John Oberlin-Harris – Page 4

Get the right kind of publicity with
our new Bark Spotlight

Getting the right kind of publicity is the key to drawing hundreds (or even thousands) of new users, prospects and customers to your business.

The biggest companies in the world can spend millions of pounds trying to win positive media coverage, like Oreo did to pull off their “dunk in the dark” stunt during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout.

But flashy PR campaigns usually aren’t an option for small businesses. So we decided to build something anyone could use to enjoy the instant interest appearing on social media and popular online blogs can generate – whether you’re a wedding planner in Leeds, or a plumber in Watford.

It’s called the Bark Spotlight, and it gives our pros the chance to promote their services prominently on our site, completely free of charge.

Why being “in the spotlight” is great for your business

We recently added a short Q&A section to every Bark profile to give you yet another way to promote your business on our site.

Filling in the questions that are relevant to you will help boost your SEO ranking and promote your services to potential customers. (If you haven’t completed yours already, you can login and do so here.)

But this feature is a lot more than just another section for your profile. We’ll also be picking our favourite responses to be highlighted in our new Bark Spotlight feature:

spotlight-koco-ltd — *The Bark Spotlight lets us highlight our favourite pros on our category pages*

The Spotlight is a key part of our ‘new look’ category pages, designed to highlight some of our favourite pros to people who visit our site. Every time someone visits one of these new pages, our Bark Spotlight will be one of the first things they see.

We’re working to roll them out across all our most popular categories right now – and you can take a look at one that’s live already right here.

But that’s not the only way we’ll be promoting the pros on our site using the new Bark Q&A. We’ll also be using the quotes you provide us with in our regular blog posts and on our social media pages to promote your business to hundreds of thousands of potential customers nationwide.

In short, completing your Bark Q&A is an easy way to get your business promoted heavily online with Bark. So, if you haven’t already, click here now and fill it in.

Train like an Olympian with British Powerlifting Champion, Charlie Shotton-Gale

As far back as the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, the world’s elite athletes have competed to see who is the strongest.

The best weightlifters can shift up to three times their own bodyweight. But even if you’re not interested in developing superhuman strength, weightlifting is a great way to stay in shape. If you want to build a sculpted, muscular physique like Chris Hemsworth or Jessica Ennis-Hill – nothing beats it.

To help you incorporate weight training into your own fitness regime, we spoke to one of our most accomplished personal trainers: British Women’s Powerlifting Champion, Charlie Shotton-Gale.

Q. What inspired you to take up powerlifting?

I’ve been powerlifting for 10 years now. I started because at the time I was playing rugby for Supermarine Ladies and wanted to get stronger – I had my sights set on England Rugby!

Then I was convinced to try out a competition… one lead to two. The first nationals I competed in I won. I was then accepted into the national team three years later and said goodbye to rugby. Best decision of my life.

I’ve been all over the world with powerlifting, made some incredible friends and seen things I never would have done otherwise.

Q. Are you looking forward to the weightlifting events at the Olympics?

Yes, I am! It was the sport I went to watch in 2012. It’s different to powerlifting in that it is about maximum strength and power (speed of movement) whereas powerlifting is solely about max strength and invariably lofting great weights.

I love weightlifting, but I’m not very good at it. I practice and I do include it in my training for power and technique work. But it’s extremely difficult – and the athletes we watch on TV are not only strong but they are technically very accomplished. And they are very, very brave to not only be able to pick up those weights, but to catch them as well!

Q. Would you run us through your favourite workouts?

Favourite upper body workout? Bench. Favourite legs workout? Squat. That’s all you need in life.

I’m just kidding, although not by much. My training consists of multi-body part high volume training, so I never separate legs and upper body workouts. I do them every single session.

One of my favourite workouts would be:

Squats 80% 1RM 5 x 3
Bench 80% 1RM 5 x 3
Tempo 4:4 squats 65% 1RM 3 x 3
Pistols / split squats / Bulgarian squats 3 x 6
Seated Deadlifts 5 x 5

If you ever meet me, you’ll see why I love leg workouts more than upper body!

