Most landscapers go quiet in fall and winter and scramble in spring. The ones who consistently stay busy have a different approach: they use the off-season to line up work before the phone starts ringing. This guide covers how to get landscaping clients during slow months so you start spring with a booked schedule instead of an empty one.
Why the Off-Season Is the Best Time to Market
Here’s the irony of landscaping marketing: the time when most companies stop is the exact time when smart ones start. Your competitors go dark in October. Google’s algorithm keeps running. If you build your SEO, update your website, and run targeted ads while everyone else is coasting, you’ll be the one showing up when homeowners start searching in February and March.
SEO takes time. That’s not a complaint, it’s a fact. A landscaping website that starts optimizing in October is going to rank significantly better in April than one that waits until the busy season starts. You’re planting seeds in the fall. You harvest them in spring.
Stephanie at Master in the Field, a landscaping company we worked with, started her marketing push in the off-season. By spring, she went from 25 impressions a day to 1,200 visitors a month. She now turns away work. Zero paid ads. The work she put in during the slow months paid off exactly when she needed it.
Start Your SEO Now, Not in March
The biggest mistake landscaping companies make is waiting until spring to think about marketing. By then, it’s too late to see SEO results that season. Google needs months to crawl, index, and rank new content. If you publish a page targeting “landscaping services in [city]” in March, you might rank for it by July. If you publish it in October, you’ll rank for it by March.
What to work on in the off-season for SEO: build out service pages for every service you offer, optimize your Google Business Profile, add location pages if you serve multiple areas, and publish content that answers the questions your customers search for. A page about “best time to plant trees in [region]” or “spring lawn care checklist” will bring in organic traffic for years.
Our guide on how to market a landscaping business goes deeper on the SEO fundamentals that drive long-term organic traffic.
Offer Snow Removal to Keep Revenue Coming In
If you’re in a climate with winter weather, snow removal is the most straightforward way to keep your crew working and your revenue steady through the cold months. The margins are good, the equipment overlap is reasonable, and a snow removal client who’s happy with you in January will almost certainly call you for landscaping in April.
The key is marketing snow removal before the first snow. By the time winter hits, homeowners and commercial property managers have already hired someone or decided to handle it themselves. Start promoting snow removal contracts in September and October. Send an email to your existing client list. Run a targeted Facebook or Google ad campaign to homeowners in your service area. The goal is signed contracts before the season starts.
Your website should have a dedicated snow removal page that explains your services, pricing structure (per push vs. seasonal contract), and service area. If you don’t have one, that’s an off-season task to add to your list.
Email Your Past Clients Before Your Competitors Do
The easiest landscaping clients to book are ones you’ve already worked with. They know your quality. They trust you. They just need a reason to call before the spring rush.
In January or February, send an email to every customer from the past two to three years. Keep it short and direct: “Spring booking is filling up. If you want to lock in your date before we’re full, reply to this email or call us at [number].” That’s it. No fancy newsletter. No coupons. Just a personal message that sounds like it came from the owner.
Include a mention of any new services you’ve added. If you’ve expanded into hardscaping, irrigation, or outdoor lighting, this is your chance to upsell clients who only used you for lawn maintenance.
You need an email list for this to work. If you don’t have one, start building it now. Collect email addresses from every customer, every estimate, every interaction. A list of 100 past clients you can reach directly is worth more than 10,000 social media followers you can’t.
Run Google Ads for Early Spring Searches
Organic SEO takes months. Google Ads can put you in front of people searching right now. For landscapers, the right time to run ads is February through May, when homeowners are actively planning their outdoor projects.
The off-season task is setting up the campaign so it’s ready to run when the timing is right. Build your ad groups around your core services, write ad copy that speaks to your specific market, and create landing pages that match what you’re advertising. A Google Ad that says “Spring Landscaping in [City], Free Estimates Available” should go to a page about spring landscaping in that city, not your generic homepage.
Google Ads works well for landscaping because the search intent is high. Someone searching “landscaping company near me” in April is ready to hire. Your ad gets you in front of them at the exact moment they’re deciding. Pair that with a strong website and a follow-up process, and the conversion rate is good.
