Best way to find new customers - Local Cleaning Company

[Wing Commander]

I am looking to try and gain a bit of insight into the best way to attract new customers to my domestic cleaning company. We are a local company, serving quite a small geographic area so most of my focus so far has been on printed advertising and word of mouth.

We currently advertise in local parish magazines, leaflet drops (professionally designed, and printed on card rather than home printed on paper as is often the way with one man band cleaners), referrals from existing customers (but this could always be pushed more I guess).

We have a website - it is seriously out of date and needs a fresh rebuild from the ground up. This is on my radar, but realistically won't happen for at least 6 months. Instead, I am keen to get some landing pages set up (10-15 of them) which cover 10-15 different topics. The idea being to really try and dominate the search results when local people search for cleaning. The competition does not spend any money on google advertising and it really wouldn't be too hard to push my way to the top, but my skills on webdesign are limited so that any result would look homemade. My brother and father both have used Jammy Basturd on here for some IT work, so it is my intention to ask him if he would do some work for me on these landing pages.

Ideas I have to increase visibility are:

Cross referrals with similar businesses ie letting agents, builders, plumbers etc
Referrals from existing customers (how do I promote this for maximum effect???)
Asking existing customers to leave a google review for us
Maybe some sort of local publicity event to try and get the business in the papers
Editorials which I would write and get published in local papers, parish mags etc.
Getting together with other local businesses and sharing advertising costs within a little trusted local magazine/pamphlet.

Any other thoughts?? My mental target at the moment is to try and get 1 new customer a week. Sounds simple enough, but we maybe average 1 new one every fortnight to 3 weeks at the moment. Which is fine for me whilst this is a second income, but would love for it to be more than that.

Our conversion, once people contact us, is extremely high so I have no doubt that we offer a good service right from the moment people get in touch - it is just that first hurdle that I really feel we are not particularly efficient in.

Many thanks!

[Wing Commander]

Rotaree said:

I think you already have some good ideas but to answer your question with regard to existing customer referrals: perhaps you could offer a discount to both the referrer on their next clean and referree on their first clean.

Yes, tried this and it works generally. My only concern being that you are incentivising people to give a recommendation, rather than people just doing it because they are genuinely happy. Maybe I'm over thinking it but could the potential new customer think we are only being recommended because if the financial reward?

[Wing Commander]

Funk said:

What's the company name?

Trusted Home Cleaning and the business is based in Bradwell, Norfolk but also covering other local villages

[Wing Commander]

Oceanic said:

I would be looking at Facebook and Google Adwords and doing location focussed ads based on where you want to target users geographically.

Ok that's good. I can certainly try three things but my follow on question then is - where do I point the advert towards? The website at the moment is shocking and has a very high bounce rate, hence wanting new landing pages done. This should be much quicker to get done, and will always be useful anyway.

Can Google adverts and Facebook ads point to my "Google business" page?

[Wing Commander]

Dejay1788 said:

Locally targeted Facebook ads.

EDIT: IF you want to do some 'free (although not targeted) advertising, join local buy sell / business groups and post an ad for your services in there once or twice a day, might generate some leads and at worst will only take five minutes of your time.

Good thinking on the local Facebook groups. Will have to look into that

[Wing Commander]

toon10 said:

My BIL has an industrial and domestic cleaning company and he uses Linked In and Facebook to promote his company. Lots of before/after shots and any positive comments from customers get shared. You'll be amazed how quickly getting your family and friends to like your page will filter down to their friends and beyond. If you're not into the social media thing then it may be a bit of a ball-ache to update but it seems to be working for him.

Before and after shots, I can do. I will have to make a bit more of an effort with the social media side of things. I think little and often will be the way.

I have already sent an email around to various customers who have the internet asking for reviews, and have had 1 come back in already, as a 5 star, which is nice. Hoping to get a few more which may well boost my Google My Business listing.

[Wing Commander]

Frimley111R said:

Go to Streetlife's website (local forum essentially), loads of requests for cleaners on our local one!

What a little goldmine!! Thanks for the link. I guess I had heard of that website but it never registered with me. I will sign up and see if I can make a few regular posts on there and answer any relevant questions.

Thanks

[Wing Commander]

veevee said:

Forget the groups, just buy targeted ads, you can specifically target any demographic you want. I.e Women aged 30-60 in your local area (I think you can even draw a geographical area on the map). You can also add a slightly scary amount of details, working/not working, has kids, etc. So you can get exactly who you want.

You'll still need a good website though, I'd sort this out ASAP, a static website is not that difficult or expensive, so a reasonable web person should be able to do you one in less than a week for a few hundred quid. This really matters as the whole point of cleaning is for things to look nicer, if your site looks rubbish people will immediately discount it.

You are right about the website - I will look into this ASAP. Agree on the ability to target specific demographics on Facebook. Being able to zoom in with laser accuracy on my target audience is really useful.