Q. How important is proper diet and nutrition? What tips do you have for people looking to optimise their diet for weightlifting?

You wouldn’t run a Ferrari on diesel, so why run your body on pizza and chips? Having said that, I am a heavyweight female so my diet is not perfect. I aim for it to be spot on 70% of the time when I’m in post-comp mode, and 80%-90% of the time when I’m gearing up for a competition.

I always notice a difference, when I focus on my diet. Strength improvements can come in as quickly as a week!

All people are different, so I can’t give tips. One person will benefit from a high carb low fat diet, whereas I love a high fat high protein diet. My advice is pick a diet, try it for two weeks, assess your strength during and at the end. Then pick another. Do the same till you find one that makes you feel strong.

My biggest piece of advice is: listen to your body, not to the adverts. Your body knows what it wants – all companies just want to make money off you.

Q. Great athletes have great trainers. How do you help your personal training clients progress with their lifting and achieve their fitness goals?

By following my philosophy of achieving: consistency, consistency, consistency. I create programmes, sessions and lifestyle plans that all boil down to keeping my clients consistent.

In my experience, the most successful people are those that have been consistently working at their chosen task over long periods of time. Okay, okay – some people are naturally gifted freaks. Usain Bolt, for example. But even he has had to work hard for it.

If I have clients that want variety, I give them variety and it keeps them adhering to the changes. If someone wants an education and to learn skills and knowledge, then I teach them to keep them motivated. Whatever it takes to keep my clients consistent is the service I deliver.

Q. What advice would you give to someone just starting out with powerlifting, or any other type of high intensity fitness training?

Don’t start out thinking you could be the next big thing, or aiming for some kind of record. Keep your head down, work hard, enjoy it – and remember that there are no quick fixes. It all takes the most incredible amount of time. But if you enjoy the journey, you will enjoy the result.

GET INSPIRED: Unleash your inner Olympian this summer with Bark

There’s nothing more inspiring than watching the greatest athletes in the world compete for Olympic glory. But why should the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Andy Murray have all the fun?

For many of the elite athletes that compete for Team GB in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, this will be the high point of their careers. But your greatest sporting achievement could be yet to come.

So as the clock counts down towards the greatest sporting event on Earth, take a look at our guide to unleashing your own inner Olympian this summer.

Get in shape with a personal trainer

Great athletes have coaches. Just as Toni Minichiello helped Jessica Ennis-Hill get from high school athlete to Olympic gold medallist, your personal trainer will be at your side every step of the way as you achieve your fitness goals.

Whether you’re looking to lose weight, develop speed and agility, build muscle mass or anything else – we’ll find a great local personal trainer to provide you with all the help and support you need.

Place a personal training Bark today and we’ll begin contacting personal trainers in your area on your behalf right away.

Perfect your diet for maximum efficiency

When you’re pushing your body to its limits, you need a balanced diet to help you perform at your peak and recover quickly afterwards.

From managing your protein intake to repair damaged muscle fibres, to helping you replace the electrolytes you lose when you sweat – a great sports nutritionist will create the perfect diet plan for your fitness regime.

Simply place a diet and nutrition Bark today and we’ll start searching for great dieticians in your area right away.

Hone your skills with sports lessons

You don’t have to be a top flight athlete to get a lot out of sports lessons. Not only are they ideal if you’re hoping to get good enough to join your local team, but they’re also great if you want to get fit and have fun in the process.

With 27 separate sports categories on our site – including football lessons, martial arts classes and more – you’re sure to find the perfect sports coach for you with Bark.

Whatever sport you want to learn, place a Bark today and we’ll begin contacting local sports coaches for you right away.

Get washboard abs with Pilates classes

Olympians including swimmer Natalie Coughlin, cyclist Victoria Pendelton and tennis legends like Roger Federer and Serena Williams all cite Pilates as a crucial part of their training regimes.

