How to Get Leads for Your Cleaning Business via Facebook

Between Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp, it’s easy to think that Facebook is no longer a useful tool for lead generation. At almost twenty years old, the platform is a geriatric by social media standards, but that’s no reason to underestimate its potential reach.

Maid service expert Ryan Leavitt gave a presentation at ZenMaid’s 2019 Maid Summit outlining how cleaning service owners can promote and run ads on Facebook that yield exceptional results.

We’ve unpacked the key learnings from Ryan’s presentation to help you get the most out of Facebook and generate those all-important leads for your cleaning business. Best of all, you’ll learn how to do it without being spammy. Let’s dive in.

In this article we touch on:

• How to use Facebook groups to build a custom audience
• What to post in Airbnb and property management Facebook groups
• How to use non-spammy posts to build your pool of relevant leads

Pro tip: Watch Ryan’s video after reading our post. Everything we talk about in this article is discussed in detail in Ryan’s presentation (you’ll find it at the end of the post).

Facebook is still one of the best lead generation platforms

There are so many ways that you can market your home cleaning business, but one of the most profitable ways is by using Facebook ads.

Everyone we know is on Facebook, including some of those people in our lives that said they never would. That’s why it is important for your cleaning service to be able to reach people on this particular social media platform.

To make use of this platform, you need to target your niche. Whether it is stay-at-home dads, young professionals, or people who simply don’t have the time to do a proper cleaning of their homes. Define your niche and then direct your ads to this particular subset of Facebook users.

Your targeted ads won’t go to a lot of people, but they will be directed specifically to those who represent your potential, and ideal, cleaning clients.

Make lead-generating Facebook ads for your cleaning business

When marketing your maid service, use videos, pictures, and easy to read information to entice potential cleaning clients.

Some great examples of video content that you can use are:

• Scans of rooms before and after a cleaning
• Clips of cleaning techniques that your cleaning business uses
• Quick videos of you talking straight into the camera about what you offer

Ryan explains in detail how to upload your content, video, and picture for your ad in his video.

Join the right Facebook groups to find your ideal clients

To reach your ideal customers on the platform, you’ll need to join relevant Facebook groups. Doing so allows you to collect user demographics data that can be applied to who sees your ads. For this reason, it’s critical to keep your potential cleaning client in mind when selecting which groups to join.

Join groups that are for specific areas of the field you want to target for your home cleaning services. For example, groups for Airbnb owners, project management, or young professionals.

When searching for groups to join, use specific city names and keywords like “Airbnb” or “Airbnb community”. Focusing your search will help you to find groups that are relevant to your niche.

Pro tip: If you’re not already familiar with Facebook groups, a great place to jump in is the ZenMaid Facebook group, where you can talk with owners and leaders in the cleaning service business and see what other cleaning companies are up to.

Create a post for your target Facebook group

Once you’ve joined a group, you can’t simply start posting ads for your cleaning services from the get-go — you’ll be kicked out. No one likes a spammy group member, and you’ll likely be in violation of the groups’ usage guidelines.

However, there is a process around this…

Create regular Facebook posts and share these with the groups you’ve joined. Think of it as top-of-funnel content marketing — sharing funny, insightful or valuable content with others — as a means of having people interact with your post, and gathering user data that can then be applied to custom audiences.

Here’s a basic rundown:

• Step 1: Find a video on YouTube that you think would get people talking or spark emotion, like one where an Airbnb home gets trashed or there is a big stain left behind by renters.
• Step 2: Create a post with a comment saying something simple like: “OMG what would you do if this happened to you?!”
• Step 3: Add the video link to the post and publish it, making sure that it doesn’t post to your personal Facebook wall.
• Step 4: Head over to the ads manager on your business page and create a custom audience using Facebook sources of video.
• Step 5: Share the same video post you created for your business page to the various Facebook groups you have joined.

Whoever clicks, watches or comments on your post will be added into your custom audience group, which you can then target later with ads.

Pro tip: Some of the Facebook groups you have joined will have a review process. Make sure that whatever you are posting in the group follows the guidelines and rules so you don’t get kicked out.

Now that you have an idea of the process, when you are ready to create your own posts you can watch Ryan’s step-by-step video and follow along as he talks in more detail about each part.

Compelling Facebook posts will result in more lead

Constructing the perfect message to market your maid service doesn’t have to be something you rack your brain about, have fun with it. 

You can use emojis for words like “home” to catch attention, but be sure to put the word in as well so that your potential cleaning clients don’t have to work hard to decipher your message.

Emojis are a great way to add some color to your ad copy, but don’t overdo it!

You can use a form to capture your leads’ contact details through Facebook (fast-forward to the 28-minute mark in Ryan’s video for instructions on how to do that). The secret here is that because Facebook already has the email and name of the user, the form will auto-populate, making it easy for the user to do two quick clicks and submit the form.

Pro tip: Remember you are required to include your privacy policy, so add a link back to your website as guided by Facebook’s set-up process. 

By the way, if you don’t have marketing budget to spend on ads right now, don’t worry. We’ve written a post that explains how to get leads from Facebook without buying ads.

How much effort should you put into Facebook ads

While you definitely want more than one ad going out at a time, you don’t have to spend a lot of time with crafting unique written ad copy. You can keep the text the same, and change the videos to create multiple variations of the same ad. 

Create at least 6 duplicate ads per ad set by clicking on “duplicate” when setting them up in Business Manager.

Monitor your Facebook ads and, if you find that they are costing you more than about $8 per lead, switch them out for something else. 

Remember, the more ads you have running, the more spread your total budget will be. And the more leads you get per ad, the better your chances of having a positive return on investment (ROI).

Even the best way to get cleaning leads requires follow up

We’ve discussed Facebook as a lead generation platform and talked you through both content for ads and the process of joining groups and sharing posts to gather leads. When you apply this process and continue to post into groups, you’ll add to your target audience and build up an extensive list of leads over time.

Don’t get impatient! This will take some time and you must be consistent.

Along with patience, it’s critical to remember that with any leads you do gather, you need to have a system in place for following up with them. When people are on Facebook, even if they click on an ad, they often aren’t looking to buy right away. However they might be ready to buy in 3 or 6 months time.

So, as useful as Facebook can be for getting leads for your cleaning business, the platform is only as effective as your follow up. Having a follow-up process in place, where you follow up with leads on the first day, the second, fourth, seventh, and so on, allows you to build a relationship with the leads you’ve gathered. After the 30-day mark, following up every 30 days by messenger or email acts as a friendly reminder that you’re ready and waiting to help as soon as your leads need you.

Watch Ryan’s video to learn the system to set up your videos, your ads and for the dos and don’ts for posting into groups (without being spammy).

About the presenter

Ryan is the owner of Service Yeti, a service that offers leads follow-up for cleaning company owners who don’t have the time, or expertise, to set up automations to do the follow up for them.

This talk first aired at the 2019 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.