For more on paid advertising for landscapers, see our guide on landscaping leads.
Update Your Website for Off-Season and Spring
Your website shouldn’t look the same in January as it does in July. In the off-season, your homepage should be doing two things: promoting winter services like snow removal, and capturing leads from homeowners who are planning spring projects now.
Add a banner or section that says something like: “Booking Spring 2025 Now. Get Your Estimate Before We Fill Up.” That creates urgency without being pushy. Early spring clients often want the best companies, not just the available ones. If you signal that your schedule fills up, serious homeowners will reach out now.
Review your service pages and update any content that references the current season. A page that says “Call us for summer lawn care” in December looks stale. Keep the content relevant to where your clients are in the year.
Build Your Online Reviews in the Off-Season
The off-season is a good time to reach back out to past clients for Google reviews. You’ve just finished their jobs. The experience is still relatively recent. Send a short text or email to anyone from the past season who hasn’t left a review and ask them for one.
Reviews build over time and they directly affect how high you rank in local search. A landscaping company with 60 Google reviews will outrank one with 12, even if the work quality is identical. Use the slow months to build this asset. You won’t regret it in April.
What to Do This Month
If you’re reading this in the off-season, here’s what to focus on in order of impact: First, get your SEO work started, because it takes the longest to pay off. Second, email your past clients about spring bookings and snow removal. Third, build or improve your snow removal service page. Fourth, set up your Google Ads campaign so it’s ready to launch in late January or February. Fifth, collect reviews from everyone you worked with this past season.
None of this is complicated. The landscaping companies that stay busy year-round aren’t doing anything extraordinary. They’re just not stopping when everyone else does.
Frequently Asked Questions: How to Get Landscaping Clients
When should a landscaping company start marketing for spring?
The honest answer is October. If you want strong organic search rankings by March, you need to be building content and optimizing your site in fall. For paid ads and email campaigns, January and February are the sweet spot for capturing early-season intent. By April, the competition for paid ad space is higher and most homeowners have already started calling.
Is it worth offering snow removal if I don’t have the right equipment?
It depends on your market and what equipment you’d need to add. Many landscapers rent or lease plows for their existing trucks during the first season, then buy equipment once the revenue justifies it. Talk to a few neighboring commercial properties or HOAs about what they pay for snow removal. If the numbers work, the equipment investment often pays for itself quickly in colder climates.
How do I find landscaping clients specifically in the off-season?
Your best sources are past clients (email and direct contact), targeted Facebook and Google ads to homeowners in your area, and your Google Business Profile for people actively searching. Referrals from past clients are also strong year-round. If you’ve done good work, ask your best customers if they know anyone planning a spring project.
What’s the most cost-effective marketing channel for landscapers?
Long-term, SEO consistently delivers the best return on investment because it generates leads without ongoing ad spend. Stephanie at Master in the Field grew from 25 daily impressions to 1,200 monthly visitors with no paid ads, and she now turns away work. Short-term, Google Ads and direct email to past clients will get faster results. The best approach is both: invest in SEO for the long game while using ads and email to fill the short-term gap.
What should my landscaping website say in the off-season?
It should promote winter services prominently (snow removal, holiday lighting, winter pruning), capture early spring leads with a message about limited availability, and keep your contact forms and phone number easy to find. Remove or de-emphasize seasonal content that doesn’t apply. A homepage that still talks about summer lawn care in December is a missed opportunity.
How many months does SEO take to work for a landscaping company?
In most local markets, you’ll start seeing meaningful movement in 3 to 6 months. In competitive metro areas with many established landscaping companies, it can take 9 to 12 months to break into the top search positions. The timeline is one of the strongest arguments for starting in the off-season rather than waiting until spring.
Ready to Line Up Spring Jobs Now?
If you want help building a landscaping marketing strategy that works year-round, not just when the phone is already ringing, get in touch with us. We’ve helped landscaping companies turn slow seasons into their best lead-generation windows. Our landscaping marketing service is built specifically for companies in this trade.