Thanks

[Wing Commander]

951TSE said:

I don't think you need to do the free first clean for the referee. Let them make their own referrals to get the reward, you shouldn't need to reward for signing up. Only reward on sales not referrals.

Good point. We, as a rule, offer the first clean half price just as a little sweetener. It doesn't cost much, and is a nice gesture to start with. I would probably look at offering a free clean to the referrer, and a half price clean to the referee.

Thanks

[Wing Commander]

beko1987 said:

Having a facebook page is a cheap and easy way to get started, then join lots of the local selling sites. Ours always have people asking if anyone knows any one off/end of tenancy cleans etc.

I run my Dyson repair facebook page. 150 likes in a year, but with zero advertising. (I have a full time job so almost don't want it to fully take off). What I have done is sell loads of refurbished dysons, but with a sticker on the machine saying 'Refurbished by Dyson Repair and Service, then a little blurb, serial number, model number and date. Just printed them out at work on nice avery labels.

You want to get all the unemployed facebook addicted mums singing your praises, that way when someone posts up asking for what you do, you get tagged. Then you can either just reply to that, or post the link to your page up in the comments and direct people there. I get about 5 likes every time that happens to me.

Before and afters are key too, I make sure to take photo's of the most minging before vacs, then once they are done and looking like new. Exploded pictures are good too, you could do 50/50 shots, or some particularly nice track marks in carpet etc?

Have a page and pay some money though, and it could all take off! I just haven't bothered!

I certainly need to spend a bit more time promoting things on Facebook, so will get started on your suggestions in the next few days. I have a page set up already but it is horribly out of date and needs fresh information.

[Wing Commander]

Oceanic said:

Wing Commander said:

Ok that's good. I can certainly try three things but my follow on question then is - where do I point the advert towards? The website at the moment is shocking and has a very high bounce rate, hence wanting new landing pages done. This should be much quicker to get done, and will always be useful anyway.

Can Google adverts and Facebook ads point to my "Google business" page?

If you don't have time to do a full rebuild/tidy-up of your site you could use a service like ClickFunnels.com to create a landing-page and sales funnel, using targetted Facebook / Adwords ads you could probably clean-up in your local area (excuse the pun).

Thanks for the suggestions. I have looked at using unbounce and leadpages etc for this but really struggled with making it look professional and also I noticed they are heavily biased towards creating American looking pages which just isn't in keeping with what I have in mind.

I have Jammy Git on the case though and he is working with me to get various landing pages done. Once I have this, I can plug in Google Adwords, Analytics, Facebook adverts, and start carrying out some tests to see which work.

[Wing Commander]

globalcarparts said:

Hi,

My wife has recently setup a domestic cleaning business (www.homeclean-uk.com)

She has only advertised in local village shops so far and is getting lots of enquiries.

She only wanted 3 jobs per week - which she got in the first 2 weeks of advertising... She's currently turning work away... It's got me thinking about making more of a business of it.

Andy

Hi Andy

Thanks for the info. Really pleased to hear that it is taking off for your wife! We unfortunately don't really have a nucleus centre to our village with village shops but we have advertised in them regardless. Unfortunately, not a huge response from this line of advertising for me.

All the best for your wife's venture

[Wing Commander]

janesmith1950 said:

For landing pages, take a look at unbounce.com. Really simple, quite low cost and easy to test new things to enhance conversions.

Hi

Yes, I have tried LeadPages which is similar and I can get it working technically, but I cannot ever seem to get anything to look any good, hence me calling in the services of a PHer to build it all up for me!

I then fully plan to test and enhance from there on in

[Wing Commander]

technodup said:

ind a local park or public space that's full of rubbish and clear it up. Tell the local rag, they love that sort of stuff.

That is certainly on the cards

[Wing Commander]

OK, so I realised that I had a few unreplied comments and also that I had not updated progress, so hopefully I have addressed this all now.

I have employed the services of Jammy Git from PH. He is creating some landing pages and other bits and bobs in the background to give me the leg up I need and get me over the hurdle of having decent looking landing pages. From here on in, I fully intend to A/B test various different aspects of the whole thing, including Facebook ads, Google ads, etc

I have also been carrying on getting leaflet cards being delivered. These have been pretty successful but I now have some additional questions for PH.

If I get 1 or 2 new customers in a particular area, say a street, I want to try and capitalise on this. The chances of me getting more customers on that street is high, and it also means one cleaner can go from house to house making it more efficient too.

My question is: How would you best target these houses? They have already had a card popped through the letter box. I was thinking, perhaps knocking a personalised letter for that road, and conveying the message that others in the street have signed up and we would give them a special offer if they joined too. Other than this, I am drawing a blank. I refuse to do any door to door knocking - just not how I want the business pushed.

So thoughts on how I can tap into this would be very interesting!

Also, as a previous PHer said, Streetlife has been very useful. I have signed up and created a business page, and started posting in my local area. Have also done one sponsored post which got some interest. So thanks for the suggestion!!

