Leads, leads, and more leads (specifically house cleaning leads for your business). Everyone is talking and writing about them, but have you actually taken the time to see why they are so important?
Leads are everything for a business that wants to be successful. After all, they are the so desired clients you are looking for your house cleaning company.
If you don’t invest time and effort in generating more, it will be impossible for you to earn your place in the niche, generate more sales, and close deals with residential or even commercial clients trying to look and hire services like yours.
Now that we have piqued your interest and briefly understand your need for leads, how can you generate more house cleaning leads? Today, we will share some strategies and steps you should follow to make it possible.
Make Sure to Build Your Website
Many customers search the internet for cleaning services. This makes it crucial to have an online presence for your business and ensure you have a site where you can receive your potential leads and future clients.
Many house cleaning companies seem to forget how crucial it is to have a website of their own and not just rely on social media and other platforms. Now that this is clear, what must it have?
Your website for cleaning businesses should include information about your business, what services you offer, and the price ranges of your work. To highlight your work, you can include customer testimonials or reviews.
Online marketing strategies are a great way to get the best out of your website and increase your cleaning contract chances.
This will increase your website’s visibility and allow more customers to search for your business online.
Take your time building it instead of hurrying the process. Also, make sure you are aiming for a simple yet modern and easy-to-understand site that anyone can find pleasant and comfortable to use and navigate in.
Your Website Must Be Conversion Focused
Your house cleaning website is the center of your lead-generation efforts for cleaning services. It is your brochure, business card, service description, and salesperson all in one.
It helps customers understand the value of your service and gives them a reason to choose you over your competitors, which is why we suggested the previous option. However, we must focus on several parts of it individually.
Since it encourages visitors to contact you and become a lead, a strong call to action should be highlighted with contact information. Make sure you are clear about what your services and your service area are.
An open design with a clean layout and strong use of white space will give the right impression of your business.
After you’re done, run some usability tests. Compare your website with the competition. Does your website clearly communicate the value of what you offer? Would anyone choose to work with you?
Don’t Forget About Your Reputation
Searching for cleaning services in major cities will reveal something that is clear: reviews are a major factor in how content is ranked and how you can obtain more clients.
Google My Business listings have star reviews for cleaning services in specific cities or locations, for example. Yelp reviews and Home Advisor are the top organic results you will find when searching for them.
Reviews play an important role in choosing services such as home cleaning, and since review content can impact search rankings and help them find the most trustworthy services, you must manage it to guarantee you’re not missing this chance.
Therefore, you must make an effort to get your clients to leave reviews.
Asking is the best way to begin. Ask the business or homeowner to leave a review after a service call, but not to the point of being pushy.
Create an Email List
Email marketing isn’t dead. It won’t die as long as people continue to open their emails almost every day or rely on it to receive some information, even when they are just using it unconsciously and on their phones.
Everybody opens their emails daily, from large commercial clients to homeowners. You just need to make your email valuable enough to be able to sneak into their inbox.
You can offer them a discount, a free ebook, or an infographic in exchange for their email address.
This will give you value, and you’ll get something in return – a list of email addresses that you can send regular updates to.
Where can you offer those exchanges? On your website and different platforms.
You Can Rely on Paid Advertising
Nowadays, paid advertising is a major part of the digital world.
Many websites charge for mentions and media outlets that publish press releases, and it is all because paid advertising has had great success over the last few years and brings many clients every month.
Cleaning businesses are eager to even pay per lead and show them what they got. However, you must be careful about how to pay for the advertising, not leads in specific.
That being said, paid advertising is now easier and more targeted than ever.
For example, if you want to advertise on Google, you only need to focus on specific local keywords, and there is software that can assist with this.
However, advertising on Facebook can be accomplished by filtering various interests and demographics to find the right customer.
You can also consider the paid options by search engines themselves or rely on someone to handle the process.
Lead Magnet Is the Same as More Leads
Don’t understand how this works or what it is about? The quote form you implement on your website could be one version, but not everyone who visits your cleaning business website will be ready to get one.
Offer something valuable to someone interested in cleaning if you want to increase your house cleaning leads.
You might make a guide listing the best cleaning products that every homeowner should have or just provide value by offering another type of free content that is actually useful.
If you are interested in the list idea, it could include the top cleaning products for common household cleaning tasks.
