Certainly having an optimized online presence can improve your cleaning company marketing. However, one thing that many cleaning companies don’t seem to realize is that a poor online presence can hurt your cleaning business in several ways. A poor online presence can repel potential customers just as quickly as an optimized online presence can attract them. In this post, you’ll learn 8 ways a poor online presence can hurt your cleaning company marketing.
Lack of trust from no website or a poorly functioning website
Digital marketing is a powerful way to grow your cleaning business. However, this doesn’t mean you should ignore offline marketing strategies. Your offline marketing strategy can be enhanced with an effective digital marketing strategy.
Typically you’ll network through trade shows and networking events or through organizations like the chamber of commerce. A poor online presence might seem like it wouldn’t hurt offline activities but in reality, it can. Just because you met someone locally doesn’t mean they won’t look at your website. In fact, your website is often the first place they will look after meeting you.
You can’t ignore your cleaning company website because if it isn’t optimized it could cost you these potential accounts. We often talk with cleaning companies that either don’t have a website at all or they do have one and it is outdated and is not user-friendly.
You may be the top player in your market based on referrals and networking, but if you ignore your online presence, and the competition does have an optimized online presence they can begin to take accounts away from you.
Less local traffic from an unoptimized Google My Business page
Another aspect of a successful online presence for a cleaning company that often goes overlooked is a Google My Business page. Many cleaning companies either don’t even have a Google My Business page, or it isn’t optimized.
If you provide cleaning services locally, an optimized Google My Business page is a necessity. Many people frequently use search terms such as “cleaning services near me”, or a specific city name followed by some type of cleaning service-related term.
Because of this, you want to have your Google My Business page set up and optimized. When it is set up properly and optimized your cleaning company is much more likely to show up for these types of terms in Google Maps.
Similar to having a poorly designed or non-existent website, if you lack an optimized Google My Business page, you’ll miss out on this local traffic and likely lose those leads and customers to your competition.
Lower site ranking from search engines because of inaccurate citations and directory listings
Traditionally you might have listed your cleaning business in the local Yellow Pages, but these days directory listings have moved online. There are many online citations and directory listings you can create for your cleaning business, but many people don’t take the time to do this.
Unfortunately, when you don’t take the time to properly manage your citations and directory listings it can have several negative consequences. For starters, when you are listed in many different directories it can help build credibility and authority for your cleaning business.
Also, it can help build quality backlinks to your cleaning company website. The more quality backlinks you have, the more likely it will be that your website will rank better in search engines.
Another thing to consider is that if you aren’t listed in directories, or if your listing is incorrect, it can be a red flag for search engines. Search engines like Google are looking to see that you have a consistent name, address, and phone number listed for your business.
If this isn’t consistent, it can hurt your chances of ranking well in search. This could cost you many leads and new potential customers, so it is wise to properly manage your citations and directory listings.
Your website doesn’t build authority because of no content marketing strategy
Do you have a content marketing strategy in place for your cleaning business? If not, it could be costing you targeted traffic and the potential to convert that traffic into leads and sales.
A content marketing strategy has several benefits to your cleaning business such as building trust, credibility, authority, and increasing traffic to your website. Most people either don’t have a content marketing strategy or they don’t combine it with effective keyword research so they see little to no results.
It is important to have content on your website but it needs to be long enough to be effective. Often we see cleaning companies that have content on their website, but the total word count on most pages is around 200-400 words. When companies were just starting to figure our content marketing several years ago, this might have worked, but today you need much more comprehensive content to be effective.
In most cases, you’ll want at least 750-1000 words on your pages and if your local market is competitive you may need even more. Your content also needs to be relevant to what your ideal customers want and are searching for. Helpful content isn’t enough. Your content should be helpful, but also what people are actually searching for.
Your social media strategy repels potential customers
Social media can be an effective marketing tool for most businesses. For a cleaning business, you will likely use social media to post content from your website, for prospecting, and running paid ads.
For most social media platforms organic reach has been replaced with paid reach. In most cases, people are just going to want to see that you have some kind of presence on social media.
Getting a significant amount of results from social media for a cleaning business will likely require a large time commitment. This doesn’t mean you can’t use social media effectively. However, understand that massive organic results on social media come from a large effort.
