How to Market & Advertise Your Cleaning Business – 10 House Cleaning Marketing Ideas, Tips & Tricks
April 6, 2021
Do you need ideas on how to promote and get clients for your cleaning business? This post has the ideas and tips you need to help house cleaning businesses generate leads and get new clients, fast.
#1: Develop a conversion-focused website
The focal point of your cleaning service lead-generation efforts is your house cleaning or janitorial website. It’s your business card, brochure, service description and salesperson — all wrapped into one.
Think of your cleaning service website as a guide. It helps people understand the value of your services and gives them a good reason to select you instead of your competition.
It also guides visitors towards taking the action of contacting you so they become a lead. You want a strong call to action with highlighted contact information. Be clear about your service area and what your services are.
Here is an example template design:
You want something modern but simple. An open design with a clean layout and strong use of white space will give the right impression of your business.
After you’re done, run some usability tests. Compare your website to the competition. Is the value of your offering clear? Would you choose you?
If you’ve done a good job with design and website content, you should be the clear choice in your area.
Pro tip: Offer an incentive for new customers
Your website is mainly a tool designed to get new leads to reach out to you. Offer them an immediate incentive to entice action, such as:
An introductory offer is a great way to get an edge on your competition and get the new lead.
#2: Clean up with search marketing
Both home and commercial cleaning services need to rank on page one for searches in their area. Most people will start their search for a cleaning service on Google.
You do this in three ways.
The first is to use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. You use the auction system (Google Adwords) to bid on keywords and gain placement at the top of the page. The top four results on any search page are all PPC.
The second is the Google My Business listing. This is a free listing that ties into local search and Google Maps. It’s important to optimize your description and service listing with the keywords, particularly for the cleaning services you specialize in. As a cleaning service, this listing will tie into your physical location. To get search results in other areas you service, you’ll need to run PPC ads. Also, getting more positive reviews will help your ranking.
The third is the organic listing of your website. This is driven by your search engine optimization (SEO) work and content marketing strategy. Optimize your site for relevant keywords, get some backlinks into your site and blog on a regular basis to get high rankings.
Note that you can use your blog to optimize content for a variety of searches, including common questions people have about cleaning products and services. This is a great way to introduce your brand to leads doing research and get them into your marketing funnel.
When you do all these search tactics well, you can actually get three places on page one,
If your business is not appearing in at least one of these spots, that’s your priority. Start with paid ads at the top. Then, work on your organic listings.
#3: Use retargeting
Even with high rankings on search engines and a great website, many prospective customers won’t convert when they first visit your website. It’s just the nature of how people behave online.
But you can stick with them by using retargeting ads. These ads appear to people after they’ve visited your website, working kind of like an automated drip campaign. As they consider a service, your ads stay in front of them on the web.
Here is an example retargeting banner:
This can be a really effective marketing tactic, particularly for cleaning services where people don’t always make an immediate decision.
#4: Manage your reputation
A search for cleaning services in any major city reveals something with clarity. A major part of how content is ranked — which connects to what searchers want — has to do with reviews.
For example, this search for “cleaning services Denver” shows Google Places listings with star reviews. The top two organic spots are review sites Yelp and Home Advisor.
The point is that reviews play a major role in how people decide on services, like home cleaning or janitorial. They check reviews to find the best, most trusted services, and the review content affects search rankings.
This means you need to make a proactive effort to get your best clients to leave you reviews.
The easiest way to start is to just ask. After a service call, ask the home or business owner if they will leave you a review. Don’t be pushy, just mention it.
Another effective way to get reviews is to send out an email follow up. We use templates like this:
If they click yes, it links to the reviews site you want to get content on. If they click no, it opens a feedback form so they can detail the problem for you.
Also, include the Top Rated Local® widget on your website so you can get people to click through to reviews without going to search. The Rating Score™ feature gives a score for all your reviews online.
#5: Use Facebook marketing
There are a number of effective ways for cleaning services to advertise on Facebook, particularly for residential leads.
Start by creating a solid Facebook business page with all your contact info, descriptions and images. Think of this as a secondary website. Many leads will look you up on Facebook and evaluate you the same way a website visitor would.
