22 Cleaning Business Marketing Ideas

When starting any business idea, you have to ask yourself many questions like how will I find employees, how to build a website, and how will I market to my potential customers? In this article, we will be answering everything you need to know about the latter. You can be a master at setting businesses up and becoming a well-oiled machine in hiring. What happens when you do not have the customers to cater to?

Before we dive into the dozens of ways you will be able to market your cleaning business, there are a few things we will cover quickly to make sure your business is ready for success. If you have already established your business with a name, logo, color scheme, and website URL, then you can skip this part. Or, if you do have these already set up but would like to know more then, we encourage you to keep reading!

Business Name and Website URL

First things first, your name. It should be short and sweet, easy to spell as well as easy to remember. Long forgetful names will hurt you right from the go as the customers will have difficulty finding you again. We do not suggest going with a name like “Adams Super Clean Team.” Instead, something along the lines of King of Maids, Diamond Clean, or any other variations is fantastic.

Now that you have chosen your name, you are not quite finished yet. The next step you will want to take is to see if the domain name is available. We highly suggest making your domain precisely as your business name reads. For example, our name is BookingKoala, and our domain name is www.bookingkoala.com. If your domain name is taken but adding a letter or word is available, this is strongly not advised. So for us, if www.bookingkoala.com was taken, but www.thebookingkoala.com was open, this would not have been ideal, and we would have gone a different route with the name.

You want to make it as simple as possible for your potential customers and your returning clients to be able to find you. If they have to spend more than a few minutes finding you, they will end up looking elsewhere. If you are still having difficulty choosing a name, we have created a post that provides 300 business names for your cleaning service that you can choose.

Logo

Next, you will want to create your logo. Having a clean and straightforward logo will make you look more professional before you even start. You will want to make the logo something that goes with your name, of course. Creating a logo that looks busy with too much going on will not necessarily drive customers away. Still, it may make them look at you differently.

Color Scheme

Colors, oh how we love them! But picking the right colors for your brand is essential. With a name like Sunny Cleaners, you wouldn’t want to go with black and red. Both of those do not remind us of the sun but the opposite. Matching your colors to your name and logo will make everything fall into place perfectly.

We have created a guide to follow that you can read here!

As we are about to dive into all the ways to market your cleaning service, this list is in no particular order. We will, however, state our recommendations as to which methods you should focus more on your time, energy, and money vs. others. Also, depending on the region you live in, some of these methods may be more beneficial than others. So we suggest you take some more time to research which strategies work best in your area.

1) Door hangers

This method has been around for decades. But in the digital era, this is becoming more and more obsolete. There are still some areas in which flyers/door hangers do work.The benefits of using door hangers/flyers are that they are very inexpensive and can have thousands in a few minutes. Besides going door-to-door, you can post them at grocery stores, coffee shops, or any store that will allow it. When it comes to leaving them at people’s homes, the most important thing to know is that if you do not pay for postage and drop them off manually, they cannot go in the mailbox. This is a law in the U.S., so if you are reading this from another country, you will have to look into your country’s laws. In terms of the actual hanger/flyer, you will want it to be simple yet giving enough information to the potential customer without being too cumbersome to read. Your name, logo, website, or phone number, a brief description (something no more than 1-2 sentences), and a discount code.

2) Friends and Family

When looking to make any purchases, often, we look to our friends and family for recommendations. It is especially the case when we are potentially looking at spending a couple of hundred dollars on a product or service. Who better to ask than those of your loved ones? Word of mouth is one of the best forms of marketing you can have. Why is it so great? It’s because it doesn’t cost you a single penny. Now you are probably thinking to yourself, “how can I guarantee that I will have this?” Simple. Focus on providing the best overall service to your customers. From the moment they call or email you to the moment your cleaner leaves their home to your follow-up with the customer. All of these play a massive role in benefitting you in the long run. If your friends and family can’t vouch for you, who can?