A common mistake cleaning businesses make on social media is that they only post about sales and offers. Only posting sales messages typically turns off most of your followers. Instead, follow the 80/20 rule. This means that 80% of your content is value-based, and only 20% is sales-based.
Social media can also be a great place to network and prospect to find new potential customers. For more information on this, check out this article on how to get commercial cleaning clients on Linkedin.
No social proof because you lack a review and reputation management strategy
Do you know what your review rating is online? Your review score can greatly influence if potential customers hire you or not.
An overall positive review score provides several benefits such as social proof, improved credibility, an increased conversion rate, and it is also a ranking factor on your Google My Business page.
A low conversion rate could be caused by having a poor reputation management strategy. Also, it could be a reason why your Google My Business page isn’t ranking well.
Even if you provide great service, your average customer is not going to leave a review. If you hope to get a significant number of positive reviews you need to systematize your review management.
We’d definitely recommend asking for a positive review after each service that is performed well. You can also leave business cards with your clients and ask them to leave you a review after cleaning.
Another great time to ask for reviews is immediately following some kind of positive feedback you receive from a customer. Make asking for reviews a part of your follow-up process.
Potential new employees will work for another company
Another potential issue a poor online presence causes is it can repel potential employees you are trying to hire. It seems like a common issue today that many cleaning companies are struggling to keep quality employees on hand. Typically, there are a lot of cleaning companies advertising to the same potential hires. This means you need your website to stand out.
If your website doesn’t work well, or if it looks dated, it can raise red flags to potential recruits. You want to portray your company as professional and a great place to work that has job security. However, a poor website design or lack of an online presence can destroy that perception.
Real employee photos are another thing that can help build trust with potential hires. With real photos, it can also improve conversion rates of potential hires applying for your positions.
You also want to have an employment page on your website. With this page, you can help sell potential hires on why they should work for you. This is especially true if you are running paid advertising for hiring employees.
An employment page can help pre-qualify potential hires. You can do this by discussing the type of people you are looking for and who isn’t a good fit. When you pre-qualify potential hires it can help improve the quality of the applications you receive.
Wasting money on your paid advertising strategy
You don’t like wasting money, do you? If you have a poor online presence and are running paid ads, you could be doing just that. As we mentioned earlier, your website is a reflection of how you do business with potential customers.
A poorly designed website will cause most people to leave quickly without hiring you. In some cases, people don’t even wait for your page to load before they leave. This can result in people clicking on your ads, but never making it to your website. Let’s say this happens 30% of the time. That means 30% of your ad spend budget is being thrown away on wasted ads.
Also, consider the user experience of your online presence. Do you respond quickly to those who message your social media profiles? What about people who request estimates or that fill out your contact form? If not, they may decide to take their business elsewhere.
Do your ads fit with the online platform you are advertising on? Unfortunately, many people use images and videos that don’t fit naturally on the platform where they are advertising.
When you advertise on Facebook for your cleaning business you want to use real employee photos. Stock photos will stand out but in a bad way. Most people will scroll right past your ads when they see a stock photo.
By using real photos that are natural-looking on the platform you’ll get people to stop scrolling. When people take the time to actually look at your ad your engagement will increase.
Conclusion
There are many drawbacks to a poor online presence. An optimized online presence attracts customers, a poor online presence repels them. The most common issue we see with new clients is a poorly designed website or they don’t even have one.
Most cleaning company owners don’t realize it, but your online presence is a reflection of how you run your business. When most people see a poor online presence they immediately think you run your business poorly as well.
Another step you should take is to optimize your Google My Business page. An optimized Google My Business page can increase your exposure in local search. When your cleaning business website isn’t optimized for SEO your likelihood of being found by search engines is virtually non-existent.
With optimized social media, an effective review and reputation management, and a content marketing strategy, you’ll be found online more often. A poor online presence can increase your cost of conversions and lead to wasted ad spend from paid advertising.
Certainly, you want to optimize your online presence to improve your traffic, leads, and sales from digital marketing. However, a poor online presence will do damage to your reputation and business as well. If you need help with your online presence optimization and digital marketing, be sure to schedule a call with our marketing team.