If you own a cleaning service business, you may be wondering how you can shake things up to bring in more clients and boost revenue? The answer: create a marketing plan.
Operating a small business with limited resources can make creating a marketing plan seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be.
This article will provide simple, actionable tips to help you create a marketing plan for your cleaning business and provide best practices on using marketing tactics like social media to better target customers in your market area.
What Goes Into a Marketing Plan?
When people talk about marketing, many things come to mind: social media, advertising, email marketing, a website; the list goes on! But, to achieve a real difference with your business plan, you need a solid, focused marketing plan that includes methods for measuring success.
After all, you don't want to waste precious funds by trying random tactics without knowing whether or not they improve your bottom line.
Creating a marketing plan is the best way to market your cleaning service business to your target audience and grow your company. To get you started, here are a few helpful tips.
Start with a SWOT Analysis
The term SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's a way to evaluate your own business against your direct competitors to understand where you're doing well and where you could make changes to improve your competitiveness.
Thus, you'll need to have a basic understanding of:
- What your business does well (i.e. the efforts that directly contribute to revenue generation)
- What your businesses weaknesses are (i.e. where you're falling short in achieving revenue goals)
- What your opportunities are (i.e. areas where your competitors are doing well, that you could replicate to match their success)
- What your threats are (i.e. the areas where your competitors are doing far better than you and are, therefore, threatening your ability to gain market share)
Define Your Target Audience
After completing your SWOT analysis, you should define your target market – in other words, your ideal customer. This includes demographic questions like:
- What are their age and gender?
- What do they do for a living?
- Where do they live?
- What is their typical annual income? (This helps ensure you aren't targeting folks who can't afford your services to begin with)
- Where do they hang out online?
All of these aspects will help to narrow down who you're targeting so you can ensure any of your marketing and advertising efforts are geared toward that target market.
Once you know who you are marketing to, it becomes easier to tailor marketing materials (ads, website content, marketing email campaigns, marketing social media posts) to your target market's needs.
Set Your Marketing Goals
Once you know where you stand, who you are marketing to, and where they can be found, it’s time to set goals for the marketing campaign and define what success looks like.
For example, success could consist of how much revenue is made per month or year from new customers gained via marketing, the number of new leads (potential customers) generated from your marketing tactics, or how many of those leads convert to paying customers.
Defining what success looks like is a vital part of any marketing campaign, and it will help keep you on track as you move forward with your marketing efforts. After all, if you don't know where you're going, you won't get there any time soon.
Document Your Baseline Metrics
The next step is a critical but often overlooked aspect of any marketing plan. Once you have established your marketing goals, you need to take a baseline measurement of where you're at today.
For example, if the goal of a marketing plan is to increase the number of new customers you obtain in a month by 10%, you'll need to know how many new customers you bring in per month, on average today. Otherwise, you'll have no way of measuring your success.
Components of Your Marketing Plan
Now that you’ve defined your target market, set some goals, and know what success looks like, it is time to put together the marketing plan itself. Think of this plan as your map. You know where you want to go; now you have to decide how you'll get there.
In many cases, this may include a mix of both traditional print marketing, like mailing flyers to a target prospect's home, and digital marketing tactics, like emailing clients about promotional offers.
Whether print or digital, it should include details for how you will reach your target market, what marketing channels you will use (ads, website content, marketing email campaigns, marketing social media posts), and what marketing tactics (promotions/discounts) you'll use to attract new customers.
After the marketing plan has been developed, it's time to get buy-in from any key stakeholders who need to weigh in on your goals, and then take action!
How Do You Market Cleaning Services?
First, it is essential to realize that there isn't one marketing tactic that will work best for every business, so it's vital to find the marketing solutions and tactics that are right for you.
When it comes to marketing your cleaning service business, there are many different aspects that you need to take into account.
To put together an effective marketing plan, you'll need to consider things like your target market, what services you offer, how you're going to reach your target market, and how much budget you have allocated for marketing.
You can find several ideas in our Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses blog, but here are just a few to help you get started.
Create a Search Engine Optimized Website
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to help people, who are already looking for cleaning services in your area, find your website.
Essentially, SEO refers to optimizing each page of your website with keywords and phrases folks are searching for online. That way, when using those search phrases or words, Google will point them to your cleaning service business.
Some of the other website benefits include:
- It makes it easier for potential clients to find you in a google search
- It helps potential customers get more information about your business before reaching out (i.e. pricing, services, contact information, testimonials, etc.)
- It helps deter potential clients that might not be a good fit for your services (for example, a client that can't afford your services)
Build Community Relationships
This might be the most important part you'll have on the marketing plan for your cleaning services business. After all, your community is filled with potential clients you are trying to reach and convert, so it's a great way to find referrals.
Some ideas to build strong relationships within your community:
- Advertise in local newspapers
- Use word-of-mouth by asking happy customers to share a testimonial or review of your cleaning company with their friends and family
- Partner with nearby businesses in a similar niche (for example, HVAC repair or other home services) to cross-promote your services
- Offer special discounts to attract new customers
- Participate in, or sponsor, a local event. Helping other local businesses or the community needs, will, in return, let them know you are a team player and care about more than just sales
- Consider offering a subscription service or monthly cleaning contract to increase customer loyalty and retention
Using a mix of these marketing strategies, you can reach more potential customers and build a loyal customer base for your cleaning services.
Use Social Media Marketing
While you need to be careful not to spam your customers, using a variety of marketing channels can help increase the likelihood that you'll reach the right people at the right time. This includes the use of social media to both promote your business and engage with customers and potential clients.
For example, you could ask new clients to share pictures or a testimonial about their experience in exchange for a discount for future services. This helps create a connection with your customers and makes them more likely to use your services in the future.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn offer excellent opportunities to connect with potential customers in your area.
When creating social media posts for your commercial cleaning service, be sure to:
- Share photos of your team and work in progress
- Post about any special offers or discounts you're running
- Share customer reviews and testimonials
- Respond to comments and questions from followers
By responding to customers on social media, you'll not only create awareness for your cleaning service business, but you'll also build trust and credibility among potential customers.
Market Your Business with Broadly
Now that you understand the importance of having a marketing plan for your cleaning service company, it's time to get started.
Remember, marketing is an ongoing process that should be revisited and tweaked as needed to continue achieving success. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon.
Are you strapped for resources to get started with your marketing plan? Broadly can help!
The Broadly platform provides several easy-to-use tools that can help you better evaluate your online reputation, streamline customer communication across all channels into a single platform, and boost the number of positive reviews you receive from your customers.
Broadly is an affordable service that can help you execute your marketing plan, even with limited resources. To learn more, schedule a demo today!