3) SEO

Once you have your website up and set with the perfect color scheme and fabulous images, you will need to go one step further. This next step is to get your site good quality traffic to come to it. If you think by just having a website that your potential customers will flock to it, you are sorely mistaken. It would be best if you prepared it for search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is what helps your site be found on search engines like Google. Having a website that is correctly set up for SEO is vital for your business’s success. How do you do this exactly?

We’ve made a post about SEO you can check out here.

This goes very, very deep and can become confusing for most, but this is essential for any business that wants to succeed. You don’t need to do this yourself as you can hire a marketing firm to do this for you, but that becomes very expensive. Also, ranking your keywords takes time, and we’re not talking hours or days, sometimes not even weeks but months at a time. We strongly suggest that any cleaning business looking to start marketing has some SEO strategy in place.

4) Facebook Ads

Oh, Facebook. Love it or hate it; it’s here to stay. As of this writing, ads on Facebook have changed forever. Apple has since introduced an update to their IOS platform that allows users whether or not they want to be tracked from app to app. This is major because, before this, Facebook was allowed to track whether you clicked something within it and rerouted to another page to gather any info on you, the user. Now, if you opt-out of the tracking, it will become harder for them to track you once you leave Facebook. So now that you are familiar with the most current policies regarding Facebook ads, you can make a better decision on how you would like to proceed. Suppose you are just starting and have a tiny budget or even a decent-sized budget. In that case, we recommend staying away from these ads as they can quickly drain that budget with no revenue to show for it. There are far more excellent places to spend your time and money when starting. If you have been in business for a while and have a large budget to spend, then you can try your hand at these ads. Learning it yourself will take tons of time and patience, while hiring someone will cost even more on top of your budget for the ads themselves.

5) Yelp

Yelp has become the go-to place for businesses to create a profile and hold reviews. This platform became famous for becoming one of the very early adopters of collecting consumer reviews. For that reason, it has blossomed into a giant. Creating and holding a profile on Yelp is free and should be done at your early stages of business. You will want to make your profile look as professional as possible. The more information you provide for potential customers, the better. Having your website, hours of operation, phone number, “About the Owner” description, and the services offered should be the bare minimum. Adding in directions, a Yelp-specific deal, and a few photos will take this a step further in gaining the customer’s trust.

Once you have a great-looking profile, you will want to focus on getting those reviews. The best approach is to reach out to clients after the cleaning as a standard follow-up to see how the service went. If they were satisfied, politely ask them if they wouldn’t mind leaving a review. Make sure to respond to all reviews, whether they are a disgruntled 1-star or a fantastic 5-star review. If they are negative, keep your responses as professional as possible and never talk badly to the customer no matter the circumstances. If the issue was you, your cleaner, or neither, keeping a calm, cool head will go a long way to show how professional your business is. Anyone reading your responses may look at how you respond more so than what the issue initially was.

6) Yelp Ads

Once you have created your profile and set it up entirely, you will want to start gaining reviews from your current customers before spending any money on ads. Yelp representatives will surely be calling within the first few days to help you get started. As their intentions may be to help novices, they ultimately try to get you to spend money on ads. The worst thing you want to do is start spending money on ads without having a single review on your page. It will show potential customers that you are a new business and that they may be the first to try you out. You will be tossing money away because when it comes to trying a new service or product without reviews, nobody wants to be the guinea pig. Once you have about 10-15 well-received reviews is a safe place to start trying their ads. If you are in a competitive market, the cost of the ads will be higher, and your chances of landing a customer may be less. Also, there may be areas where Yelp is not as prevalent as another review site like Google or Facebook, so start small and test.

