Business name? Check. 

Logo? Check. 

Cleaning equipment? Check. 

Cleaning business plan? Check. 

Customers? Hmm…

If you’re raring to get started with your new cleaning business but find yourself lacking a solid client roster, then you might find that a bit of marketing is in order to get the word out about your company.

In this guide, we’ll explore seven powerful cleaning business marketing strategies and tips. We’ll cover tactics like paid advertising and email marketing and discuss how to grow your online presence through SEO, content creation, and social media accounts.

1. Know your target audience 

Before you get your hands dirty digging into emails and ads, it’s important to take a step back and make sure you’re clear on who you want your marketing to bring in.

That is, who is your target audience?

As a first step, you’ll want to define whether you’re going after residential or commercial cleaning opportunities. But you can also go a layer deeper.

As a commercial cleaner, for instance, you might specialize in:

• Post-construction clean outs
• Event spaces
• Retail stores
• Medical facilities

With a more narrow focus on the specific jobs you’re looking to take on, you can turn your attention to defining your customer persona.

A customer persona (Source)

Say, for example, that you’ve decided to specialize in residential cleaning and target Airbnb property owners who need their properties cleaned in between guest bookings. Your customer persona should discuss what they care most about when selecting a cleaner. 

For instance, price is probably a concern, but reliability and punctuality are likely much higher up the list, as there is often a short window of only a few hours in between bookings where the cleaners can clean the property. Your customer wants to know that they can rely on a cleaner to arrive on time and complete the job to a satisfactory standard before the next guests arrive.

Understanding your audience helps you shape your messaging. For example, your ad copy when targeting Airbnb owners might not focus on budget. Instead, you’d present your business as reliable, trustworthy, and on time, perhaps weaving in customer testimonials to speak to those values.

2. Build your online presence 

One of the most powerful ways to create a reliable pipeline of cleaning business customers is by building out your online presence to show up in search results.

Creating a website is a critical first step, and from there you can start engaging in search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

With SEO, you build website pages that focus on common search terms that are relevant to your business and services and that your target customers are likely to Google when looking for someone like you.

The first step is to select search terms with strong purchase intent. You might be able to answer “What is a window cleaner?” as a window cleaning company, but that search doesn’t imply that the customer is interested in hiring one. Local SEO is a good place to start, as these keywords indicate that the customer is actively looking for a provider near them.

These two cleaning businesses, for example, are targeting the search term “Window cleaners Melbourne.”

A Google search for “Window cleaners Melbourne” (Source)

They do that by creating targeted landing pages incorporating topics and keywords that are relevant to the search term. These pages tell Google and other search engines, “Hey, we’re a window cleaning business in Melbourne. Send the searcher to us.”

BaxClean’s website (Source)

You’ll also want to follow in the footsteps of these cleaning businesses and set up and optimize your Google Business Profile.

Google Business Profile is a free tool Google provides that allows businesses to manage their presence on Google and Google Maps. When Melbourne customers search in Google Maps for “Window cleaners near me,” BaxClean shows up because it has optimized its GMB profile.

A Google Maps example search (Source)

You’ll also want to dive into online directories like Yelp, Houzz, and Angi and create profiles there that direct back to your website. Your goal is to increase your online footprint and be present in more places where customers can find your company online.

3. Use social media 

Social media marketing and content marketing in general can be a powerful tool for finding new cleaning customers, but it’s also very easy to get lost in the mix.

Your first step to make sure you’re connecting with the right audience is to select the channels you’re going to focus on.

For example, if you’re going after corporate clients, you’ll be much more likely to find them on LinkedIn than on Snapchat. Similarly, you might look at Facebook to target single-family homeowners who tend to be 40 or older, while TikTok or Instagram may be a better choice if your target audience is young professionals who need to deep-clean their apartment at the end of a lease.

Once you’ve decided on your platforms of choice, it’s time to build a strategy. There are two core ways to use social media to find new clients:

1. Organic: This is about posting on your own account and interacting with your followers (they’re potential customers!).
2. Paid: Here, you’re running ads to specifically target new customers, as well as those who’ve visited your site already via retargeting.

The most effective social media strategies tend to include a mix of both.

