Today is another day where I ask questions of YOU. I’ve done my fair share of talking on this blog (about a lot of topics).
Now I would like to hear of your successes and failures in the marketing world. There are so many ways to get new accounts, some work and some don’t.
One of my favorites was direct mail. In fact that is how I landed the majority of my accounts. I simply mailed a sales letter, business card and a flyer offering some kind of special offer to my target list. I’ve written about this direct mail advertising and how to craft sales letter and flyers several times…
- The Direct Mail Letter. Get The Most From It With These Tips.
- How to create a sales letter that gets you customers
- Sales letter and flyer combo for landing apartment complexes
- How one letter to a property management company resulted in $17,512.54
- Your cleaning business flyers need to be on target.
- Building a house cleaning flyer that gets results.
I’ve also done well getting new clients via networking, marketing to real estate agents and going door to door handing out flyers. Different methods will yield varying results based upon the effort and skill level you posses at a given task. The bottom line is a “well balanced” attack plan that makes use of several approaches will work best. I wouldn’t suggest depending too heavily on one technique in case that approach dries up for one reason or another.
As far as my marketing failures goes, I’ve done a few things that yielded no results. i’ll share the biggest loser and that was advertising in newspapers. I had professional designed print ads, and a decent budget targeting a wealthy town near me. The goal was to get more carpet cleaning jobs. What to waste of money that was. I doubt that I made 20% of my money back on that ad.
So now that I shared my best and worst experiences in getting new accounts, it’s time for you to share yours. Just leave a comment below with what has worked for you and what didn’t work. Sharing this sure helps the beginners (and everyone else) who is looking forward to making more money in their business.
If you liked this post, you can subscribe to our Cleaning 4 Profit RSS feed. If you are looking for a step by step blueprint that will show you how to start your own cleaning business, then check out my Cleaning Business Training Manuals.
NOTE: Win a FREE personalized sales letter for your commercial cleaning business.. Leave a comment below sharing BOTH what marketing approach works best for you and what didn’t work at all. Those who leave a comment before March 29, 2018 at 12.00 PM EST will be eligible to win.
We had some success with putting flyers in mailboxes but got notified by the US mail that that wasn’t allowed. Since then all we seem to have luck with is our website.
We’re very new at this… less than a month. We love your articles and are following you all the way. We haven’t started soliciting yet, but are working on our mission, our strategy, our focus and so on. We can’t wait to continue to learn successes and failures because they are all lessons. Thank you for this post!
Hi Jessica! Thanks for chiming in. Hopefully we get a good response.
I find word of mouth has been my best advertising tool. What I found hasn’t worked for as of yet, is the advertising in the small local papers. I must add this: When I received this e-mail from you seeing all the great information you provided was very exciting to me. Thank you
I tried direct mail but it did not get me any new clients. I have had some luck with Craigslist.
Tom,
I am excellent in communication and convincing people, but what I lack is fundamentals of sales pitch for cleaning business, important confusion being what is the best method to devise a quote when you see client facility(i.e. based on sq ft? or based on cleaning complexity? or based on location? or based on number of hours I think it would take? or all of the above and more? What is the best formula per say, I guess). I have never done till now (what business I got so far is by being a franchisee, but do want to start knocking on doors of businesses to get my foot in the door on my own and moving away from being franchisee).
I absolutely love your articles and tricks you share to make cleaning business grow faster. Your current article taught me great deal! Looking forward to more learning experience, Tom.
We are very new to this, we are super excited & I myself enjoy listening to all your podcasts & enjoy reading all the tips you have to offer. We are currently looking at different Marketing companies to choose which one will best meet our mailing campaign. We are trying to keep our costs low, but also trying to get the best bang for our buck! Thanks Tom for all your input & help… You have definitely become my mentor!!!
1. Most successful method in getting new clients – REFERRAL (Always works, every of my client has brought one extra client)
2. Due to the side of the world i come from, SOCIAL MEDIA didnt really go to well for me…
We are in the startup process. Attempting to find the ins and outs regarding the cleaning business. I love the articles and on-site you are giving to your readers
Mr. Watson: sending you a great THANK YOU for your weekly advice! I always go to your emails to gain knowledge and learn something new. We have been serving the area of Marietta, GA since 2007. So far, our business is doing fine. However, I would like to gain more leads. A big portion of my profit goes into marketing as we are using all the tools available to get more leads. We get great accounts by referrals, as looking online is the worse way to find good leads. The competition for my type of business is fierce. That’s why I strive to stay on top, and your weekly advice helps me tremendously. Thank you again!
