Stop Chasing Scraps and Start Winning the Big Jobs
If you’re a landscaper in Brisbane, you know the drill. You spend half your day driving out to suburbs like Chermside or Carindale to give quotes for tiny garden clean-ups or small retaining walls, only for the homeowner to ghost you or tell you they found someone cheaper on Facebook Marketplace.
It’s frustrating. You’ve got the gear, you’ve got the skills, and you know you can transform a backyard into something worth $80,000. But for some reason, the phone only rings for the $800 jobs.
Most of what you hear about "marketing" for tradies is rubbish. You don’t need to worry about "algorithms" or "brand awareness." You need a system that filters out the tyre-kickers and brings in the homeowners who are ready to spend real money on a total outdoor transformation.
In this guide, I’m going to show you exactly how to stop being a "mow and blow" guy and start being the high-end landscaping specialist that homeowners are willing to wait months for.
The Problem: You Look Exactly Like Your Cheapest Competitor
I’ve worked with dozens of Brisbane businesses, and the biggest mistake I see landscapers make is trying to be everything to everyone. Your website (if you have one) probably says "No job too big or too small."
That’s the first thing you need to change. When you say "no job too small," you are inviting people to call you for a $150 pruning job. High-value clients—the ones in Ascot or Bulimba looking for full structural landscaping, outdoor kitchens, and paved pool surrounds—don't want the "no job too small" guy. They want the specialist.
If your tradie website isn't making the phone ring with the right kind of jobs, it’s usually because you look just like the bloke with a beat-up ute and a borrowed shovel. To get the $50k+ projects, you have to look like a $50k+ business.
1. Show the Work You Actually Want to Do
This sounds simple, but 90% of landscapers get it wrong. If you want to build high-end decks and stone walls, stop posting photos of basic turfing jobs on your social media.
People buy what they see. If a homeowner is looking for a complex multi-level garden design and they see nothing but photos of freshly mown grass on your page, they’ll move on to the next guy.
Quality Over Quantity
You don’t need 500 photos. You need five incredible projects documented from start to finish. The "Before": Show the messy, overgrown, or sloped backyard. This shows the problem you solved. The "During": Show your team working hard, the structural integrity (drainage, footings), and a clean site. High-end clients care about how you treat their property. The "After": Take these at sunset. Use a decent phone or hire a local photographer for an hour. Lighting is everything.When you show these big transformations, you win better jobs because the customer can actually visualise what you’ll do for them. They aren't guessing if you're good; they have proof.
2. Stop Buying Leads from Middlemen
If you are paying for leads on sites like Bark or HiPages, you are fighting a losing battle. Those platforms are designed to make you compete on price. The homeowner posts a job, and five landscapers get the notification. It becomes a race to the bottom to see who can quote the lowest.
High-value clients rarely use these sites. They use Google, or they ask friends for recommendations.
You need to stop buying leads and start owning your local area. When someone in the Western Suburbs searches for "landscape designer Brisbane," you want your name to come up first—not a directory site that’s going to charge you $40 just to talk to a person who might not even hire you.
3. Your Website is Your 24/7 Salesman
Let’s be honest: most tradie websites are a waste of space. They are slow, they don’t work on phones, and they don’t tell the customer what to do next.
If you want big projects, your website needs to do three things:
1. Load Fast: If it takes more than 3 seconds to load on a phone, people are gone. 2. Look Professional: It needs to work on phones perfectly. Most of your customers are looking at your site while they are sitting on the couch at night. 3. Filter the Leads: Don't just have a "Contact Us" button. Have a form that asks: "What is your approximate budget?" and "When are you looking to start?"
I’ve seen this work for a stone mason in Coorparoo. He was tired of quoting $2,000 jobs. We changed his website to focus entirely on luxury outdoor entertaining areas and added a minimum project value to his contact form. His lead volume went down, but his profit went up because every call he took was for a $30,000+ project.
