Most marketing advice for small businesses doesn't quite fit outdoor living companies. The generic playbook assumes a fast sales cycle, a digital purchase, and a buyer who's already searching for the product. None of that is quite true for pergola builders, swing set makers, deck companies, gazebo specialists, custom shed manufacturers, and the rest of the backyard structures world. The sales cycle is longer. The buyer's research is more emotional than transactional. The seasons drive everything. And the buyer is almost never typing your specific product into a search bar. They're typing the dream into the search bar, and you have to be the company that shows up for the dream.
Here's what we've learned working with outdoor structure clients over the years, and what I'd tell any owner in this space who's trying to figure out where to put their marketing investment.
The buyer is buying the backyard, not the product
This is the most important shift for owners to make, and it's the one most outdoor structure companies miss. The buyer of a swing set isn't really buying a swing set. They're buying summer afternoons with their kids. The buyer of a pergola isn't buying a pergola. They're buying the version of their backyard where they actually want to spend time. The buyer of a custom shed isn't buying a shed. They're buying back the garage from the lawn equipment that's been crowding it out for years.
This isn't soft marketing language. It's the actual position the buyer is in when they're researching. They're imagining their life with the thing, not evaluating the thing on a spec sheet. The marketing that works for outdoor structures has to lead with the life, not the product. Donald Miller in Building a StoryBrand puts it cleanly: the customer is the hero of the story, and the product is the tool that helps them get the life they want. Outdoor structures is the category where this principle is most obvious, and most often violated.
Look at the homepages of most outdoor structure companies and you'll see what I mean. They lead with shots of the product. The biggest, fanciest swing set or the most architectural pergola. The customer is invisible. The actual life the product creates is missing from the photos. The buyer scrolls past, can't see themselves in it, and moves on. The companies that win in this category lead with photos of real families in real backyards. The product is present but not the hero.
Seasonality drives the entire marketing calendar
Outdoor structures is a seasonal business in most of the country, and certainly in Lancaster County and the Mid-Atlantic. The buying decision usually happens in late winter and spring, the installation happens in spring and early summer, and the marketing has to be timed accordingly.
The mistake most owners make is going dark in the fall and winter, assuming the buying season is over. The reality is the opposite. The buyer who's going to install a swing set in May is doing the research in February. The buyer who's going to put up a pergola for Memorial Day is making the decision in March. By the time spring arrives, they've already chosen. If you weren't visible in their feed in January and February, you were never in the running.
The fall and winter content cycle is when outdoor structure companies should actually be doubling down. Behind-the-scenes content from the workshop. Customer stories from last season. Time-lapse videos of installations that happened in spring. Anything that keeps the company top of mind during the months when the buyer is dreaming, not buying. This is the rhythm we run with Star Quality. The shoot work happens through the season. The deployment happens year-round.
The customer is the photo, not the product
Closely related to the previous point, but worth its own attention. The strongest photography for an outdoor structure company isn't a perfectly lit product shot. It's a moment. Kids on the swing set. A family at dinner under the pergola. A grandfather and grandson in the workshop together. The product is in the frame but the people are the subject.
This is why we plan most Star Quality shoots around real installs at real customers' homes. The shoot day is structured around catching moments, not staging product. The product photography happens too, but it's the supporting material. The hero shots are the ones with the family in them.
Owners sometimes resist this because they worry that if the customer is the focus, the product won't be visible enough. The opposite is true. A product photo gets scrolled past. A family photo with the product in it gets shared, saved, and remembered. The product gets more attention because the family invited it in.
Social proof carries unusual weight in this category
Outdoor structures is a category where social proof does more work than in most. The buyer is spending real money on something that's going to sit in their backyard for ten or fifteen years. They want to know that other people made the same call and don't regret it. Reviews matter. Testimonials matter. Customer photos shared on social media matter. The companies that figure out how to systematically collect and showcase this material outperform the companies that don't.
The honest way to do this is to ask. After every install, send the customer a friendly email asking how they're enjoying the structure, requesting a Google review, and offering to share their photos on social if they're willing. Most happy customers will say yes. Most companies never ask. The gap between asking and not asking is the gap between a brand that feels alive in this category and one that feels closed off.
The Google Business profile is often the front door
In our market, a significant percentage of outdoor structure buyers find companies through Google's local pack. The map results that appear at the top of a search for swing sets near me or pergola builders Lancaster County. The Google Business profile, not the website, is where the first impression happens.
Most outdoor structure companies underinvest in this. The profile is sparse. The photos are few or low quality. The reviews are old or thin. The hours might be wrong. The company looks like it might not even still be in business. This is a fixable problem and a high-leverage one. A complete, well-photographed, regularly-updated Google Business profile can dramatically change how often your business appears in local searches and how often those searches turn into calls.
Video, not photo, is the closer
For most product categories, photography does the conversion work. For outdoor structures, the closer is increasingly video. Specifically, time-lapse install videos and walkthrough videos of finished installations. These do something a photo can't. They show the structure in motion, with the scale of the real backyard around it, and they let the buyer see what the actual experience of having it will feel like.
The companies that publish a steady stream of install videos and walkthroughs are the ones building real audiences. The buyer who has watched ten of your install videos before they ever called you has already decided you're the company they want to work with. The call is just the logistics.
If you want to talk through it
If you run an outdoor structure company in Lancaster County or anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic and you want to think through how to position your marketing for the coming season, schedule a strategy call. We work in this category constantly. We know what's actually working and what isn't, and we'll tell you honestly which moves will produce results for your specific business.
