Landscapers and trades: reading rivals' reviews for what customers value

Where to look

Start with the places your customers actually look when choosing a trade:

• Google reviews on each rival's business profile.
• Any review or trade directory sites common in your area and your trade.
• Reviews and testimonials on the rivals' own websites, bearing in mind these are chosen by the business.

Choose three rivals who quote for the same kind of work in the same area. A garden design studio and a mowing round are not really competitors, even if both call themselves landscapers.

Only read what is public. Do not post on rivals' profiles, and never leave reviews of a competitor.

Read a good spread: recent reviews matter most, because they reflect how the firm works now, but a handful of older ones show whether a theme is long-standing. Read the low-star reviews in full rather than skimming the stars; the detail is where the value is.

Sort reviews into themes

Copy recent reviews into a sheet, one row per review, with the rival's name, the star rating and the text. Then tag each review with the themes it mentions. For trades, the themes usually include:

• Turning up when promised and keeping to the agreed schedule.
• Communication: replying to messages, explaining changes, keeping the customer informed.
• Tidiness: protecting the property, clearing up, taking waste away.
• Quotes: clear, itemised, and matching the final bill.
• Quality of finish and attention to detail.
• People: polite, respectful, trustworthy in the home or garden.
• Aftercare: coming back to fix problems, advice on looking after the work.

You will quickly see which themes come up most in praise and which in complaints. That is your local picture of what customers value.

Look at volume, recency and photos too

Beyond the themes, note three simpler things for each rival: roughly how many reviews they have, how recent the latest ones are, and whether customers or the business have added photos of finished work.

A rival with fewer reviews but many recent ones may be more active than one with a large but old collection. Photos of real jobs do a lot of work for trades, because customers want to see the standard of finish before they invite someone round. If your rivals' profiles are full of project photos and yours has none, adding your own job photos, with customers' permission where their property is recognisable, is a quick, low-cost improvement.

What the complaints tell you

Complaints in rivals' reviews are often more useful than praise. If several reviews across different firms complain about quotes that grew or crews that vanished halfway through a job, you have found a fear that many local customers share.

That is an opportunity, but only if you can do better. A promise such as a fixed, itemised quote or a named contact for the whole job answers the fear directly. Make the promise only if you will keep it every time.

Also read how rivals reply to bad reviews. A calm, specific public reply that offers to put things right reassures future customers. A defensive one does the opposite. Note what works and apply it to your own replies.

Using customers' own words

The words customers use in reviews are often better marketing copy than anything a business writes about itself. "They left the garden cleaner than they found it" says more than "professional service".

Use the themes, not rivals' customers' actual sentences. Find the same themes in your own reviews, then use your own customers' words on your website, in quotes and in adverts. Our guide on turning review themes into ad copy and the recipe for review themes to ad hooks walk through this.

Collecting your own reviews within the law

After reading rivals' reviews, many owners want more of their own. Ask every customer, make it easy with a direct link, and reply to every review, good or bad. Do not offer incentives without being open about it, and never write or buy reviews. Our post on the fake reviews ban explains why this matters.

If replying to reviews keeps slipping, the review response backlog recipe helps you clear it and keep it clear.

Next step

Pick three rivals, tag their recent reviews, and write down the three themes your area cares about most. We are building a reviews watch loop to do this tracking for you; it is in build and not on sale. Until it ships, the free Insight Report gives you a first read on how your own site presents the things customers value.