Add organic posts with updates about your services as well as curated content about hygiene around the house, etc. Don’t spend a lot of time on organic posts, but do try to keep things updated and stay consistent.
Next, activate Facebook Messenger. Many prospects will contact you through this messaging app. Create auto-responses for basic questions, then be ready to reply within an hour during the workweek.
Improve your reputation by setting up reviews and getting some positive comments from happy clients. Encourage them to mention you when someone uses Facebook recommendations.
Your best chance for direct lead generation is to use Facebook Lead Ads. You can target key demographics, like family make-up and household income, but also life changes, like recent moves or expecting a new baby. Use your list of current clients and create a lookalike audience.
You can dial in your targeting with considerable precision on Facebook to generate new house cleaning leads.
#6: Use LinkedIn for commercial cleaning lead generation
For targeting commercial cleaning leads, we recommend using LinkedIn.
Business professionals use LinkedIn as an online networking tool. Think of it as a huge, digital business after hours. If you want to make connections with office managers that hire commercial janitorial services, this is a good place to start.
One thing to keep in mind is that LinkedIn is very much a personal networking platform. You need a person at your business who has a personal LinkedIn account connecting with office managers and business owners in your area.
You can make connections on LinkedIn organically, but like Facebook, your most precise targeting will come from using LinkedIn Ads. With ads, you create the direct-response material that’s more effective for cleaning service lead generation.
#7: Create a unique value proposition
For all your advertising and marketing collateral, there will be one underlying message that:
- Conveys something unique or special about your service
- Communicates how you solve a specific problem or concern for your clients
- Clearly distinguishes you from your competition
Why wouldn’t your leads just choose Merry Maids? Are you cheaper, faster, more reliable? Do you use non-toxic cleaning products or take steps to protect the environment?
Some cleaning services tout their green cleaning solutions and how they’re safer for kids, pets and the environment. Others offer premier or concierge-level services for more affluent homeowners who want that level of service.
Give leads a clear reason to choose you with a strong value proposition.
#8: Create a promotional video
Video is proving to be increasingly effective at getting the message across for businesses, like cleaning services, particularly as more consumers search for services on their mobile phones.
Video content is easy to take in on a phone. In a minute or two, you can communicate your entire value proposition. For example:
Very few cleaning services invest in video, missing an effective way to communicate their value. Videos are also low-hanging fruit for YouTube searches.
#9: Use marketing, email and CRM software
For recurring services, like residential or commercial cleaning, both email and customer relationship management (CRM) software are indispensable.
With email, you can create lists and send updates on services to existing clients, as well as create drip campaigns to send periodic promotions to leads.
The email newsletter is a great way to maintain touch with clients and give them valuable info and special offers. This is a useful retention strategy that will keep your name ahead of competition trying to steal your business.
The CRM allows you to track all services and communication with clients so your entire staff has access to their communication history, service needs and special requests. This can be accessed on mobile phones so staff can get needed info when working onsite.
Marketing 360® offers free small business CRM software that integrates with the rest of our marketing platform, including forms on your website, email lists and more.
#10: Get to know your audience
Perhaps the most valuable tip we can give you — that applies to everything on this list — is to spend more time researching and understanding your target audience.
There is an unfortunate tendency with small business marketing to create content that too business-focused. People talk about their services as if they exist in a vacuum, making no connection to what motivated their audience to seek them in the first place.
Why do most of your clients contact you, really? Is it because they don’t have time to clean? Are they serial procrastinators? Are they affluent so having a cleaning service is a status symbol? Do they have finicky in-laws? Are they moving or doing a major spring cleaning?
The better you are at connecting your customer’s motivations to your marketing message, the more successful you’ll be at converting them into high-quality leads.
Take your house cleaning or janitorial business to the next level with Marketing 360. See our plans and pricing.
Originally published 11/13/19
Get Plans and Pricing Below
Get the know-how to get ahead
Get business, marketing and sales tips written by experienced industry practitioners. 100% free. Cancel anytime.