It’s a great cross training exercise because it focusses on functional movement – working your abs, back, glutes and thighs.

If the idea of toning your body through a combination of controlled movements and breathing exercises appeals to you, place a Pilates Bark now and start getting free quotes from local Pilates instructors.

Have a sports massage – and do it all again!

Whether you’re training to compete at the Olympics, working out at the gym or just stuck in front of a computer all day, you’re likely to experience tight muscular pains and aches at some point.

Sports massages are proven to help you achieve peak performance, reduce the risk of sporting injury and speed up your recovery times.

So when you’re feeling sore after an intense workout, they’re ideal for treating those aches and pains – so you can get back out there and do it all over again as quickly as possible.

How to hire a great local pro
for absolutely anything

Whether you’re planning a loft conversion, or looking for a walker for your dogs at the weekend – hiring a someone to work for you is a big deal. You need to be confident you can pick the best pro for the job, and if you’ve never done it before it can be hard to know where to begin.

Luckily, with Bark you can use the same simple steps to find great local pros for just about anything. Here’s our foolproof guide to hiring great local professionals for whatever you need.

Check out each pro’s Bark profile

Once we’ve tracked down a shortlist of local pros who are eager to help you, the next step is to pick your favourite. To make this process quick and easy, we ask all of our pros to set up their own Bark profile with everything you need to decide if you want to hire them.

Take a look at each’s pros profile page to discover more about them, taking care to consider questions like: Have they done the sort of work you’re asking for before? Do they have the best portfolio of previous work? And do they have the best references?

Most importantly, pay close attention to the reviews each pro has received from other Bark customers, as these give the best indication as to the quality of their work. These reviews will be highlighted with a green “verified” badge.

Agree the price in advance

We understand that budget will often be a key factor when it comes to deciding which of our pros you want to hire. That’s why we make sure each of them can send you a rough estimate when they introduce themselves to you in the Bark Messenger.

In the majority of categories, our budget estimator tool will then show you how that price compares with what other Bark users have been quoted for similar services in the past.

But whether you’re looking for someone to mow your lawn, to plan your wedding or anything else – the most important thing is to agree the price you’ll pay in advance. So when you find someone you want to hire, always be sure to ask for an exact quote before they start work.

Consider staged payments

For jobs where materials are needed, it’s reasonable for your pro to expect part-payment before completion to cover the costs. But note that this is not the same as asking for money upfront, which you should always avoid.

We recommend offering to provide payment in instalments as different project milestones are reached. This gives your pro an added incentive to get the work done quickly, and helps ensure you’re not out of pocket if something happens that means they’re not able to complete the job.

For example, if you were having an extension built onto your house you might agree to pay for the materials when the work begins, then pay the rest upon completion.

Confirm the details in writing

The last step before the work begins is to agree the key details of the job you want doing in writing. This is especially important for larger projects, especially when they involve construction work.

Getting a written quote will be a big help in the unlikely event that you have to deal with some kind of dispute further down the line. Make sure your quote spells out exactly what work will be done, when it should be completed by and who will supply the necessary materials.

Review your pro to help other Bark users

Once you’ve hammered out the details, you’re ready to hire your pro! But before you wrap things up, there is one more thing we ask you to do.

You see, we’re proud of the community we’re creating here at Bark. People using our service can draw on the experiences of hundreds of thousands of other users to find the right pro for them – and that wouldn’t be possible without ordinary people like yourself.

So after the work has been done, we strongly encourage you to leave a review about your experiences on your chosen pro’s Bark profile. That way, we can continue improving Bark so it’s even easier to find great local pros the next time you use our service.

**Want to hear about even more customers through Bark? Now you can!**

We receive emails all the time from pros asking to hear about even more clients looking for their services. Specifically, many people want to be alerted to customers from further afield than our Service Areas tool allowed.

