This morning, I saw an ad on Facebook for a local landscape company I’d never heard of so I followed the link to their website. I realize every new landscape company has to start somewhere with their advertising but as a owner of a landscape company, I get really annoyed that some landscape companies promise the world with their words and stock internet photos of projects they would have a hard time completing. This company was showing pictures of grand houses with grand landscapes. I really hope consumers see through this type of advertising. In some regards, the world wide web is still the world wild web. There just isn’t any oversight when it comes to what people are putting on the web. I actually have had friends call me in two instances because other companies were using our work to advertising their own company’s in CT. How stupid can you be?
I was an early adopter of the internet. When our first site went live on the world wide web, there was only one other landscape company I could find online. The company was based in Illinois. Our first site, which went live in the early 90’s was archaic by today’s standards. What we did do was portray an honest representative of what we were doing at that point in the company’s history. We were showing planting projects in the $2000-$6000 that we actually completed and we actually took pictures of. I never blatantly portrayed something we weren’t or work we weren’t capable of with other people’s photos. With every redesign of our website, the gallery of work was replaced with larger and more impressive work. The sad thing is, I’m quite confident, if you hired this new company to complete a project similar to what they are portraying, they would be totally overwhelmed and most likely fail. Where does that leave the consumer…..most likely, not in a good place.
When you are looking for a landscaping company, you need to be vigilant. Ask to speak to the company’s past clients and get addresses of those projects. Even better, ask to see the project the company is portraying on their website, in person. I’d also recommend asking to view a portfolio knowing that most companies might not have one. Ours was dismantled years ago, scanned and put online. Analyze the pictures that they are using in their advertising. Does it really look like a picture from a landscape in Fairfield or Litchfield County?This website I’m referencing, you could tell that these photos weren’t from CT. Home styles was on indicator that this wasn’t their work. Also, look at the details. Some companies take a ton of pictures from different angles and make it appear that it’s 10 different projects. Even though we don’t have a physical portfolio, I could bring a computer to you with folder after folder of past projects, with before, progress and after photos. That’s hard to fake!
I wish you luck in finding your perfect landscape company.
Good luck!
