Are you considering investing in marketing for your cleaning business? Adding in a marketing plan for your cleaning business can help take your business to the next level, but you need proper expectations with what is possible. Cleaning business marketing takes time, and with the right system in place, it can work for virtually any cleaning business. In this post, you’ll learn what expectations you need when it comes to results you should expect to see when marketing a cleaning business.
The difference between active prospecting and passive marketing
There is a big difference between active prospecting and passive marketing. When most people think of marketing a cleaning business they are referring to passive marketing strategies.
Passive marketing is when you create a piece of content that continues to drive traffic, leads, and sales to your cleaning business for the long term. Passive marketing attracts potential clients to you rather than you having to actively reach out to them to drum up business.
While passive marketing like content marketing and SEO for cleaning companies can work very well in the long-term, they don’t necessarily bring in results quickly. If you are just getting started in your cleaning business or sales aren’t where you want them to be, it is important to implement an active prospecting strategy alongside your passive marketing efforts.
How soon should you invest in marketing for your cleaning business?
A common question we run into working with cleaning business owners is how soon should they be investing in marketing their cleaning business. Marketing your cleaning business is important, but often we find companies trying to invest in marketing thinking it will save a business that is struggling, overnight.
Often we see companies hoping to invest a few hundred dollars one time and be set for marketing. This isn’t really how marketing a cleaning business works. You want to view marketing your cleaning business as a means to scale your business to the next level, not as a means to resuscitate a dead business.
If you have an extra cash flow of at least $750-$1000 a month from a steady customer base, you should be ready to start investing in some done for you marketing services. If your budget isn’t at that level yet, you may want to work on improving your active prospecting strategies, internal business management, and do it yourself marketing strategies for now.
What kind of budget do you need to invest in marketing a cleaning business?
We mentioned that you want to have at the very minimum of around $1000 a month you can put towards marketing. If you are doing the marketing yourself you may be able to get by with less, but if you are hiring a marketing service that knows what they are doing you can expect to start off around that level.
The reason for this budget level is you will want to have a few marketing tools in place so you aren’t relying on one marketing tactic to generate business. That means there will be ongoing costs and possible initial set up costs. Another reason for this level of budget is that if you want to have an ongoing content marketing strategy for your cleaning business, you will need someone to write that content on a regular basis.
One of the marketing tools you want to have is an email autoresponder. An email autoresponder is a marketing tool can help you generate leads and convert them on autopilot. Another marketing tool you need is a website. Optimizing a cleaning company website is also very important.
Most cleaning businesses we find throw together a generic cookie-cutter website for their businesses and wonder why they don’t see results. Putting together a decent basic website can cost anywhere from $1500-$2500 and usually has some ongoing maintenance costs to keep it functional and secure.
Why optimizing your website matters
Most cleaning businesses have a website, but if the design of your site and layout aren’t optimized it can actually hurt your marketing efforts rather than help them. The common perception is that having a website is enough and that a cheap website is likely the best option.
The reality is that you get what you pay for. If you are expecting amazing results from a quick website creator you will likely be disappointed. Often we hear cleaning business owners saying things like “if a website looks nice that it will get more traffic and convert more customers.”
Having the right optimized content and messaging will convert more leads and generate more traffic than a professional-looking site alone.
Some things you’ll want to include on your website are highlighting your core difference and advantages over competitors, the benefits of your cleaning services, not just features, and real employee photos not stock photos.
You’ll also want to create a content marketing system that focuses on answering your ideal customer’s common questions, and that helps them to avoid their common problems related to your services.
Does more traffic mean more leads?
Another common misconception is that more traffic will automatically result in more cleaning leads. A boost in traffic is great, but if the traffic isn’t targeted, and if your website isn’t optimized for lead generation it won’t matter.
Often we see companies that spend money on advertising only to find that their conversion rate is terrible. Even if you have a well-optimized landing page people often check out your main website as well. If your website looks like it is slapped together and unprofessional, you likely won’t convert many leads.
Another thing to consider is your cleaning estimate request forms. We typically see these forms on websites that have way too many questions on them. As a general rule, the more questions you ask on a form the fewer submissions you are likely to get.
Having a lot of information about your client’s home or business is great, and could help you provide an accurate quote. However, if no one ever submits a form because you ask so many questions, then it doesn’t really matter.
Typically we recommend asking as few questions as possible that can allow you to give a relatively accurate quote or estimate. That way you can maximize the leads you generate from whatever level of traffic you get to your website.
What kind of marketing works well for a new cleaning business?
Maybe you are just starting your cleaning company and setting up your website for the first time. If that is the case you might be wondering what is the best way to market a cleaning business that is brand new.
First and foremost you want to make sure you optimize your website with the right foundation content pages. These pages would include your service pages, location pages, home page, about page, estimate request form, and if you are in commercial cleaning, industry pages. We also recommend having a reviews/testimonials page as soon as you have them.
This is so important because it will give you the foundation you need to build your future content marketing strategy. Those base foundation pages will give visitors to your website a clear picture of who you are and how you can help them.
Having pages for the industries you serve and the services you provide establishes your cleaning business as an authority. When your website lacks this kind of content people are unsure if you provide the services they are looking for, or they assume you don’t have much experience providing those services either.
How long does SEO for cleaning companies take?
