nextdoor targets neighborhoods which are great for local services, in a geographical position.
Would I advertise on there again? In a heartbeat, the only thing that’s stopping me is that I have enough clients on my hands and wouldn’t want to decrease the quality by having too much, otherwise a person could even grow a crew to cut lawns too — just a thought.
If you need a more visual aspect of what I do, check my YouTube channel where I cover lawn mowing topics almost daily.
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