How to Market a Lawn-Mowing Business

Sure, Zillow EZ Ads are used by numerous real estate professionals, but I’m here to tell you others can take advantage of them as well — even teenagers! Anyone that wants to target a hyper-local market of homeowners — including plumbers, electricians, handymen, and teenagers mowing lawns - can use EZ Ads to direct their business to very select group of individuals via a specific ZIP code.

I’m an entrepreneur at heart — I’m always thinking about new ideas and love the challenge of building something from scratch. As a youth — and, not unlike many other young entrepreneurs — I was always thinking about how to earn some extra spending money on my own. I sold lemonade when I was really young. Then, as a teenager, the natural progression was yard work, then lawn-mowing. I didn’t want to deliver newspapers because my area was very hilly and the homes were too far apart.

When I decided to start my lawn-mowing business with my neighbor, there were a couple things to knock off right away — buy a lawnmower, some weeding tools, and a weedwacker (I ended up buying an edger as well). Once I had the supplies, it was a marketing problem — how do I reach home owners in my immediate area who might want someone to mow their lawn on a regular basis or do ad-hoc yardwork?

What method did I use? To start, my neighbor and I printed up fliers and dropped them off at all the homes in nearby neighborhoods. This was both time consuming (walking around for several hours) and not dirt cheap ($.05 per copy). As a teenager with a limited coverage area (after all, we had to cart the lawnmower around with us), there weren’t many options to advertise hyper-locally. Instead, the focus was on attracting one or two clients and rely on them to spread word of mouth to their neighbors.

Even though I’m obviously biased since I work at Zillow, had EZ Ads existed a decade ago, I would have used it to reach home owners in my ZIP code. Think about it: A young entrepreneur can reach 10,000 people in their immediate ZIP code with their message for only $100. That seems to be a fairly good deal if you ask me. It beats trudging around the neighborhood on foot, dropping off fliers at each doorstep. Plus, EZ Ads avoids spamming homeowners with a paper flier that will likely immediately get recycled.