Videos or additional information about the best cleaning techniques for each product could be included.
It’s possible that someone would value a clean house if they wanted to learn about the best cleaning products, and when they sign to get it, you will have their information so you can continue to market to them in the near future.
They might still be interested in your services if the timing is not right. Once you have a lead, it’s your responsibility to keep them coming back for more.
Your content should position your cleaning company as the best choice for them to hire and show that your service is better than any of your competitors.
Blogging Is Often Underestimated
Once you have your lead magnet, you will need quality content to nurture the leads from house cleaning and attract new customers to your cleaning business website.
This is where blogging comes in.
A blog can be added to your cleaning company’s website. It will allow you to create content that addresses your ideal client’s needs, answer their questions, and educate them about the benefits of cleaning services.
There are many benefits to blogging for cleaning businesses. It allows you to educate and sell to your customers without being pushy or sending a message that says, “buy or hire now.”
People are drawn to buying but hate being sold to. This is a crucial concept to remember when creating blog content.
You can promote your cleaning business in your content, but it must be subtle.
If you write your content and just add your services at the end of the post, you are more likely to have new leads and deals compared to when you just offer your services in every paragraph.
If you’re having a hard time with blogging or want some help, this is what we can tell you to do:
- Use blogging with Facebook advertising.
You will place a Facebook pixel in your blog posts. When someone visits that page and that pixel will track them.
You have two options: you can retarget site visitors with ads or start collecting data to create a lookalike audience from those who visited the blog posts.
This can be used to segment your market by creating value-based blog posts on your website.
Most likely, someone who visits your blog posts is interested in what you have to say. If you posted about cleaning tips to keep your home clean, someone who views the post is likely interested in cleaning services.
They wouldn’t read the blog post if they didn’t feel interested in it.
You should target your Facebook pixel when creating a lookalike audience from people who have visited your blog posts. This will allow you to get more quality traffic, leads, and even cleaner clients at a lower price and higher conversion rate with your blogs and Facebook.
- Choosing your blog topics.
While you might think that blogging is a great marketing strategy to market a cleaning company, you may still wonder what topic you should blog about. This is a great question, and you have many resources to answer it.
Keyword research is one resource that you should consider. Although this may seem complicated, there are many ways to conduct keyword research for your blog. T
Some extensions can show you how many searches a particular term receives each month and help you determine what kind of content your target audience is looking for online.
It is important to create content, but it is not enough if no one is actually looking for it.
To find the right content for you, you can use the keywords you see and have some ideas from other blogs or websites.
Just type in an idea for a post that you think could help your target market answer a question or provide better results. For an example, see the image below.
Scrolling down to the bottom of Google’s page will give you suggestions for search terms and topics that people are searching for. These questions can be answered, and blog posts created on them will help you get cleaning clients.
Google My Business Helps to Find Services
You aren’t interested in finding them but rather how to use Google My Business to help your leads find you.
A Google My Business Page optimized for cleaning businesses is a great way to attract targeted local traffic and close more deals considering that your company focuses on areas where the services can reach.
Many cleaning business owners don’t have a Google My Business Page or don’t optimize it properly. If you aren’t already using one, you better start now.
It is important because it can help your cleaning business appear in Google Maps and place you on the top 3 results whenever someone searches for house cleaning services near you.
But it’s not enough to just show up. Your page must be optimized and have positive reviews that make it stand out.
We have already discussed the uses and benefits of reviews, so we will just say that your chances of getting a call from someone increases if your cleaning business is ranked high on Google Maps and has many positive reviews.
Popup Quote Form: Best Idea Ever
A quote page is one of the best ways to generate more leads for your house cleaning business. Although this is obvious, there is an effective way to make people who aren’t even ready for it to use it: a popup that offers a call-to-action to get a free quote.
Along with the free quote popup, you could offer a discount or other special incentives. This is because most people who visit your website for the first time may not be aware of your unique advantage over your competitors.
If you offer any kind of discount or incentive, make sure it lasts so people can consider you and decide they won’t regret it. Also, ensure the incentive is connected in the long-term to one of your services. You might offer a 6-month free service that includes a house clean.
Freebies could include a room for carpet cleaning, fridge cleaning, or oven cleaning. Remember that even if you give something away for free or offer a discounted price, it still has to be profitable.