7) Craigslist

Craigslist has been around since 1995, and since it came out, there have been little to no changes in its appearance. But that has not stopped it from being one of the most popular places to find jobs, sell items or even market your service business. You may have already used Craigslist to find your cleaners, and if you haven’t, then you can use it for both! Creating a post will only set you back $5. It is very straightforward and does not take much time. If you want to make a nice-looking post, then we suggest using Canva to create an image to upload instead of using the standard text box. The customers who are usually found on Craigslist are looking for a bargain, so if you want to have clients fast, you will need to offer up some deals. If you are just starting out and in one area, this is one of the cheapest methods of marketing you can use, and we highly suggest it. Once you start to have recurring clients and revenue, you will want to shy away from using this. The other methods are better alternatives for the cost and quality of the clients.

8) Social Media

We are living in the golden age of social media and all its glory. So when it comes to running a business, creating a profile on every major social media platform is necessary. Even if you don’t plan to use every one of them, you will still want to hold the profile with your business name. There are a few reasons for this: you do not want to end up having someone else take it and end up posting negative things to ruin your brands’ image; also, even if you don’t have a plan to use it now, you may want to in the future. By then, it may be too late as someone else could have picked it up and now wants you to pay to have it.

With all these mediums comes a great deal of learning, which takes up so much precious time. Taking the time to create and set up these profiles is something that, at the very least, you must do. Now, when it comes to posting, this is something that you have to decide how you want to go about. The more frequent and engaging you are on all platforms, the more popular you will become. Suppose you don’t have the time or energy to focus on this. In that case, you can outsource it to either a third-party company or hire a social media manager. Fiverr is a great place to look for someone inexpensive if you are on a tight budget. We absolutely recommend having all your profiles created and set up and trying to get something posted each at least once a week. At the very minimum, anyone who lands on any of these pages will see something relatively recent and know you are still operational.

9) Email 

Email, the original way to get in front of a customer since the internet became popular. Some may think this is an outdated and obsolete way to reach customers, but that is simply untrue! Email remains one of the best ways to market your business to customers. Why? It’s because it is one of the cheapest ways to get in front of a customer’s face and the most targeted. Collecting emails should be one of your top priorities when it comes to having a marketing strategy. To set up a way to collect emails, all you need to do is have an email capture somewhere on your website, preferably the home page footer. Having a place where customers can subscribe to a newsletter or tips and tricks to clean their home is a great way to promote yourself. You may be asking, “why would I send out tips for a customer to clean their own home?” It will show the customer that you are knowledgeable in your area of expertise, and let’s face it, not everyone will have a weekly cleaning. Once you have the email capture set up, you will want to create a drip campaign of emails sent out automatically. You don’t want to bombard the customer with too many emails so having one a week is a great sweet spot. You can tailor the emails to the time of year with Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals or a deep spring cleaning. Adding in coupons or discount codes will make your emails even sweeter.

Another tip is to make sure the “Unsubscribe” button is visible and easy to find and make it hassle-free to go through this process. Nothing makes a customer angrier than when they want to stop receiving your emails, and the process is ridiculously long. It will leave a bad taste in their mouths and will hurt your reputation.

Our software, BookingKoala, has a campaigns feature that allows you to do all of this and more without the need for a third-party email marketing company. This will save you time, money, and headaches because you won’t need to learn and deal with another new software to get things done. Email is another route that we strongly encourage for an intelligent marketing plan.

10) Direct Mail

The first documented use of an organized courier of written documents dates back to 2400 BCE in ancient Egypt, used by Pharaohs to get written messages back and forth to one another. Until this day, we have been continuing this just with faster means of transporting the message. Direct mail seems that it will never go away; it just keeps evolving. However, this technique appears to be overlooked when it comes to service businesses and sending a postcard or mailers. Why? Well, because we have gone fully digital. Think about it, the only mail we enjoy receiving is birthday or holiday cards from family members, that’s it. Anything else that isn’t from a governmental agency is considered junk mail and thrown away after a quick two-second glance. So why do some cleaning services still choose this method? Well, it’s the perfect opportunity for business owners to connect with their clients on a deeper level. While some businesses decide to either skip sending an email or send out a basic thank you, you can use this to your advantage.

