The Power of Marketing

Okay, so delivering a load of leaflets in the rain last week wasn't my finest idea ever and, in actual fact, did no good at all - not even ONE enquiry!

However, leaving some leaflets at my local garden centre has paid off and bright and early on Monday morning I finally received that phone call i've been waiting for.

A Job --- hurrah!

With a positive attitude, despite the still raining sky, I trundled off down the motorway and to see my clients garden. Ten minutes later, I jumped back in the car and came home again.

This one's a great job. No weeding, pruning or getting a bad back with this one. What I've had to do is design a planting plan for a blank canvas of a front garden. Somebody else has already done the preparation work of removing all the old plants, digging the soil, mulching it and covering it with a weed-barrier and chip bark.

It's been a dream. Sifting through magazines and books deciding which plants I like the look of ( the client left it all up to me without even the slightest brief) and jotting down those ideas onto paper. Now this is the kind of thing I was hoping for. Not that it's regular work still, but it's a start and hopefully, if I can get the choices right and the plants all thrive once I've planted them then the client will recommend me to friends.

That's the best method of marketing - 'Word Of Mouth'

When it's Raining!

So, yesterday it rained pretty much all day. Not a heavy downpour kind of rain but that annoying type that drizzles just enough to soak you right through.

While work is slow (and when I say slow I actually mean non-existent) I decided I'd try to drum up a bit of business by delivering some leaflets. Hmm...seemed like a good idea for the first five minutes!

By the time I'd negotiated the gates and parked cars, I'd reach the front door only to discover a tiny sticker stating that the home owner didn't want any freebie newspapers, cold-callers or unsolicited mail - my leaflet, in other words - so I'd have to re-trace my steps back to the safety of the soggy pavement and start again with the next house.

If I was lucky enough to find a door with no sticker, I then had to wedge the leaflet through the letter box without doing one of two things: a) losing my fingers as the flap swung back on me or b) losing my fingers to the yappy dogs on the other side of the door.

It really was quite a traumatic experience and I began to wonder if it was really worth all my trouble. Time will tell I suppose, but my phone hasn't rung yet!

Who'd be a Gardener?

I've recently decided that the time has come for me to get stuck in - literally - and start a gardening business.

Having trained at college to do just this, I've somehow managed to spend all of my working life at Garden Centres instead. So, with the credit crunch not just looming but hanging directly above me I did the smart thing...jacked in my steady regular income for the chance to get my hands dirty doing something I love.

Only, now I'm not quite so sure I do love it! The romantic notions of pushing a lawn mower along under glorious blue skies whilst the sun provides me with a glowing tan have been replaced with the reality of digging weeds, knee-deep in muddy borders, whilst trying to dodge the ever falling rain. Not quite such a pretty picture.

Still, the immense satisfaction I get when I turn an overgrown jungle into something Monet would be happy to paint if he was still alive encourages me to perservere.

The sun will come out soon, won't it?