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A recent ZenMaid customer asked how to increase his cleaning leads to secure more cleaning jobs. Maria Dorian, who exited her business after filling the schedules of 20+ cleaners, gave her 5 top tips to market your maid service.
1. Direct Mail / Flyers
Set up a strategic direct mail/flyer campaign in your target areas. By strategic, I mean, make sure you have a clear idea of what neighborhoods you want to target and what clientele in those neighborhoods you want to work with.
Once you have your target market in mind, craft a sales message and offer just for them.
Be specific in your message, imagining you are speaking directly to your target client. What is their biggest cleaning pain point that you can solve for them?
Be prepared to canvas these areas multiple times in a month. Remember, potential clients need multiple touch-points or contacts with your business before they will open their wallets to you.
For a step-by-step guide on how to set up an effective direct mail campaign, go here.
2. Cross Promotion / Collaboration
As a maid service, there are certain jobs in or around the home that we don’t do. For example, your cleaning business probably doesn’t offer gutter cleaning services or landscaping.
Reach out to other service providers in your area and offer to set up a referral or collaboration program.
This could be a paid referral program, where each of you earns a small referral ‘fee’ for any new clients you book off the recommendation. You will have to agree on what this fee would be and how and when it would be paid out.
But you may also want to consider a straight forward collaboration, with no referral fees involved. Simply just agree to refer any relevant business to them and they do the same.
You might be surprised at just how often another small business will be willing to recommend your cleaning business (even without a monetary incentive) and how quickly your lead pool (and your network) will grow!
3. Throw a party!
Consider throwing a party. (yes, seriously!)
Host an informal gathering like a BBQ, picnic at the local park or even rent out a small rec space for a few hours.
Invite your top 10 best customers and encourage them to bring a friend.
Use this as an opportunity to thank your loyal cleaning clients for their patronage. Along with a free lunch and chance to meet new people, ‘gift’ them and their friends with a special offer or coupon, just for them.
Keep the event social and for networking. Don’t go in hard on the sales or trying to sign up new leads.
This is a great way to show your cleaning clients your appreciation and keep your maid service top of mind for the next time they, or any of their neighbors, are asking for cleaning company recommendations.
4. SEO, SEO, SEO
Capitalize on free traffic by improving your SEO and increase your website ranking on Google.
SEO doesn’t need to be a super complicated or involved marketing tactic (although it can be!) if you follow some basic strategies.
If you are an SEO newbie, the best place to start is to add some target keywords to your website copy. For example: house cleaners in X city, best cleaning company in…, maid service in…
This will help your maid service website move up in the search results and get found by more people.
Keep SEO (your target keywords) in mind when you are creating any content for your website – this includes your blog (if you have one). Include the top cleaning keywords in your blog posts, how-to’s and general website copy.
But don’t just stuff all the keywords you can find into your copy making it sound unnatural (this will actually hurt your search ranking).
Strategically use the words throughout the text multiple times and ask someone else to read it to make sure it sounds like something a real human would say!
For more information on SEO and why it’s important for your maid service, watch this short video:
5. Local Facebook groups.
This is like free advertising!
If you aren’t already in local Facebook groups where your target cleaning clients are hanging out, you need to be.
Some examples of Facebook groups you may want to join are: Airbnb hosts/owners, property rental groups, buy and sell groups.
The easiest way to find out what groups are in your area is to search by different keywords in the search bar on Facebook. (ie. airbnb hosts in X city, buy/sell group in X city).
The key with marketing in Facebook groups is to not spam them with endless cleaning offers and pitches for your cleaning services. Check the group rules about self-promotion and offer helpful tips and advice (with no sales pitch) as often as you can.
Often you can only join groups with your personal profile. So make sure your profile is updated with your cleaning company name, a link to the website and it’s clear you are the owner.
Think of Facebook groups like going to a party, in-person. When you first meet someone, you wouldn’t say, ‘Hi. I own Cleaners R Us and we have a great special on right now.” (or if you would do that, we may need to talk!)
Engage with other members, leave helpful and kind comments on others’ posts, answer questions where you can.
For a step-by-step guide to using FB groups to get in front of Airbnb hosts, watch this training:
These are just some of the many ways you can market your maid service, generate more leads and increase your revenue.
Remember, much of marketing is a long-game. It’s about establishing trust and rapport and being strategic in the marketing tactics you use. If you find something isn’t working, evaluate it and ask why to see what you can improve on.
Give these a try and see how they work to get more cleaning clients for your maid service.