11) Blog

Your blog should be your best friend, even if you are the worst writer in the world. There are plenty of services that can help you with your writing, spelling, grammar, etc., or there are others that you can just hire to write the content for you, depending on the length. While you are thinking about which route to take, you will need to know why your blog is your best friend. Well, first of all, your blog will help you with your SEO strategy. The more written content you have per post, the more the search engines like Google value this. This is so that the reader stays on your page longer and doesn’t bounce off after a few seconds. Lengthy, well-written content that keeps a reader engaged from start to finish and teaches them something new is what you need to strive to achieve.

So now you see that blogs and SEO tie into each other, but how about blogs and emails? They’re a fantastic pair as well! Once you have this superb masterpiece all typed up and posted on your blog, you can send out a one-time email to your whole list of email subscribers. You will put the intro paragraph to the article in the email body and a link to direct them to finish reading on your actual blog. Just a tidbit of additional knowledge, every plan that we offer can add your own blog with SEO-ready capabilities!

As you can see, having a blog is an absolute must. It helps your business in so many ways that avoiding it will hurt more than one aspect of your marketing strategy.

12) Reviews

Reviews are like the golden eggs for all businesses. They are what make or break a business of any kind. From the moment you start your business, you will want to begin gaining as many positive reviews as possible. Before you or your cleaner are done working with a client, make sure to drop hints about how the service went. Plant the subliminal seeds ahead of time to make asking for reviews later easier. There may be a time or two when a customer will leave a negative review, and there are ways to make this right. First, you still want to respond to these negative reviews professionally. Next, establish what the issue is and how you can help the customer to fix the problem. There are three fundamental steps to remember about the best ways of gaining positive reviews.

There doesn’t need to be any overthinking with this. You will figure out fairly quickly which customers you should avoid asking and which customers will be more than happy to do this. Once you narrow down these people, the other two steps are simple! Places to get reviews: Facebook, Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, Thumbtack, Home Advisor.

When using our software, we highly suggest you taking advantage of our review feature. It’s a feature that you should be using to gain more exposure for your cleaning company. It allows you to collect reviews internally from your customers after the service has been completed. This will go towards the provider who conducted the service. Their overall score can help you determine how well they are doing as well. At the same time, you can also connect third-party review links to sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook, and others. Once they leave the internal review, they can click the link to take them to the correct location to paste the review.

13) Networking

Network marketing is marketing in which you rely and depend on your network of connections. This can be your professional or social network and can frequently be intertwined. You can have a good friend that is also within your professional network. At the same time, you can meet someone in a professional setting and become close friends as time goes on. An excellent example of a network for a cleaning service would be with real estate agents. Agents are constantly working with clients who, when the time is right, will need cleaning done. Whether it is before putting their house on the market and taking pictures or after the new homeowners made the purchase and are about to move in, cleanings are usually necessary. On the flip side, you can also refer your customers to realtors. You may have a client who requests a cleaning as they are preparing to get the house ready for the market but yet to find a realtor. If you know this, you can recommend any of the agents that are in your network. This is a great strategy to use as it does not cost anything. You can work on expanding your network while going to specific network events or simply talking to new people on the weekends, virtually anywhere.

14) Referrals

Referrals are like networking, but the difference is you don’t necessarily have to know the person who you are referring. The most common referrals are friends and family members. Still, with the digital age and new software created, it has expanded into leaving referral links on the internet or emails.

Our software has this same feature built-in for cleaning service customers to share their unique URL link with friends, family, or wherever they decide to post it. Familiar places that people leave referral links are within Facebook groups, Facebook comments, Reddit threads, emails, and more. Once the customer leaves their link, and another user clicks on it, that new user has now been “cookied” by their browser, meaning if they leave the page and come back within X amount of days, the system will remember where this new lead came from and payout the proper person.