“My biggest payer was a job from a PR agency 100 miles from London,” writes one Bark photographer. “If you were able to set it up to within 125 miles of London, that would be fantastic.”

“I am a photographer based in Dorset and have no interest in work in the South East or London,” says another. “Do you have a lead generation service for my area and surrounding 50-mile radius?”

There’s clearly a demand for larger service areas, so we decided to see what we could do about it!

50-mile service area 2 — *Due to popular demand, we’ve expanded our services areas to a 50-mile radius!*

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes over the past few weeks, and we’re proud to announce two big changes designed specifically to increase the quantity and quality of the leads you receive from us:

1) We’ve expanded the maximum service area size you can set in your Bark profile to a 50-mile radius.

2) When we alert you to a job you’re not interested in doing, you can now hide that Bark so it no longer appears in your dashboard.

To hide someone’s Bark, simply click the ‘I’m not interested’ button in their public Bark and it will disappear from the list of matches in your dashboard – leaving you with just the jobs you’re interested in doing.

Better yet, doing this sends us feedback that will help us tailor our service so we can provide you with better quality leads in the future.

undo 'hide Bark' — *Click the ‘undo’ button to recover a Bark you’ve hidden by accident*

This new feature should prove particularly useful if you cover a large service area and are receiving a high volume of requests from us.

(Of course, if you hide a Bark by accident you can always unhide it again by clicking the ‘Undo ‘not interested’’ button that appears in its place.)

We hope you find these changes useful, and that they’ll mean you can start winning more business than ever before with our service. So why not put them to the test right away?

Log into your Bark profile here to widen your service areas and try out our new ‘hide Bark’ feature to filter through the leads we’re sending you.

We’re always looking for new ways to improve Bark for you and your fellow pros, and later this month we’ll be sending out our summer Seller Survey to find out how you feel we’ve been doing over the past few months.

Keep an eye out for it for your chance to tell us what you really think of our service. In the meantime, let us know what you think of these brand new pro features in the comments below!

Planning your wedding is easy with Bark

Your wedding will be the single happiest day of your life. But with expectations sky high, the pressure of getting it all sorted can easily take the shine off proceedings. Luckily, Bark is here to help.

With thousands of registered pros providing everything from wedding photography to wedding makeup, venue hire and more – we’ll do all the legwork to make planning your wedding a breeze.

Placing a Bark is quick and stress-free, and with all your quotes in one place choosing the right pros for your wedding couldn’t be easier.

“What a fantastic site!” writes Emma Williams on our Trustpilot page. “I’ve used this to find room decor, flowers, photographers and hair and makeup artists for my wedding.”

She continues: “Type in what you need and the professionals come to you. It’s an easy way to compare prices and to check out people I wouldn’t normally have been able to find through search engines!”

*Another happy couple ties the knot with Bark – photo by Laine Apine Photography*

“After searching for a wedding photographer without success we fell on Bark much by accident really,” adds another happy couple.

“Very pleased we did. Within a few hours we had several contact us and through these we got just what we were looking for.”

Brides Magazine estimates the average UK wedding costs upwards of £30,000, and with big decisions such as theme or venue typically being made up to 12 months in advance, planning one by yourself can be a huge commitment.

Finding everything the old fashioned way can take months of hard work and graft, but with Bark it couldn’t be easier. As soon as you’ve placed a request on our site you can sit back and relax, and the pros will come to you.

You’ll often start receiving quotes within hours of placing your request, saving you bags of time if you’re planning in advance – and and making us great for last minute emergencies.

“Our wedding planner had to resign for health reasons two months before the wedding,” writes one Bark user. “[We] found a replacement on Bark in 24 hours! Amazing.”

“I’ve posted several ‘Barks’ over the past six months or so while planning my wedding and have found it really useful,” adds Ami Stoppard. “It makes a big difference when you’re having to organise a lot that companies are able to reach out to you, as opposed to you having to send off multiple emails.”

