Cleaning Talk - Professional Cleaning and Restoration Forum banner

Marketing advice

7K views 19 replies 18 participants last post by  missannienow 
#1 ·


I have been in business for almost a year. I know that marketing is the key to my success but I am having trouble knowing which road to take. I have advertised with Valpak and it has not been a good choice. What other things can I do?

Cinderella's Clean Team
 
#2 ·
Try taking things into your own hands and marketing through social media sites, like twitter or facebook. The positive is that it is free but the negative side of it is that there is no way to measure your success through that method.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
 
#3 ·
Hope business is going well for you.

I noticed that you're from Boise ID. I was just there for New Year's eve :). I have family there.

But back to your question...

Looks like your doing fairly well. Love your website! Nice SEO work on it.
Other tips:
Local free directories (yelp, google places, merchant circle, kudzu, etc)
Classifieds sites (Craigslist, backpage, ebay classifieds, olx, etc)
Vehicle decals
Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
 
#5 · (Edited)
marketing

The problem with valpak is that it only works well for bigger companies. It is very expensive and it also produces a feast or famine result. If you are a 1 person operation, getting 50 calls a day will be way too overwhelming and you will only be able to schedule a small percentage of those people anyways. (I have spent $5,000 on a valpak campaign so I know) You need to realize that you are the little guy and market yourself accordingly. I have begun using referral marketing with good results. On my website, I have a link to my referral marketing program where cleaning customers get 10% off each new client they send my way. I find that utilizing your existing client base for new clients is much cheaper and more effective than blowing big bucks on advertisements. Also design a good website and aggressively work on the seo. Believe me, it is a lot cheaper and equally as effective as paying $600 per month for a small phone book ad. A small cleaning company needs to be very selective about how they spend their marketing dollars.

Cape Cod Window Cleaning
 
#8 ·
I find that referrals work the best. Good website and social networking help a lot too. You just have to be proactive in letting people know that what you offer is their best choice. People tend to share about things that they like. The same goes for a bad experience. So, good reputation is a must.

________________________
http://clean4real.com
http://www.facebook.com/clean4real
 
#10 ·
Marketing is necessary thing to promote your business and good will of your costumer will helps you in raising your business. if you have good impact on your costumer then definitely it is good thing for you. One of my friend running a business and his business was going slowly mean his business was at position of no profit and no loss. He was very tens that what he should do in such condition then he started to promote his business through social media and mouth publicity. After some time his business grow very fastley.
 
#11 ·
I have been in business for almost a year. I know that marketing is the key to my success but I am having trouble knowing which road to take. I have advertised with Valpak and it has not been a good choice. What other things can I do?

Cinderella's Clean Team
I haven't visited others website in a while but I decided to check yours out. I must say this the one of the best sites I have seen with a hub of excellent information about your business. It is way more than seo and fluff. I really like how you gear towards screening your customers rather than them screening you. Love love love it!

Out of curiosity how often or how much do you think your potential customers get to view all of the information. When you talk to them if they haven't seen the site yet do you refer them to the site. Or provide them with in person information that is same as on the site?
 
#12 ·
Online marketing is cheaper if you have the time to do it yourself. You can start with local web directories where free submissions are accepted. Then you can start writing articles and submitting them to online article directories like eziinearticles.com, articlebase.com etc.

Create a facebook and a twitter page, update them regularly and put links to them on your website. Follow people on twitter so they can follow you back, tweet special offers on a regular basis.

There are probably hundreds of other ways to promote your business but you need some trial and error experience.

As an addition you can start leaflet/postcard drops within your local area. Better start with small numbers and different designs. Monitor response and choose which leaflet design works best for you. Then increase the quantity.

The best possible marketing is word of mouth. Serve your clients well and they will gratefully recommend you to their friends and neighbours. A little incentive can speed up this process ;)
 
#13 ·
All good advice, most especially with regards to word of mouth. You can always magnify your positive customer responses via Facebook and Twitter as well. Pinterest is yet another option for you, perhaps post some before and after pics of your cleaning, or clean tips? Lastly, Google's AdWords has been an ABSOLUTE gold mine for us here in Hawaii. With the plethora of reporting and conversion tracking the service affords, you'd be hard pressed to find a marketing avenue that can get you a better return on your dollar. We've outsourced all of our marketing to a local company here in Hawaii and they've improved our business ten fold. Perhaps you have someone locally you can work with as well. We've found that the smaller companies tend to re-invest more heavily into our vision while the big boys just want their commission :)

Hope this helps, and feel free to check us out at http://itscleanhawaii.com/
 
#18 ·
I know this is a very old thread, however, I couldn't resist providing my personal experience with Groupon. In a nutshell - I believe you shouldn't touch them even with a barge pole!!! I think they have one of the best (and very pushy) salesmen I have ever talked to and they push you into an absolutely unprofitable (for you) deal. In my opinion, they make a huge profit, you make a loss - this seems to be their business model. I wonder how they manage to stay in business. Ask around if a cleaning company has ever stayed for longer than 1 campaign with them. If yes, then things might have changed since I last used their service.

Good luck!
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top