Optimizing your cleaning company website with SEO in mind is another essential step in marketing a cleaning business online. Unfortunately, we often see cleaning business owners start this process and have unrealistic expectations.
Creating new content on your website takes time, and it doesn’t reach its full potential from anywhere from 6 to 9 months. It can also take longer if you have a brand new website. Google and other search engines put websites in a “sandbox” and they often don’t give them proper exposure for a few months.
Now, this doesn’t mean that SEO doesn’t work or that it isn’t worth doing, but more importantly, just understand that it is a process. You can’t create a post today and expect to start seeing new leads coming in within a few weeks. Also, this doesn’t mean that you won’t see any results while a page is reaching its full potential.
You’ll notice a small spike in traffic but nothing compared to what it can be over the long-term. Another benefit of using SEO to market a cleaning business is that once this work is completed, it continues to work and generate traffic for your business long term.
Look at it like planting seeds in farming. If you never plant seeds, don’t expect to have a harvest. If you only plant a few seeds you will likely have a small harvest. Planting a lot of seeds quickly will help your harvest come faster and bigger vs getting small crops sporadically.
You need a good follow-up system and sales process in addition to marketing
Building a digital marketing system for your cleaning business can help you generate more targeted traffic and cleaning leads for your business. Without a proper follow-up system and effective sales process in place, you will struggle to convert the leads.
Many companies don’t spend much time on improving their sales process and follow-up process. This is a huge mistake because your follow-up process can be the difference between closing the sale and losing it.
So many companies we talk to spend so much time, effort, and money on building a digital marketing system, but completely neglect follow-up. When you generate leads through your website and through advertising they are much higher quality than cold calling. At the same time, you must understand that they all won’t be “laydown sales.”
Your company is still going to have to put some kind of salesmanship into the follow-up process. It is very easy for potential customers to find a competitor’s site and ads and compare them to your offers. If you don’t make an impression on why your services are better, you will end up missing that sale.
Digital marketing and advertising work for marketing a cleaning business, but you need to be diligent in the sales process of your business to maximize your results.
How soon should you start advertising your cleaning business?
Have you ever wondered how soon you should start running ads to promote their business? This can vary from business to business, but ideally, you should have your optimized website set up first.
One thing to understand is that if you start advertising your cleaning business, some people are naturally going to check out your website after seeing your ad. If your website isn’t optimized or if it looks cheap and unprofessional, people likely won’t hire you.
Advertising a cleaning business can work well, but it really only works as long as you keep investing in it. The moment you stop investing in advertising, the traffic and leads will stop coming in.
This is why we really recommend a combination of content marketing and SEO, mixed with a paid advertising strategy. Content marketing and SEO can build a foundation for steady targeted traffic for the long-run. You should combine that with paid advertising to bring in targeted traffic and leads quickly. If you don’t have a budget for both start with content marketing and active prospecting and selling first.
Also, understand that running paid ads is not an instant quick-fix solution either. It can help bring in traffic and leads faster, but it still requires an optimization period. If you don’t have an adequate follow-up and sales process. you’ll have a hard time converting leads.
Setting proper expectations regarding your advertising budget and results
Having proper expectations of what your advertising budget will get you in terms of results is also extremely important. Often we find people thinking that they can spend under $100 a month on Google Ads and expect to get dozens of leads a day from this.
The reality is $100 a month will get you some people seeing your ads, but likely very few leads. The best way to put your ad spend into perspective is to break down your monthly ad spend and expected results to go with it.
Let’s take for example a monthly ad spend a budget of $1500. You simply take $1500/30 days and get $50 per day on advertising. We’ve found for commercial cleaning businesses they can get some conversions around $15-$30 each. Depending on the ad this could be a click on the ad, a phone call, form submission, etc.
If you are getting clicks for about $15 per click and you have $50 per day to spend that is roughly 3 clicks per day. Also, not every click will result in a phone call or a lead. At the same time, not every lead will convert into a new client. Understand that advertising works, but you still need a decent budget to get results. Also, understand that a smaller budget won’t create miracles.
As far as advertising is concerned it does require a higher and more consistent investment. For this reason, we recommend this step when you are ready to scale to the next level. Advertising when you are just starting out has the potential to quickly use up your budget.
Conclusion
Overall, digital marketing is an essential part of building a successful cleaning company today. You can get results with the old school person to person approach, and should use that marketing strategy. At the same time, your competition can quickly steal market share if you aren’t marketing online and they are.
Start by having an active prospecting and sales process in place, and follow it up with optimizing your website. Along with this optimization process, you also need to know your marketing budget.
You don’t need an extremely large budget to start to see results over time. However, a small one-time investment will not get you what you need to effectively market a cleaning business.
When creating content and optimizing SEO for a cleaning business, understand that these strategies take time to see results. Every cleaning business should utilize these digital marketing strategies. If you don’t use digital marketing, you’ll lose ground to the competition in the long-run.
If you need faster results of leads and sales for your cleaning business, you should consider paid advertising. However, you need an effective follow-up and sales process in place first. You also need proper expectations of what your marketing budget will actually get you in terms of results.
With these things in place, you are ready to start scaling and growing your cleaning business with digital marketing.
P.S. If you are struggling to get quality leads for your cleaning business, Click Here to Learn How to Get More Clients for your business with these Top 10 Lead Sources For Cleaning Business Owners.