*Lovers kiss on their wedding day – photo by Laine Apine Photography*

With hundreds of categories at your fingertips, planning your perfect wedding is easy with Bark. Whatever you need, we’ll scour the internet to get you quotes from the best local pros available on your big day, so you can choose the one that’s right for you.

So whether you need a great wedding DJ, dress rental, wedding cake bakers, makeup artists or anything else – we can help. Click the link below to place your Bark and we’ll start contacting local pros for you right away.

How to leave the perfect voicemail sales pitch in 5 easy steps

We’ll now give you instant access to a client’s personal phone number when you respond to their Bark, making it easier than ever before to secure new business with our service.

You’ll find each customer’s phone number beneath their name in the in the My Responses section of your Bark dashboard – so you can use it to call them directly.

But, from time to time, you’re bound to reach someone’s voicemail. To help you prepare for when that happens, we put together this simple guide to leaving the perfect voicemail pitch in five easy steps.

STEP 1: Get their attention first

Your objective right off the bat is to get the client’s attention, so don’t start your voicemail the same way as everyone else. As CRM company Salesforce notes, almost all sales voicemails begin: “Hi, my name is X and I’m calling from Y.”

Most people delete these messages straight away. If you recognise the company, you probably already have an opinion about who they are and what they do – and if you don’t, you usually don’t care who they are anyway.

A far better approach would be to take advantage of the specific information we send you about what each of our clients is looking for.

For example, if you were responding to Toby’s request for a wedding photographer, you might start your message: “Hi Toby, Bark just emailed to ask if I’m free to be your wedding photographer next month.”

STEP 2: Capture their interest

At this early stage, it’s really too soon to be going in for the hard sell. You’re just trying to get the customer to call you back to discuss their needs further – and for that, you need to capture their interest.

You might do this by explaining how you’ve helped people with similar requirements in the past, by running through any qualifications you have that make you perfect for the job, by stressing the benefits of choosing your service over your competitors – or all of the above.

Ultimately, the aim here is to present yourself as the best pro for their needs, and focussing on the specific details in each client’s public Bark is a great way to do this.

STEP 3: End with a ‘call to action’

It goes without saying that you should end your voicemails by giving your name and contact phone number. This is your ‘call to action’ – so be sure to state your number slowly, repeat it twice, and lead into it with the phrase “Please call me back on”.

One thing that works really well at this point is to give your client a specific reason to call you back. For example, if you were responding to a catering Bark, you might ask the client to call whenever is convenient so you can create a bespoke menu together.

STEP 4: Keep it short – but not too short

People don’t typically look forward to receiving voicemails from unknown numbers, and if your message is way too long (or too short) it’s possible they could delete it without even listening to it.

Inbound marketing experts HubSpot recommend aiming for the 20-30 second mark as a good rule of thumb. This should give you plenty of time to deliver your pitch, without taking up too much of the client’s time.

Remember, if you don’t hear anything back in a few days’ time, you can always follow-up again by text, or use the Bark Messenger to ask when would be convenient for you to call back.

STEP 5: Plan before you dial

Last but not least, always know what you’re going to say in advance. Before you even pick up the phone, give yourself a few seconds to summarise the purpose of your call in one or two sentences.

This will help you avoid long pauses and unnecessary stammers should the call go to voicemail, and will ensure you’re always ready to deliver the best pitch possible for your business.

Time to pick up the phone!

Sticking to these five simple steps should maximise the number of call-backs you get from your voicemail sales pitches, so you can win even more business thanks to our service.

Why not put them to the test right now by logging into your account here and reviewing your latest matches?

Or if you have any extra voicemail pitching tips or feedback about this latest upgrade to our service, let us know in the comments below!

It’s now even easier to “Bark” on the move

We know our best pros are often out on jobs when new Barks come in, and that’s why we’re working to make using our service as easy as possible when you’re on the move.

Following on from the success of our new one-click response feature, we decided to see if we could make the Bark Messenger itself even more user friendly on smartphone and tablet devices.

