You need to have an effective marketing plan for generating leads, fostering a stronger relationship with existing clients, and bringing in new customers, whether you operate a carpet cleaning, dry-cleaning, or professional home and office cleaning business. To target your marketing budget for the best ROI, here are 9 marketing best practices for cleaning companies to get you started.
Nine Marketing Best Practices for Cleaning Companies
Identify the Target Market
You first need to identify who your customers are before you can start developing a marketing plan. Most local business is typically generated around a particular geographical area. You need to identify the neighborhoods in your area likely to prefer your cleaning methods.
If you are able to identify the type of services that your target customers are looking for, you can tailor your services and marketing plan more effectively to better meet their desires and needs.
Email Marketing to Earn More Business
Email marketing is neither new nor dead as some people say it is. Businesses of all types have been doing it successfully for a long time. While you might be doing it already, chances are, it is possible to get extra mileage out of your campaigns. If you still send out a single email to your customer as opposed to segmenting them and customizing your campaigns by segment, this is one place to start.
If you have yet set up automated email marketing campaigns, you should consider making that your next customer retention and marketing initiative. It is much easier to do email automation than you probably assume and it is very effective for converting prospects into customers or engaging a past customer for repeat business.
Direct Mail Postcards
If you want to geo-target entire neighborhoods within a predetermined distance from your business, direct mail postcards are your best bet. If such postcards double up as coupons for discounted services, recipients are far more likely to save them, even if they don’t require your cleaning services immediately.
Door Hangers and Flyer
You can also distribute colorful door hangers and flyers to local neighborhoods, office buildings, and apartment complexes. Send out a stack of these with each cleaning team with instructions to distribute them around job sites.
Chances are where there’s one existing customers, there are numerous other potential customers who may require your services. Offer a special introductory offer for new customers and include your contact information in large, bold type.
Have a Social Media Presence
Chances are you or your employees are already active on some of the popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. You should strive to ensure that your cleaning services business has a presence on at least a couple of these channels.
The easiest place to start is by creating a Facebook business page. It is a very important step since people are now accustomed to seeing a Facebook connection for businesses. You should include a description of your service on the Facebook business page.
Don’t forget to include all the important elements, such as contact information, your services, your years in business, any specials, etc. All these are differentiators that will encourage people that visit your Facebook page to read on and perhaps get in touch with you via phone or email.
Reward Customer Loyalty
People looking for a reliable cleaning service prefer a sure thing over uncertainty. Knowing what they are getting and paying for is usually far much better than the unpleasant surprises sometimes associated with trying out a new service.
Cleaning services that offer low prices but later tack on additional charges almost always never stay in business for long. Make sure that your customers always get the same good value from you by offering loyalty rewards. A small gesture, such as an extra spot or room cleaning service goes a long way towards promoting customer loyalty.
Build Brand Recognition
It is always worth the additional expense of providing your employees with uniforms and painting your company vehicles with your business logo, name, and contact details. It is not only a great way to project a more professional image, but neighboring businesses and homeowners will see your uniformed employees and branded vehicles at job sites. The result will be the same as if the customer had personally recommended your business to them.
Business Review Websites
Today’s customer is savvy enough to check customer reviews on websites such as Angie’s List and Yelp before they sign up for an offer that seems too good to be true. It is important to ensure that you claim all your business listings including Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, etc.
It is impossible to change a negative review on those platforms, but you can mitigate it by attempting to make things right with the customer. You should also encourage satisfied customers to visit your business’s page on these platforms to leave a review.
Boost Traffic and Increase Leads Using Local SEO Data
Local SEO is now more important than ever as Google continues working to support smaller businesses in their locations. That means it is the best time to maximize your impact by including more location-specific phrases and words in your marketing strategies.
It also means ensuring that your online profiles on Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo local, Facebook, Angie’s List, and others are completely up-to-date. Local SEO works to drive more traffic and leads back to your website directly without you ever having to pick up the phone.
Final Thoughts
If you offer good value in your cleaning service, word of mouth referrals will ultimately bring you many customers. To ensure that you don’t go out of business while you wait for that to happen, you will require an effective marketing plan to help things along.
Implement the nine best practices discussed here and you will generate and retain plenty of customers for your cleaning business. Do it today and you will see just how much of a difference it makes!