4. Google Reviews: The New Word of Mouth
In Brisbane, your reputation is everything. But the old "word of mouth" has moved online. Before anyone lets you tear up their backyard, they are going to Google your business name and look at your reviews.
If you have three reviews and your competitor has fifty, you’ve already lost the job.
You need to make getting reviews part of your process. As soon as the turf is down and the client is smiling, ask them right then and there. "Glad you're happy with the result! Would you mind leaving us a quick review on Google? It really helps a local business like ours."
High-value clients look for specific things in reviews:
Did you show up on time? Did you leave the site clean? Did you stick to the budget? Was the communication good?If your reviews mention these things, you can charge 20% more than the guy with no reviews, and people will happily pay it for the peace of mind.
5. Be the Expert, Not Just the Labourer
When you go out to quote a $60,000 project, you aren't just selling plants and pavers. You are selling an outcome. The homeowner wants to host Christmas lunch outside. They want their kids to have a safe place to play. They want to increase the value of their home.
Stop talking about the cost of materials and start talking about the design.
Wrong: "It’ll be $120 per square metre for the pavers plus GST." Right: "To make this space work for entertaining, we should use a larger format stone that stays cool underfoot in the Brisbane summer. It’ll make the patio feel twice as big."When you provide expert advice, you move from being a "contractor" to a "consultant." People don't haggle with consultants over the price of a bag of cement.
6. Local Dominance: Be Everywhere in Your Target Suburbs
If you want to work in Indooroopilly, Paddington, and Hamilton, you need to make sure Google knows that. This isn't about technical jargon; it's about being relevant.
Make sure your Google Business Profile (the map listing) is completely filled out. Post updates to it just like you would on Facebook. Mention the suburbs you've worked in this week.
"Just finished a beautiful sandstone retaining wall for a client in The Gap. The drainage was a challenge on this slope, but we got it sorted before the storm season!"
This tells Google—and potential customers—that you are active in their area and you know how to handle local conditions (like our lovely Queensland storms).
What This Will Cost and How Long It Takes
I’m not going to lie to you: building a high-end landscaping brand doesn't happen overnight. If someone tells you they can get you to #1 on Google in a week for $500, they are lying.
A Proper Website: Expect to pay $3,000 - $7,000 for something that actually works and looks the part. It’s an investment, not a cost. It will pay for itself with the first big project you land. Google Ads (Optional): If you want leads now, you can pay Google to show your ad at the top. In Brisbane, landscaping clicks can be expensive ($5 - $15 per click), but if it leads to a $40k job, who cares? Timeframe: You’ll see a difference in the type of calls you get within 2-3 months. Within 6-12 months, you should be in a position where you are turning down the small stuff because your calendar is full of high-value work.What is a Waste of Money?
Yellow Pages: Just don't. No one under the age of 80 uses it. Generic "SEO" Packages: If someone offers you "SEO" for $200 a month, they are doing nothing but taking your money. Real growth requires real work.
- Radio Ads: Too broad. You’re paying to reach people in Ipswich when you only want to work in New Farm.
Your Action Plan
If you want to start booking better landscaping projects this month, do these three things first:
1. Clean up your photos: Delete the blurry, messy photos from your website and social media. Only keep the "wow" shots. 2. Update your Google Business Profile: Add your best 10 photos and ask your last three happy clients for a 5-star review. 3. Fix your contact form: Start asking for budget ranges. This one move will save you hours of wasted time quoting jobs that were never going to happen.
Look, I get it. You’re busy on the tools all day. The last thing you want to do is sit in front of a computer. But the difference between the landscaper who struggles and the one who has a crew of five and a waiting list of six months is how they handle their marketing.
Most of what you read online about this is rubbish, designed to sell you some complicated software. You don’t need software. You need to look professional, show your best work, and make it easy for people with money to find you.
If you want to stop chasing cheap leads and start owning your local market, we can help. At Local Marketing Group, we specialise in helping Brisbane tradies grow their businesses by focusing on what actually makes the phone ring.
Ready to get more high-value bookings? Let’s chat. Contact us at lmgroup.au/contact.