Spring isn’t technically here yet, but we’ve made it through the longest shortest month, and that’s reason enough to celebrate. This week I’ve brought you a solid reading list, a video to share with your friends and a great post on marketing.

• Lead gen tips for your sales team.
• Jim McCutcheon explains that you can make real money as a landscaper. (via Chris Heiler)
• Late winter reading list from Marty.
• Medieval flower clock.
• Rainscaping is growing more popular out east.
• Marketing means answering this question: Who do we want to change?
• Learn more about how to figure that out in our Grow the Market report.
• Above: Some pre-spring blooms to get you through the rest of winter.

Here’s our weekly digest of fun stuff we found online, now with more robots. Have a great weekend.

• Small, once-a-day marketing can be more powerful than a big, one-time only blow-out.
• 4 alternatives to leaving your business to your kids.
• We’ve got some whitepapers on engines, water management and holiday lighting. Check them out.
• The Case-Shiller Home Price Index by metro area.
• Above: With apologies to Lee Majors, the WSJ brings you the peak time for everything.

For our friends down in Florida. Some old school marketing from Bad Postcards.

Seth Godin offers up 7 marketing sins committed by small businesses.

Read them and you’ll see that they’re easy to do, especially if you’re a normal human being. But they’re not impossible to overcome.

Godin offers this advice as you work to replace your sins with acts of good business:

Humility, empathy, generosity, patience and kindness, combined with the arrogance of the brilliant inventor, are a potent alternative.

I consider myself a connoisseur of frozen foods. Lean Pockets, Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine (I need to stay slim), I can pick out the best tasting ones from each company, as well as give a stinky face to the ones they should have never brought to market. And within the frozen food market, I am really invested into the frozen pizza market.

In the past few years, I’ve noticed the makers of these gems have really stepped up their game. No longer are there only three variations of the same item under each brand. Nope, now there’s thin, thick and cheese-filled crusts, combos with wings, cookies, and one of my favorites, a dipping sticks pizza. They cut the pizza so it can be dipped in marinara sauce they provide And recently, I tried a Diginoro chicken parmesan pizza that was the probably one of the greatest frozen pizzas I’ve ever had. I’m smiling just writing about it.

So why am I clogging the L&L blog with unhealthy, fattening (although they now have fat free pizzas too!) frozen goods? Because the frozen food, especially pizza, market is very similar to landscaping. Some would probably say, “it’s just frozen pizza” like someone could say that you just mow lawns. And yes, that’s true, but it’s all in the presentation and the ideas to make what seems like a simple product or service into something dynamic. So, if you are a company that considers yourself just a mow and blow operation, you are missing out on a great opportunity. I remember when getting a Stouffer’s French bread pizza was like a mini-vacation for me. Now, I don’t even buy those because there are so many other better brands out there. Take a look at your competition and see what you can do better than them. Somewhere along the line, a wise person noticed no one was standing out in the market, and took advantage.

And try that chicken parm pizza. I swear, it was fantastic.

Everyone loves free cupcakes, right? YES! But what if you had to give the supplier of these tasty treats a five-star review on Yelp. Is that a dirty trick, or a great marketing ploy? Well, the cupcake competition and sweet tooths in the area weren’t happy with this sweet deal.

“That’s terrible. 5 stars gets you a free cupcake? Earn your crowd, don’t buy it,” was one tweet aimed at the downtown cupcake shop that opened just last month. Others proclaimed the offer “BS,” one said the FCC should be alerted, a public apology was requested, and potential customers were swiftly lost. “Was excited to try your cakes, but this pandering for top reviews honestly makes me not trust your business. Sorry,” said one. And naturally, some in the Twitter world took the opportunity to promote the competition in Lakewood — LaBella Cupcakes — saying, “they don’t bribe for reviews.”

Would you ever give away a free mow for a good review, or would that be frowned upon in the industry?

Go to our Facebook page and let us know what you think. www.facebook.com/lawnandlandscape

Jeff Korhan offers three tips on how your company can one-up larger players in your market by doing something revolutionary: understanding your market better than they do.

***UPDATE: Congrats to our winner Greg Fracker, president at Colorscapes By Desig in Newark, Ohio, who responded with lightning-fast timing to snag the book. And don’t worry – we’ve got a ton more books to get rid of share with you, so stay tuned.

We’re doing some more spring cleaning here at the Lawn & Landscape offices. This latest round has turned up “In Search of the Obvious” by Jack Trout. We interviewed Jack when the book came out, and we featured his groundbreaking “Positioning” last year.

So, if you could use a fresh perspective on your approach to marketing, send me an email at cbowen@gie.net and I’ll drop it in the mail.

When you’re good at what you do, and you really enjoy it, it can be difficult to step back and think about promoting yourself.

I mean, if you enjoy this work so much, how is everyone else not as excited as you all the time?

Jason Cupp recently visited with a landscaper out west having some trouble keeping her service schedule and marketing schedules in sync.

Of course, when it comes to marketing, there can be several challenges, not the least of which are what you want to promote, what medium you want to use, and exactly who to target. This client’s struggle, however, involved timing; she was always behind the power curve getting her marketing message to prospects.

So he had her make up two calendars — one for her services and one, set a few months back, that would help her schedule promotions for those services.

A simple idea, but one with a lot of power that could help a lot of landscapers. (And editors, come to think of it.)

Read the full post here for all the details.

Here’s our weekly digest of cool internet stuff. Enjoy!

• Chris Heiler launches an online radio show.
• Ikea granite.
• Five tips on improving your local search results. (via @canyoncomm)
• Interview with Nike’s VP of sustainability. (via @waterguru2)
• Too much work is bad. Except when it’s good.
• Green construction is booming.
• A round-up of water rebates from across the country.
• Above: The concept of doughnut marketing, illustrated.