House cleaning businesses are easy and relatively inexpensive to start up, with no special skills required, so they are a popular choice for first time business owners. An often overlooked, but important, part of the business plan for a new house cleaning business is the marketing plan – how will you acquire customers for your new business? Your house cleaning marketing strategy can make or break the business, so it is vital to look at it early and often, tweaking when necessary.
Research
What kinds of marketing are house cleaning businesses doing in your area? What services are offered? Even before you buy a broom, you will want to do some research, and really look at your competition. What aspects of your potential customer’s needs might they be missing? Which types of ads work in your local area? Chances are if a business runs repeated ads in a local coupon clipper magazine, on the radio, or in the local newspaper, those ads are quite effective. Can you take advantage of any free resources, like Craigslist or Oodles to market your business?
Make Plans
* “Grand Opening” promotions. Planning for your house cleaning marketing launch should include some “Grand Opening” promotions. Perhaps offer a “deep cleaning” or a month of free service as a price if they sign up with you and give you contact information including their email address. You can use a combination of print ads, flyers, and even some online marketing to get the word out about the drawing. Design a coupon, and use it, with a code that tells you which of your marketing efforts is most effective.
* Do a couple free cleaning jobs. In order to get started in this business, you need to prove that you do a great job. The easiest way to do this is to offer a few free cleaning jobs to friends or non profit organizations, in exchange for testimonials that you can add to your house cleaning business marketing pieces.
* Local business reviews. Set up accounts for yourself on local review sites, like Yelp and Insider Pages, and encourage those who you’ve done jobs for to place their testimonials about your services there.
* Build your Presence Online. Now that you have a business plan in place and a strategy for your house cleaning marketing, it is time to take your business online. Even small, local businesses benefit from online marketing, and it is essential for every business today to have a website for potential customers to look at. It lends credibility, and is an excellent sales tool when properly utilized.
* Pick a catchy, easy to remember, and relevant name for your business and check with one of the domain services to be sure it’s available.
* Build a simple website. Have information about the business, about you, pricing if you like, and a page for testimonials and one for contact information. With the easy templates available, a simple website can be a do it yourself project.
* Start building your brand. You need a logo that defines your business and is easy to describe and remember. For a house cleaning business, it can be as simple as a broom with the words ‘Clean Sweep’ embedded. You can typically get a logo designed by a professional graphic artist for a few hundred dollars. If startup funds are tight, use this free logo designer.
* Friends and family. Have all of your friends and family ‘like’ your Face book page, and ask them to comment to help build activity.
* Advertise your website. Place a few targeted ads, including your website address. Local publications are great, and free resources like Craigslist and Oodles are even better.
* Use the power of social media to drive traffic to your website: Face book and Twitter can be invaluable to start up businesses. Face book discounts and Twitter freebies are a great way to build email lists.
* Email marketing. Used sparingly, this keeps your business at the top of your customer’s minds. Create a monthly newsletter and send that out to customers.
* Google Places. This free service should not be overlooked. Each local search brings up the related businesses on a map, and these results are first in Google.
* Write some articles. Writing relevant articles and submitting them to article directories can help build valuable links into your website. Make sure these articles show your expertise, and look for ways to re-use the content, either in your email newsletter or print marketing pieces
Do periodic reviews of your house cleaning business marketing. Focus on the things that work, and discontinue those that don’t.