[Wing Commander]

Landlord said:

Not sure if Jammy Git is covering this with what he's doing for you but I searched "domestic cleaner Bradwell" and your site was on the middle of page 5. I, like I suspect a majority of people, don't look beyond the middle of page 1 unless it's something very specific I'm after. It would suggest to me that SEO might be a good option.

One thing, and I don't know the areas you cover at all but, where I live, I don't know any of my neighbours - we've only been here 6 months and rent plus it's a busy road so no real "community" to it by that's by the by - so I find all things like this via Google. Word of mouth is no good for me in my situation.

One other thing for your website - could you put a cost on there? Maybe "starting from x per hour". Also, is there a minimum number of hours per week? These are the first two questions I have when thinking about domestic cleaning.

Chucking thoughts out there - can the customer decide from one week to the next whether they want the cleaning done? Do you do "spring cleans" as well as weekly tidy ups? Is it just hoovering and dusting you do or can you do other things (I'm not sure what but maybe window cleaning/patio clearing/light gardening/whatever).

You are correct regarding SEO. I am hoping that this can come reasonably easily as competition in my area (in terms of search results) is either from national companies which do not actually cover our area, or local companies who have a very poor (albeit better than us) web presence, so it should be reasonably easy to muscle my way up for various key search results like the one you used.

Website, as mentioned before, will be updated at some point later next year, but the new landing pages will have all the info on them ie prices, what we do, frequency of cleans etc

Thanks for the feedback

[Wing Commander]

technodup said:

Wing Commander said:

signed up

Don't ever use that phrase for a start!

Wing Commander said:

I refuse to do any door to door knocking - just not how I want the business pushed.

So thoughts on how I can tap into this would be very interesting!

There are ways to knock doors and ways not to. Get business cards with 'one free clean to the value of...' or something on the back.

When you're at your existing customer visit the 6 closest houses. Introduce yourself and tell them who you're doing work for. Let them know your vans will be around and there might be some noise, but you'll be keeping it to a minimum. Tell them to contact you if they have any problems e.g. a van gets parked across their drive.

They have seen your van before anyway.
They can ask the neighbour if you're any good.
They know you're courteous and thoughtful.
They have your contact details (and an offer on the back which you didn't mention).
You didn't try to sell them anything.

Trades are usually pretty clumsy when it comes to selling, especially door to door. Plus it's not really the done thing any more. BUT being thoughtful will always be appreciated. The fact it might lead to more business is purely coincidental...

A face to face will always beat a letter imo.

Love those ideas!! Have already started getting this in place. Will keep you posted. Many thanks for the post - genuinely helpful in giving me a new perspective on door to door

[Wing Commander]

Monkeylegend said:

Put adverts in your local parish magazines in the areas you want to work. Takes a couple of months to build up a good response but once you get a few jobs the rest will follow.

Don't make the adverts look too flash/professional, just say what you do without any outrageous claims, people like to support small local businesses.

A very cheap form of advertising but very effective. Make one customer happy and they will tell their friends about this local business doing a good job.

Worked very well for me for 15 years or so. You are a local business so keep it local, and in somewhere like Norfolk the internet is alien

Hi ML,

Thanks for the feedback. We already advertise in the local parish mags, with good success. Customer referrals are also pretty good. We made sure our advert is still "quaint" but still professional. It seems to be well received.

Glad it works for you too! Internet is indeed a bit alien around some of these parts. Many of our customers are elderly and do not have the internet so it is all down to having a mixture of advertising methods.

Thanks

[Wing Commander]

technodup said:

hat's your process or do you just wait until someone recommends you?

I could write a book on this sort of thing. In actual fact I am writing a book on this sort of thing.

The process is very much a passive one. Once in a while, I might offer existing customers a discount if they sign up any friends or relations, but normally, it is completely off their own initiative to refer us.

When I try to think of it from a customer's perspective, it is probably really tricky to recommend a cleaner unless the conversation is being led from the 3rd party. People are unlikely to say "oh, I know this brilliant cleaner you should try" out of the blue. Rather like the most recent poster, this might have a negative response from the person!

Seeing as you have a book underway on the topic, would it be possible for you to impart some thoughts on how I might improve this?

Thanks

[Wing Commander]

skinnyman said:

You need to appeal to the ladyfolk of the house.

I suggested we hired a cleaner, as we have a 3yr old and my missus is pregnant, I thought she'd appreciate the idea as it would give her more time with the children. I was told the idea was insulting as I was insinuating that she's not capable of looking after her own house (she's right, I was)

Indeed, the majority of our customers are either female on their own, or the female of the family unit. Our advertising reflects this, I hope.

Getting a cleaner is a livestyle choice. It isn't necessarily that the home needs the help (although this can often be true), it is that they would like the help so that they have time available to do other things, either other chores or something more interesting.