That last part seems to confuse people still, so we’ll break it down some more.

Jack is your paying customer for the previous three years and has signed up for your referral program to earn credits toward your business by referring others. So Jack goes on Facebook and leaves his unique link in a group meant for fathers in Chicago, letting them know about your superb service. Now, Adam happens to be scrolling along and sees this link, so he clicks it because his parents are coming in to visit from Miami. Adam lands on your website and likes what he sees, so he decides to schedule your service. Now that Adam has clicked Jack’s link and completed a purchase, Jack will be rewarded with whatever amount of credits you choose to give per referral sign-up.

Referrals are a fantastic way to market your business, especially when using an automated system as we have built into our software. There is no manual work done as everything is completely automatic and tracked, even the credit disbursements. We highly recommend this to any cleaning service business.

15) Yard Signs

Most people think of yard signs as a way to promote upcoming political elections. Still, realistically they can be used for promoting any business, especially home service businesses. Whether it is roofing, fencing, landscaping, or home cleaning, a yard sign can bring more eyes to your business than you would think. Imagine you are at a neighbors house for a cookout. During the conversation, you learned about their kitchen or bathroom remodel. The thing is, you hadn’t seen any signs posted, and because their driveway goes all the way to the back of the house, you never saw a construction van neither so without them telling you, you would have no clue that anything was done. If a yard sign were posted in front, you would see that a few times a day when taking out the trash, leaving for work or school, or any other times. While yard signs are an acceptable way to get more local eyes on your business, it’s hard to scale and doesn’t guarantee someone will see it. Also, due to weather conditions, the sign might not last long during a thunderstorm or snowstorm.

16) Party

What is the best way to get a bunch of people together? Throw a party! Everyone loves a good party, especially when there is free food and drinks. Parties don’t have to only be for nighttime. You can schedule a party for a weekend during the day or afternoon when customers are off work. Parties are an excellent way for you as a business owner to interact with current customers and get to know new potential clients. If you have an office space for your daily management team, you can use this to host the gathering and show off your business. The main focus is to help the customers feel like family and that they can trust you. Suppose your main goal is to throw a party and have a great time without actually showcasing your business. In that case, this will turn into a ruined opportunity quickly. We think a party can be an excellent way to change things up when business seems to have slowed, but this should not be a priority or even something that you rely on. Having an annual party can be the right amount because you have time to build up your list and have set up a date to send out your invites.

17) Leave-behinds 

What is a leave-behind? A leave-behind is something small like a trinket that is left once the service is done. Think chocolates on your pillow after room service cleans your hotel room. Leave-behinds can be anything small that the customer will use and won’t break your bank when you order hundreds or even thousands of them.

What you want to make sure, though, is that you are not leaving just a blank item without branding. You want to order these with your brand on them with at least your name and logo. You don’t have to go crazy and leave a website, phone number, and email either cause it can get too crowded and look too pushy. If you are just starting and don’t have a large budget, choosing specific clients to give these to will be your best bet, like first-time cleans. This will make a great first impression as well as save you from breaking the bank. Overall, leave-behinds will have your customers feeling a personal touch when working with you and not a killer if you skip out on these.

18) Google Adwords

Google AdWords is just like Facebook ads but instead will appear at the top or bottom of a search result. When searching for a specific keyword like “Cleaning services near me,” you will see the ads at the top with the word “Ad” in which companies pay to be there. Under those are all the naturally ranked pages in which users don’t pay for the spot. Adwords is not something for someone who is just starting and doesn’t have a good-sized budget. Adwords can be difficult to set up. Getting any help or guidance from Google is just you referring to their help center articles. Even if you are tech-savvy but don’t have the money for Adwords, we highly suggest you wait off on this until you have an excellent recurring customer and revenue base. Adwords doesn’t guarantee a customer will book with you, and the moment a potential lead clicks on your link, you are charged for it. Overall, we recommend using Adwords once you have steady recurring customers and are still growing through other marketing channels.

