How to Find More Customers for Your Commercial Cleaning Business

By Dan Young @CleanPixel

Given that 98% of consumers turn to the internet to gather information about local businesses, it’s makes sense for commercial cleaning services to adopt online lead generation methods. Using diverse ways of digital marketing platforms is an effective strategy to enhance the visibility of your cleaning business and generate top-quality leads.

Introduction

In the bustling world of commercial cleaning, where competition is fierce and client expectations are ever-increasing, lead generation stands as a critical challenge and a cornerstone for growth. For companies like yours, carving out a unique space in this competitive market is not just about delivering cleaning services but also about how effectively they can connect with potential clients.

To start, you need to understand something called a “unique value proposition” or UVP for short. A unique value proposition (UVP) is a statement that describes the unique benefit that your company, product, or service provides to its customers or clients. It explains how your company or its offerings can solve a customer’s problem or meet their needs in a way that sets it apart from competitors. In other words, why are you special and why should I choose you for my commercial property over the next person. You need to define this because it’ll help you with your messaging and approach for commercial clients. Remember, it is a competitive world, so when you approach these types of clients you should be prepared!

Local SEO

Effectiveness: 5/5

Cost: Medium-High

Local SEO helps your cleaning business show up at the top of Google search results, catching over half of all search traffic.

Local SEO is about making your cleaning business easy to find online over time. It’s different from paying for ads because it focuses on showing up in regular search results without paying.

Here are some ways to use Local SEO:

• Update your Google Business Profile with your current phone number and address. Many companies do not put their address as it might be there home address. This actually hurts your business in the eyes of Google.
• Make sure your website works well on phones (mobile first).
• Use important words and phrases on your website that people might search for.
• Update important parts of your website like the title and description.
• Keep adding new, good-quality information to your website.

While some businesses do their own SEO, it takes a lot of time to learn and keep up with. An SEO expert can really help by improving your website and tracking how well it’s doing, making sure you get the most from Local SEO. CleanPixel’s sister company (Digitize Everything) has been doing custom services like SEO for mid-size companies for 8+ years. If there is an interest, reach out here!

Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC)

Effectiveness: 4/5

Cost: High

Pay-per-click advertising helps more people see your cleaning business online.

In PPC, you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. You can bid on important words that people might use when looking for cleaning services. This way, your ad shows up at the top when someone searches for things like “office cleaning” or “carpet cleaning.”

PPC ads target the people most likely to need your services and encourage them to visit your website or a special page designed to welcome them. The most popular place to run these ads is on Google Ads.

PPC can quickly bring more visitors to your site, and you can control how much you spend on ads. However, if you stop paying for the ads, your business won’t show up as much online unless you are also using other ways to market digitally.

Email Marketing

Effectiveness: 4/5

Cost: Low

Email marketing is a cheap and effective way for businesses to reach out to potential customers.

To do well with email marketing, you need to sort your audience into groups and send messages that are tailored to each group. This takes extra effort, but it works. Emails sent to specific groups get opened 14% more often and clicked on 75% more than emails sent to everyone at once.

Commercial cleaning businesses use email marketing to:

• Share special offers or discounts.
• Follow up on quotes they’ve given out.
• Remind customers it’s time to renew their cleaning contracts.
• Give tips on cleaning for different seasons.

Other smart moves in email marketing include setting up automated campaigns, keeping a well-organized list of contacts, and tracking how well your emails are doing.

Lead Magnets and Landing Pages

Effectiveness: 4/5

Cost: Medium

Lead magnets and landing pages help bring the right customers to your website and let them interact with your cleaning business.

A lead magnet is something useful you offer to potential clients in exchange for their contact details like their name and email. The more helpful the offer, the better the lead magnet works.

For example, you might give away a how-to guide, a newsletter, or a template. New customers can get these by filling out a form on a special page on your website called a landing page.

You can make different landing pages for different kinds of customers, like those from industrial facilities or medical offices.

Good landing pages should have:

• A simple design
• A clear instruction on what to do next, like “Sign up here”
• Text that convinces people to act

The form on the page should be short and easy to fill out, asking only for needed information so people can quickly complete it.

