How to Use Social Proof as the Ultimate Maid Service Marketing Tool

The concept of social proof has been around since way before marketers were capitalizing on it. It is deep-rooted in human behavior and has been part of marketing and sales since the beginning. 

But more recently, it’s become a go-to resource for getting more leads and sales. When used correctly, social proof will grow your business and boost your reputation – both online and in your community. 

What is Social Proof?

Social proof is any statement given by your customers that lets other people know about their experience using your service. This includes things like your online reviews, testimonials, word-of-mouth, and user-generated content by your customers after you’ve added them to your favorite maid service CRM and left them a clean, sparkling home.

At its core, social proof provides potential customers with validation that they are making a good choice by working with you. 

When people react positively to something, it encourages onlookers to follow in their footsteps. 

Social proof has been around for ages in the form of word of mouth and verbal recommendations. But now, with the internet at our disposal, social proof is worth so much more and is so much more easily accessible to people looking for it. 

Customers are so bombarded with marketing and advertising in their day-to-day lives that one of the only ways to cut through that noise and to stand out is to let your existing customers do the talking for you. 

Customer reviews are 12 times more powerful than marketing assets. And, 90% of customers trust reviews more than the company’s marketing. 

There are likely dozens if not hundreds of cleaning businesses that you’re competing with in your area. It’s safe to assume that many of those cleaning businesses are doing some of the same marketing strategies that you are. 

But what does your maid service have that your competitors don’t? Your existing customers. 

Your customers can be your biggest advocates and significantly impact your marketing strategy if you know how to ask. 

How do you harness social proof? 

So now that you understand how valuable it is to have customers speak up on behalf of your cleaning business, what are the best ways to make it happen? 

Aside from actually providing them with an experience worth remembering, you need to create opportunities for them to leave reviews. Often, this comes down to your company culture, providing a good service, and knowing how to treat your customers. 

If you have a great culture and excellent customer experience, you’re halfway there. 

Let’s go over some of the more tangible ways to get social proof from your existing customers. 

Share your reviews on multiple platforms for maximum visibility 

Once you have good reviews on sites like Yelp or on your Google My Business listing, use those reviews to show potential customers what they’re missing. 

Sharing your reviews on your social media platforms and in communications with your potential customers cuts down on the time it will take them to see the reviews, and it will give them a positive impression of your brand. 

It’s also a more active approach to marketing to new customers because you’re not waiting for them to search for your reviews, you’re putting that information directly in front of them, and you’re controlling the message. 

Identify your most valuable marketing and social media platforms and start incorporating your reviews and testimonials into the content you post on those platforms. 

Here’s an example of how GMaids repurposes their Google reviews into branded Instagram posts. This is a great strategy to keep your social media calendar full and reinforce to your followers that customers love you. 

Make it easy for customers to leave reviews 

With most businesses, maid services included, the customers that go out of their way to leave a review are the ones who had a not-so-great experience. 

This is why it’s crucial to make it as easy as possible for your happy customers to leave good reviews. If you don’t have a process to ask satisfied customers to leave reviews, your ratings might suffer. 

After every cleaning, choose one or two ways to ask your customers for testimonials and provide them with direct links to the site you want them to leave the review on. 

It’s okay to be transparent and honest about how valuable it is for you when they leave reviews. Satisfied customers will understand this, and will want to do what they can to support your business. 

If you don’t want to do this process manually, you can use a tool like NiceJob to automate this process for you. NiceJob communicates with your customers and creates a clear path to the review sites, making it as easy and streamlined as possible for your customers to leave reviews. 

Add reviews to your website

In addition to adding your reviews to your social media and marketing campaigns, make sure you have your most recent reviews on your website. 

Enjoy Life Cleaning Services does a great job of highlighting their reviews on their website while also letting customers know what review sites they’re on and their ratings on each site. 

If you see a customer leaving a particularly glowing review on Google or Yelp, it’s okay to reach out to them and ask them if they are willing to expand on their review. 

Let them know that you would like to feature them on your website and how much you value their support as a customer. Sometimes, they may be willing to write more or create a video testimonial. 

When adding reviews to your website, make sure you’re highlighting the most recent reviews. 

Relevance is super important when it comes to social proof. You want people to see that someone used your service in the last couple of days. 

Old reviews don’t mean anything, but the ones from a week ago are more powerful because it shows that you are still doing a great job NOW. 

Share user-generated content 

Sometimes, people might not leave reviews on specific review sites, but they will share their experiences on their own platforms. 

This type of user-generated content is extremely valuable. Make sure you’re actively monitoring your social mentions and resharing content that other people are creating about your brand. 

Customers might write a Tweet or share either experience in an Instagram post. When you see this happening, reshare this content onto your page and thank the customers for sharing their stories. 

This type of social proof can be even more valuable than reviews or testimonials because they come directly from their customers themselves on their own account. 

Start using customers reviews and testimonials in your marketing campaigns

Social proof makes great advertising and marketing copy. If you’re creating ads on Facebook or Instagram, don’t be afraid to include screenshots of reviews or testimonials in your ads. 

If you have email sequences as part of your sales funnel, throw in some testimonials in your emails to further solidify your value to potential new customers. 

You can even include testimonials on your sales and landing pages. When you have customers sharing their experiences with your maid service, that is one of the highest forms of marketing leverage you have. 

Dazzle Cleaning uses this strategy by adding a video testimonial directly to their booking page. This gives uncertain customers some extra incentive to book right on the spot and reinforces that they’re making a great choice. 

Positive social proof from happy customers makes for some of the most dynamic and valuable marketing assets you’ll have. 

Use social proof to hire the best talent 

Lastly, you can use social proof to attract top talent for your cleaning business. When potential employees see that people love working with you and have great experiences with your business, it tells them that it’s also a great place to work. 

Candidates want to feel good about the company they are applying for, so having social proof on places like your job posts or website can help make your cleaning business more attractive for job seekers. 

Use a tool to automate the process

You can create your own manual process managing your reviews and collecting social proof. But if that seems tedious, using a tool like NiceJob can help. 

NiceJob easily integrates into your review platforms, social media apps, and other marketing platforms to seamlessly collect reviews and show you the best ways to disperse them throughout your marketing channels. 

You can tell the tool to automatically share positive reviews across your social media accounts and even customize the messaging and what the posts look like. This way, your followers can see a steady stream of nice things about your brand, and you don’t have to spend your time combing through your reviews, choosing the best ones. 

Final Thoughts 

Social proof is quickly becoming the go-to resource for getting more leads and sales for your maid service. Letting your happy customers speak for you can build trust among your audience and attract new customers authentically and organically. 

To learn more about how to harness the power of social proof for your business so you can grow and scale quicker, check out Shawn’s full presentation from the 2020 Maid Summit.

About the presenter

Shawn Hill is the Community Marketing Manager for NiceJob Inc. and specializes in maid service marketing, eg. building engagement and customer interaction. In this post, we’ll cover his tips for getting more leveraging social proof and customer reviews to grow your cleaning business. 

This talk first aired at the 2020 Maid Service Success Summit.

The Maid Summit is an annual online event that brings together the most successful leaders in the cleaning industry, like Debbie Sardone, Angela Brown, Courtney Wisely, Amy Caris, Chris Schwab and more. Get free access to masterclasses and workshops that will help you to grow, scale and automate your cleaning business so you can get more leads and create more profit. Make sure you’re on our email list to find out how to get free tickets to the next event.