So we asked our Customer Services team what feedback we’ve been getting about it, and discovered that many of our pros felt the text box where you compose your messages was too small on mobile devices.

Bark Messenger is now faster and easier to use! — *Our latest update makes Bark Messenger faster and easier to use*

In the old Bark Messenger, this box only fitted a couple of lines of text, making longer messages tricky to edit and check for mistakes.

That’s obviously no good, especially when you’re composing your first message to a potential client and need to make a good first impression.

(As we’ve noted in the past, the best opening messages are usually around 500-600 characters long.)

So we re-wrote the code for that part of the Bark Messenger so the text box will now dynamically expand (and shrink) as you type in your messages.

In the process, we were also able to make everything run faster, by chucking out a lot of the cumbersome Javascript the messenger used to depend on.

In short, Bark Messenger is now faster, more responsive and mobile friendly – meaning it’s now even easier to respond to clients using it when you’re out on a job.

If you’d like to send us any feedback about how you’re finding this new feature, send us an email at team@bark.com. Or if you’d like to suggest any further improvements we could make to the Bark Messenger in future, let us know in the comments below!

Why you should hire a photo booth for your next corporate event

Everyone knows that photo booths are a great alternative to traditional photographers at weddings and anniversary parties. But for household brands like Dolby, Listerine and Adidas, they can also be powerful promotional tools.

Modern photo booths are kitted out with a host of marketing features that, with a little bit of creativity, can be a great way to promote your business at any corporate event. To find out exactly how some of the world’s largest companies do it, we spoke to Martyn Doherty from leading photo booth hire company, The Photo Cabin.

“Corporate photo booth hire is quite a broad area,” Martyn explains. “It covers anything from conferences in the day, as a sort of breakout thing for people to do, to work parties, product launches, festivals, fashion weeks – literally any kind of corporate event you can think of.”

Companies including Adidas, Listerine, PayPal, Nokia and more all make use of photo booth hire services at big corporate events – and right now, Martyn is working with Dolby at the Ministry of Sound to promote their latest clubbing collaboration.

“They’ve got the world’s first nightclub surround sound that they’ve just installed, so everything has to be remastered from stereo to Dolby Atmos,” he explains. “At every event they’re doing, they’ll have a photo booth there to help promote this night. So they’re doing animated GIFs, data capture and stuff like that.”

Having a photo booth present at the Ministry of Sound will create yet another way for people to enjoy themselves on these immersive new club nights. But the marketing benefits go way beyond the booth itself.

*Adidas hired The Photo Cabin to help them cover Milan Fashion Week*

“Data capture’s probably one of the most requested things with corporate photo booth hire,” Martyn says. “The most common way is just capturing an email address. So the user can just email their photo to themselves, they type it in and we can capture it that way.”

“On Facebook upload, we can also get your name, age, current city, date of birth, email address,” he adds. “Depending on the user’s privacy settings, you can get basically everything.”

Letting people share their photo booth pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is also a great way to boost your brand’s social media presence. This approach worked wonders for Adidas when they commissioned a custom photo booth for the last Milan Fashion Week.

“At Milan Fashion Week [Adidas] were targeting certain famous people outside venues, getting them to come over and have their photo taken,” Martyn says. “They were getting like 40,000 ‘likes’ when they uploaded the pictures online.”

Listerine enjoyed similar success with their photo booth campaign at the 2014 Isle of Wight Festival, generating over 130,000 Facebook impressions in just three days.

Listerine generated nearly 140,000 with their photo booth at 2014's Isle of Wight Festival — *Listerine generated nearly 140,000 Facebook impressions with their photo booth at 2014’s Isle of Wight Festival*

“From 400 digital prints, the number of impressions was something like 140,000,” says Martyn. “The ROI for essentially what’s an advert to be seen that many times is huge.”