You should not offer anything too time-consuming or difficult to use. To avoid losing money to generate more leads for house cleaning, you may have to set limitations.
Connect with Other Companies
Another avenue to find new customers is networking with businesses other than your direct competitors in the cleaning industry.
If you own a house cleaning business, it is good to get to know the local window washers.
Small businesses will often recommend service providers they know, and you could return the favor by referring them back to your clients.
Participating in local events is a great way to make connections with your community.
To give back to your community and generate positive publicity, you can offer your cleaning services for free to a charity or nonprofit organization
Get insurance for your cleaning business.
Your cleaning company will need to have insurance to be signed up by large commercial clients looking for house cleaning (no, you won’t aim for homeowners only). However, having insurance also shows that you are serious and trustworthy.
Cleaning companies can be shut down by lawsuits, accidents, or unhappy customers. Cleaning businesses often purchase the following policies:
- General liability insurance: Cleaning companies need general liability insurance since you are responsible for any damages caused by clients who slip on wet floors or if you cause damage to client property while working.
- Janitorial bonds: You can get coverage if you or an employee is accused of theft or if you lose a client’s property.
- Workers’ compensation insurance: Your cleaning company should hire its first employee as soon as possible. This insurance will cover the medical costs of injured employees and reimburse them for their lost wages.
Provide outstanding service during the bidding process
Although your pricing and length of the contract might cause you to lose cleaning contracts, poor customer service should not be a reason for you losing business. If you are able to offer great ones, leads will come thanks to the combination of results, referrals, and reviews.
This is an important aspect to consider when you are trying to obtain cleaning contracts.
Communication and details are crucial in the initial stages when bidding for a cleaning job. Take a tour of the property with your potential client to discuss the work needed.
To ensure that your prospect is fully informed about the cost of work, prepare a detailed estimate.
After you have given a quote or submitted a bid for cleaning services, make sure to follow up.
Find out why a potential client chooses to work with another company. This insight can help you improve and secure future cleaning contracts.
Establish a referral program
Customers who are satisfied can lead to new cleaning contracts. Ask your top clients to refer their friends.
Cleaning companies often offer discounts to clients who refer others, but you can create a referral program in any way that suits your business model.
Prospects that have been referred are more likely to trust your services and have better customer retention.
According to a study done at Wharton, referred prospects have a 16 to 25% higher lifetime value than clients who found your company using a different outlet.
Offer value-added content for free
You can share valuable, free content on your company’s blog or social media, such as Facebook and Instagram.
It’s true that if you try to sell your customers something every time you approach them, it will be difficult to establish a genuine relationship with them.
You can help your clients (and potential clients) by sharing practical tips, information, and advice with them.
They will be able to see the value that you provide and ask if they are willing to pay for it.
We said customers must have at least 6-7 contact points with your company before they are willing to open their wallets.
These touch-points can be made possible by sharing great tips and how-tos for cleaning your home, as well as valuable safety and health information.
This free, non-exclusive content is completely unaltered, and you can keep your clients (potential or current) in the loop.
When you are remembered and asked for a referral for a cleaning company, guess who they will refer?
It doesn’t matter if you write a novel or don’t know how to get this done. All that is required is a brief explanation or detailed description of the topic. Include photos that you have taken (and permission to use) if you have them.
You could also create a video with your phone (great for sharing cleaning tips and hacks)
Be human and share what makes you different
Differentiating yourself in a competitive market is crucial. Customers want to know what you can do that is different from other cleaning companies.
Assess your competitors – What do they do that is unique in terms of their messaging and actions? You can listen to the opinions of your market by using social media, reviews online, and word-of-mouth to find out more about your competitors’ services.
What are the market’s needs? It might mean a greater focus on green cleaning products and flexible cleaning times (evenings and weekends), etc.
Your marketing can help you communicate to your customers clearly how you are different.
If you don’t know how to communicate, just send out newsletters, blog posts, or blogs that offer cleaning tips.
This will allow you to be recognized as an expert in your field and introduce your team (bios and videos are great). Customers will know who to trust.
You will notice that this option, the previous one, and the lead magnet look almost the same, but some differences apply based on the final goal or purpose of the strategy.
Therefore, it is alright if you decide to rely on all of them and include them in your plan to guarantee the best outcome.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your House Cleaning Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My House Cleaning Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic House Cleaning Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.