No doubt, you’ll see from the other pages on this site, we’re a big fan of commercial landscape maintenance. But you’re probably wondering, does my retail park or my business estate need to worry about having professional grounds maintenance?
So let’s take a look at one of the reasons commercial landscaping should be a no-brainer for every business trying to increase sales and find more customers.
For this article, we’re going to be using Bluewater Shopping Centre as an example. (Just a note, this isn’t one of our customers, (yet) so everything in this article is based on facts)
Let’s start with some interesting figures about the customer that visit this shopping centre.
- Visitors: There are 27million of them each year. And 3million of them visit during December.
- Income: The average household income of a visitor is £41k. Which is above the national average of £35k.
- 76% are female and 71% are classified as ABC1 – upper middle, middle and lower middle class.
What does this mean?
Better First Impressions = More Customers
It means the visitors to Bluewater are typically used to a comfortable standard or living. And this means they expect to shop in an environment similar or better than in which they live.
And that’s where commercial landscaping makes its first notable contribution to the growth of a business.
An ABC1 customer is much more likely to stop, park and choose to do business in a commercial area where the landscape is neat, clean and well presented.
If they arrive and find overgrown weeds, rubbish floating around the car park and dirty pathways, they are much more like just to turn around and head down the road to another, competitors business park.
Better Facilities = More Customers
Bluewater has 13,000 car parking spaces. And they need every one of them to handle the amount of visitors they receive in peak shopping seasons.
Now imagine, half of the spaces are obstructed by weeds, rubbish and broken tarmac.
Potentially, that’s preventing half the shoppers from visiting the centre.
Are You Stopping 50% Of Your Customers Visiting?
Take a look outside your offices, and around your business park? Is that broken fence really the right impression to be giving a new customer? Are overgrown bushes and rampant weeds obstructing your valuable parking spaces? And is litter getting out of control?
These are the types of problems which can be easy to procrastinate over. But they are, whether you appreciate it or not, damaging your business.
A commercial landscaping contract is a simple, cost effective way to eliminate these problems. A professional landscaping company will take care of these maintenance issues as a matter of routine.