19) Promo Video

Promo videos are on the rise, and they can be a fantastic way to showcase your business in a quick 60-second clip. Now, if you know your way around a computer, putting together a promo video is not as difficult as it sounds. There is software created to make this step that much more straightforward. They have pre-recorded clips that can be used for various businesses. All you would need is to add some background music and your brand information to make it personal. Suppose you don’t want to have the same cookie-cutter video that many other businesses have. In that case, you can outsource this to someone to create something original. The video will cost more, but at the same time, you will end up having something unique that other businesses don’t have. We recommend using Fiverr to find someone that can help with these services as there are dozens from all around the world with all levels of experience and price points. The great part of all is that you don’t need to keep paying for it once this video is made. You can publish it on all your social media channels and run a small budget for an ad campaign.

20) Local Newspapers

Your local newspaper has been around for decades, and there are still some people who like to use it. Those are primarily people who are not internet savvy but are still looking for new businesses. Why would you want to exclude these people, especially when the cost of leaving an ad has dropped drastically over the years. With less and less competition fighting for physical ad space and with businesses going all-digital, this can be a hidden gem depending on your area. All you would need to do is find out where to call to set up the ad and then give them the information. If you wish to add a logo or an image, I’m sure those can be emailed to the correct person quickly. Again, this is not a method we believe you should have your business live or die by, but if you are just starting and want to have various marketing methods, then go ahead and place that ad! If months have gone by and not a single call has come in, then you can go ahead and stop cause you will be throwing money away at this point.

21) Nextdoor

Nextdoor is a social media platform that is used to connect people in your neighborhood. According to Nextdoor,

“Neighbors turn to Nextdoor daily to receive trusted information, give and get help, and build real-world connections with those nearby — neighbors, local businesses, and public agencies. Building connections in the real world is a universal human need. That truth, and the reality that neighborhoods are among the most important communities in our lives, have been guiding principles for Nextdoor since the beginning.”

Think of Facebook but for meeting new neighbors and searching for services. This is a great tool to add to your arsenal of marketing as it is still in its early stages and can become quite the underdog.

22) Thumbtack

What is Thumbtack? Thumbtack is a marketplace for service businesses to connect with customers looking for someone to complete a job if you haven’t heard of it. Thumbtack works because service providers offer their services on the platform (the list of services is long, including cleaning and house repairs). Customers post jobs, choose from bids by service providers, and contract the most suitable business for their needs. If you are just starting and have a small budget, you may want to wait a bit to start using this service as it costs per lead even if they don’t end up going with your company. If you send a quote for a job to the customer, but they don’t end up opening it, then you are refunded the cost for that lead.

Suppose you’ve made it this far, and we genuinely hope you have. In that case, we understand this is a lot of information to process, primarily if you are a beginner. So as you can see, there are numerous ways to market your cleaning business with new ideas coming up all the time. From in-person to digital to even traditional snail mail, you can have your pick. You need to always remember that depending on the area that you live in, the stage in which your business is at, your budget, and the type of marketing strategy you use will significantly affect how quickly your cleaning business will grow.

The term “work smarter, not harder” comes into play when developing your business’s marketing plan so take your time. Just because you see one company doing something doesn’t mean it will work for you. You have no idea what they are budgeting or how in-depth they are using their resources. If you try to copy someone else, you can find yourself shutting the doors on your business faster than you opened them.

We genuinely hope this has cleared up some questions you may have had about different types of marketing for your cleaning business and that you are now pointed in the right direction. If you still need more guidance, we encourage you to read over our blog or check out our YouTube channel for more helpful information. The service industry is an ever-growing industry that always has opportunities for money to be made. Suppose you’re reading this and not a fan of residential, commercial, or carpet cleaning. In that case, a different small business idea like a mobile car wash or lawn care business.