“But also, it’s not just an advert,” he adds. “It’s going to be kept on that person’s Facebook profile forever, because they’re tagging their friends to it and they’ve liked it.”

By simultaneously letting you capture valuable data about your customer base and boost your online presence through photo sharing, photo booths really are a promotional tool like no other. But it’s not just the world’s biggest brands that are using them to promote their business and attract new customers – soon, you could be too.

Place a photo booth hire Bark today and we’ll find a great photo booth hire company for your next corporate event right away.

How to hire the right landscape designer for your garden

If you’re reading this, you understand what a magical place a garden can be. Where some see little more than a patch of of fenced-in lawn with a shed at one end, you see possibility.

It’s a safe place for your kids to play, somewhere you can relax on a sunny afternoon, a party venue and loads more besides. All you need is the right pro to make your garden dreams a reality.

A quality landscaper will help you create the garden of your dreams. But, for many people, finding someone you can trust to get the job done right is easier said than done.

Well, that ends today. Here at Bark, we believe finding skilled local landscape designers online should be quick and easy. So right now, we’re going to show you how to find the right pro you.

How to work out your budget

Before we get started, let’s talk price. A good landscaper will usually tailor their plans to fit your budget, but there are a couple of factors that might affect their quote.

For one thing, if your garden sits on difficult terrain, you may need to pay more to get the end result you’re looking for. As one of our pros told us recently, it’s a lot harder to turf a sloping lawn than a flat one.

But, to help you work out a ballpark figure, we’ve created a handy tool to show you what fixing up your garden is likely to cost. We call it the Budget Estimator, and how it works is simple.

When you place a Bark on our site, it shows you a summary of what people with similar requirements are usually quoted. This should give you a ‘rough and ready’ idea of what a realistic budget is for your project.

What to look for in a landscape gardener

With the question of what your project is likely to cost out of the way, it’s time to start comparing quotes – and that’s what we do best.

From the moment you place your Bark, we’ll start contacting skilled landscapers in your area, and you’ll often start receiving quotes within a couple of hours.

Everyone you hear from will be ready and available to renovate your garden, so all that’s left is for you to choose your favourite. Here’s a few things to think about when making your decision:

Do they have a solid reputation?

Reviews are a great way to gauge what to expect from a landscaper, which is why we assign our pros ‘star ratings’ based on how previous customers felt about their work.

Be sure to take a look at each pro’s Bark profile and website to see what people have been saying about them.

What’s their portfolio like?

A smart company will only post their best work online, so don’t be surprised if every landscaper you find has a great portfolio.

But having said that, they’re still well worth looking at to get a feel for the kind of work each pro normally does. Check to see if they’ve done the sort of thing you’re looking for in the past and made a good job of it.

Are you looking for specialization?

Many landscaping companies have teams of specialists to help with the different aspects of your project.

It can work out cheaper to hire individuals for each task separately, but generally people prefer the convenience of having one firm that can handle everything for them.

Do they have local experience?

When it comes to gardening services, local businesses have a real edge. They know which plants are most likely to thrive in your specific microclimate and they’re familiar with local laws and regulations.

That’s why we believe it pays to find someone with local experience to fix up your garden, rather than going to a major chain.

When you find someone you like the look of, invite them round to take a look at your garden and give you an estimate. Most landscapers will provide free consultations, and it’s a great opportunity to ask a final few questions to iron out the important details:

How many years’ experience do they have? Are they fully insured? Are they certified by a UK Trade Association? What’s the breakdown of their quote? And does their work come with a guarantee?

Once you’re satisfied you’ve found the right pro, all that’s left is to get a written contract of works and get the ball rolling – job done!

Get FREE landscaping quotes today

Now you’ve seen how easy it can be to hire a landscaper with Bark, it’s time to get you the garden on your dreams.

Remember, we do all the legwork for you to find the best landscapers in your area, and send personalised estimates direct to your inbox. Simply click the link below to find skilled landscapers in your area today.

Author: John Oberlin-Harris