We have had some success with a newer networking site called “nextdoor”. Also during this past Christmas we put together a goodie bag with our flyer, 2 biz cards and some chocolate and went around to Salons introducing our business and services! That worked well. Direct mail did not work the greatest for us, but now thinking it may have been the wording or presentation on our flyer.
What works for me is landing a job in one area and then going to other businesses in that same area with my card. I introduce myself personally and tell them I’m cleaning other specific customers in their area. Most of the time people are not happy with their current cleaners and I land it on the spot. What has not worked for me is advertising in my local paper. Huge waste of money.
The approach that works for me is word of mouth; if your work shine and have communication skills your customers will refer you to family and friends even clients.
There is several ways to grow your business but my excellent work skills,regular clients and my professional personality gains for me
We are just getting to the point where we need to consider other marketing strategies. Currently we have gained new accounts through cold calls and following up regularly until there is an opportunity. Once we get an account we make sure we perform well above the average and that has led to more accounts threw word of mouth and references. We have business cards and flyers that we will also pass out during outside marketing trips to various properties when things are slow. Sometimes one approach works better than the other so we make sure we allocate our time evenely until we develop a marketing plan that is tried and true.
We’ve had great success with contacting our local chamber of commerce. They gave us a list of chamber members which included emails. We emailed from the beginning of the alphabet to the middle, then our schedule became so full we couldn’t take on any more accounts. Take into account, our business consists of my husband and I only. We have 7 accounts and we work more than we sleep.
We tried Thumbtack and local advertising with the newspaper and neither one did anything to help.
We are very thankful for our local chamber of commerce, our business would not be where it today without the help of them!
Hi M!
In some ways… a quote factors in everything you mentioned in one way or another. To simplify it however, just figure how many “man hours” will it take to clean (IE: 5 hours of cleaning for 2 people is 10 MAN HOURS), then multiplying by your hourly rate.
This is how I viewed hourly rate in simple terms (back when I started)…
The more often we clean the less per hour we charge per hour, and the less we clean the more we charge per hour.
I’ll make up this scenario (this is for regularly scheduled weekly work)…
5 nights per week my pay rate may be 22 per man hour
3 nights may pay rate may be 26 per man hour
1 night per week pay rate may be 30 per man hour (sometimes more)
SPECIAL NOTE: A one time job may get charged 35 per man hour or so. This depended upon HOW BAD I WANTED THE JOB.
I didn’t blindly follow the above approach, as it depends on the situation, but you at least have an idea of what to do.
The mailer offering the two weeks free has absolutely worked. The door to door approach has not yielded any inquiries.
I purchased a list of businesses in my local area by zip code. I dedicated three days a week from (9am until 3pm and did nothing but cold calling to set appts. It is strictly a numbers game. I have had a small amount of success with this method.
What didnt work was I had a company direct messaging people about my services but it didnt work because the company kept saying I needed to provide set rates or a range and i could not without knowing sq footage and the condition of the house. What did work was offering one free night of cleaning for small offices which turned into new accounts.
An ad on Craigslist did not work. I got no response. Word of mouth and my facebook page have been the best so far for me getting business. And my business cards have helped also
Melissa Swindell
Crispy Clean Cleaning Services
Reference bonus program works the best for us. People refer clients more willingly when they know they’ll get a bonus 🙂 direct mailing didn’t seem to work for us unfortunately!
We have tried the Val Pak & Money Mailer mail outs but the return has been a failure as in less that 1%.
We currently do a direct mail sales letter with an offer to all new home owners in our area. We pay $40 a month for the list of names and address labels (usually we send around 400 a month) . The ROI is high and has been a steady increase month on month. There are a lot of new developments in our area and once we get a couple of regular cleans their neighbors see our marked cars and ask about us too.
What company would I use to get a monthly list of names and address of new homes and businesses in my local area?
I have found that my leaflets have not been been responsive enough so far and do need a sales letter to strengthen this.
Word of mouth seems to gather the most interest this end. It’s been a slow process but slowly building up.
You could try “Info USA”, look them up on Google. There are also many others under the “mailing list broker” search term.
Our best approach for getting new clients has been by referrals, which has allowed us to grow in terms of long term/recurring clients. What hasn’t worked for us has been calling, it’s tedious and usually you get a gatekeeper who is not interested in passing along your information to the person in charge.
I m invited to bid on a warehouse 37,000 sq ft they want different prices for offices and open space but I can’t figure out blue prints and what is going price for commercial post construction. I specialize in residential post construction but someone said it’s less then what I would charge my home builders. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated