You’ve purchased your various cleaning supplies and posted a job listing to hire your first crew of workers. You have a business name and have secured your business license. But do you know how to market a cleaning business? Now that you’re ready to get started with cleaning your first residential or commercial space, what are the best steps you can take to market and grow your new cleaning startup?
How to grow a cleaning business
Get online
A website is the first tool you should use to set up your cleaning business’s online presence. It’s a launchpad for all your other marketing communications on social media, by email, and in search engines. By creating a website, you will be searchable and come up when people are looking for cleaning services in your area.
It’s not just about creating a website, but also making sure your site clearly communicates just what your cleaning startup does. Keywords on your site will also make your business pop up in Google and other search engines when potential customers hunt around for services. For example, if you only clean commercial locations and offices, you should specify that on the home page.
If necessary, hire a consultant to write the website copy for you. Or if you prefer to wait to include that in your budget later, keep the copy very simple, but clear and accurate.
Next, create a couple of social media accounts specifically for your business. For cleaning services, Facebook is a good choice to set up a business page. Given that social media platform’s great reach across the public and its use for both business and personal purposes, it’s the best choice if you prefer to only manage one social media account.
Free and inexpensive ads
Facebook has several levels of pricing for its algorithmic ad campaigns that pop up to targeted users. After creating your business page on Facebook, you can start out by testing an ad for a short period of time, say two weeks, and customize the ads for the frequency they will pop up, and how many users to target.
Evaluate the number of clicks and views using Facebook’s simple ad metrics feature, and re-evaluate to determine if you need to make any adjustment to the campaigns.
Google also has targeted ads that can be set up with specific keywords that will bring up your business for people living in your region. Google also has a range of pricing for ads, and the more basic options are very affordable.
Yelp offers free publicity to businesses that set up a listing with the local rating service. It’s a way to get your cleaning startup in front of more potential customers. The app is often the first place people go to search for local businesses, so having an established listing there ensures your startup will pop up in searches for cleaning services.
The Yelp app also provides low-cost ads that can be tailored to your business and turned on and off at any time.
Blogging
Articles and video clips are a great way to share educational content about keeping spaces clean while increasing your business’s SEO or search engine optimization. We recommend you write short how-to articles for your website. The topics can be different each week or month, and address different cleaning challenges and how to solve them.
For example, articles could look at the best way to minimize dust and clean surfaces, environmentally-friendly products to use in the office, how to clean your oven, or the best way to keep clothing colors intact. Website articles can be reposted on Facebook and Twitter as well, which will increase their visibility in search engines.
Blogging doesn’t just have to be written articles. Video platforms like TikTok are extremely effective vehicles to reach potential customers in your area. Don’t forget to use hashtags like #cleaning and #maidservice to increase views of your videos. The short clips could address the same cleaning topics above and are a fun way to reach a broader audience.
Network
Finally, join your local chamber of commerce and spread the word about your cleaning startup. Pass out business cards at local offices and homeowners’ associations and ask current customers if they are willing to share your cards with referrals. In neighborhoods that allow in-person marketing, post or distribute flyers or your cards.
By putting these marketing methods into place, you’ll have your new cleaning business up and running in no-time flat.