Social Media Marketing

Effectiveness: 3/5

Cost: Can do it yourself

People spend around two hours every day on social media, so businesses can really benefit from using social media smartly.

First, figure out which social media platforms your customers like to use and what kind of posts they react to the most. Videos are especially popular; in 2023, 91% of businesses used videos to reach their audience.

Make sure your posts match what your business stands for but are also fun to watch or read. You could make funny posts, show off your employees, or run contests with prizes. Coming up with new ideas for social media isn’t easy, especially for a business owner like yourself. CleanPixel allows you to build social media posts instantly and takes the headaches away of creating new posts all the time. If you’d like to learn more go to our website here.

Social Media Ads

Effectiveness: 3/5

Cost: Low

Social media ads are great for drawing in more customers for your cleaning business. Some of the best places to advertise include:

• Instagram and X
• LinkedIn and Meta (previously known as Facebook Ads)
• Snapchat Ads and TikTok
• Yelp
• YouTube

The cost of ads varies based on where you advertise, what kind of ad you use, and how much you want to spend. Your ads can be simple pictures, a series of images (carousel), or videos. You might pay based on how many people see your ad (cost-per-mille or CPM) or how many click on it (pay-per-click or PPC).

To get the best results, mix your online advertising with traditional ways of finding customers.

Other “Offline” Methods for Getting More Cleaning Business Leads

Offline lead generation means promoting your cleaning business through connections with other businesses and people in your community. The best way to get leads is by combining different strategies like these:

Networking Events Effectiveness

5/5 Cost: Free

Go to networking events to meet other business owners and professionals in the cleaning industry and your local area. These events are more than just swapping business cards; they’re a chance to make long-lasting professional connections that could lead to free leads for your cleaning business. You might find these events at:

• Cleaning industry conferences, workshops, expos, and trade shows
• Local Chamber of Commerce gatherings
• Community business or professional group meetings

Join groups local business groups are also good for finding out about events near you. Lastly, make sure to join larger associations like American House Cleaners Association to network and learn best practices.

Referral Programs

Effectiveness: 5/5

Cost: Low

Use your current happy customers to get new ones through referral programs. Word-of-mouth is a powerful way to get exclusive leads. Set up a referral program that rewards people for recommending your service, like offering free services, discounts, or other special deals. Advertise your referral program to your clients and link it to your customer relationship management system to better follow up on leads.

Vehicle Branding

Effectiveness: 4/5

Cost: Medium

Use your company vehicles as moving billboards. You could fully wrap your vehicles or just put your company name and phone number on them. Make sure the design is simple and matches your brand. Since your vehicles advertise your business, keep them clean and in good shape.

Partnerships and Cross-Promotions

Effectiveness: 4/5

Cost: Low

Work with other businesses or professionals who might need cleaning services or have clients who do. This could include construction companies, real estate agents, event managers, and property managers. These partnerships can help both businesses get more leads.

Community Involvement

Effectiveness: 3/5

Cost: Free

Getting involved in your community can help people remember your business when they need cleaning services. You can sponsor local events, help with community projects, or participate in job fairs. This shows your community that you care and helps get your name out there.

Direct Mail Campaigns

Effectiveness: 2/5

Cost: Medium

Sending mail directly to potential customers can make them feel more connected to your business. It works best when you target specific types of businesses in a certain area. Make your mail stand out with bright colors and clear, compelling content. Include an incentive like a discount or coupon to encourage them to try your services. Track how well your mail campaign works with special phone numbers, codes, or URLs.

Mixing online and offline marketing strategies can really help grow your cleaning business by getting more high-quality leads and increasing your visibility.

Learn more about how to grow your cleaning business

Lead generation is an essential part of commercial cleaning business growth. But often, businesses lack the resources to follow up or nurture leads to their full potential. We can help with a number of these areas.

CleanPixel’s industry-specific AI tools empower cleaning companies to automate their marketing efforts but also improve operations. This technology was built to help remove the headaches and elevate things like communication, contracts, and content like social media and blogging allow you to focus on more “core” areas of your business.

Visit the CleanPixel to learn how we empower cleaning pros to run and grow their cleaning businesses.