Posting content regularly on your own page—sharing before and after photos, cleaning tips, and client testimonials to add social proof—will add credibility to your brand and allow you to engage with your audience as you grow your follower count.

Conversely, running paid ads will help you get in front of prospective clients who don’t yet know about your brand. 

LinkedIn ad targeting parameters (Source)

You can set up demographic targeting parameters on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to pinpoint people who fit your customer persona—real estate agents in your city, for instance—and even use intent signals to drive conversions. For instance, you can set up your ad platform to show a targeted ad to any person who has recently been on a competitor’s website, helping you win cleaning clients and expand your presence.

Retargeting ads are another important strategy for bringing visitors back to your website. Here, you use a Pixel to track people who’ve visited specific pages on your website and that fit your target market criteria. Then, you’ll up your ad platform to show paid ads to those visitors on your platform of choice, like this one on Facebook:

A sample Facebook retargeting ad (Source)

Retargeting is a powerful tool for keeping unconvinced customers engaged throughout the buying journey.

4. Leverage referrals and reviews 

Gathering positive reviews from customers is important for adding social proof to your marketing efforts and subtly signaling to new customers that you’re a trustworthy and reliable service provider.

Online review platforms like Yelp and Trustpilot are a good place to start, but asking existing customers to post a review on your Google Business Profile is especially important in the cleaning industry, where location and proximity are important and local SEO plays a major role in winning new business.

The simple strategy for getting more reviews is just to ask. Schedule an automated email to go out after each completed job asking for a review. Make sure to include a clear link to your review site of choice.

A customer review request (Source)

You can make your review-gathering program even more effective by leveraging the principle of consistency. This is the concept that people are more likely to go through with an action if they’ve verbally committed to it prior, as we want our actions to be consistent with our promises.

To make use of this powerful principle, simply let your customer know that you’ll be sending a review request later and ask them if they’d be willing to complete it. They’ll almost always say yes, and this will increase your response rates to the automated review request email.

Implementing a referral program is also a good way to expand your reach and incentivize current clients to spread the good word about your small business. 

Cleaning business referral program (Source)

For example, as a house cleaning company, you might offer previous clients a 10% discount on their next home cleaning package for every new customer they refer. You can make this an even more effective marketing campaign by also including a discount for first-time customers.

5. Incorporate email marketing 

The list of ways you can use email marketing to engage with potential clients is nearly endless.

Start by building an email list of current clients that you can remarket to. Then, focus your marketing efforts on capturing more emails, such as with an email newsletter signup pop-up on your website.

An email newsletter signup pop-up (Source)

Here are some other ideas for email marketing campaigns you can implement:

• Sending out value-packed newsletters, such as a new cleaning tip each week
• Offering exclusive deals or discounts to email subscribers​, such as a 10% discount of your next purchase
• Promoting seasonal offers, such as spring cleans
• Sharing case studies to show off your services in a real-life context, such as a “before and after” gallery

You can use automated email scheduling to ensure that your messages reach customers at just the right time. 

Say, for instance, that you run a commercial office cleaning business, and you know that most offices require a deep cleaning service about once a month. You can set your email automation to send the same automated email to customers 25 days after their last deep clean, meaning you’re always top of mind when the “Hey, this place needs a good clean” thought comes along.

6. Consider networking and local partnerships 

Developing a strong base of digital marketing tactics like those we’ve discussed above is a good practice, but it’s never a bad idea to get out into the community and promote your services the old-fashioned way.

If you’re servicing commercial cleaning clients, attending local business events and networking with other small business owners are great ways to drum up some local business. For residential cleaners, setting up a booth at the next home show or outside a home decor or hardware store could be a good strategy for engaging with the community.

You could also consider forming partnerships with complementary services to cross-promote and recommend each other’s services. For instance, a carpet cleaning business could cross-promote the services of an upholstery firm and vice versa.

7. Use paid advertising

Our final strategy is very popular among cleaning businesses: Google Ads.

Essentially, you’re paying to jump the queue on organic searches. Take a look at this Google search for “Carpet cleaner near me.”

A Google search for “Carpet cleaner near me” (Source)

While there are plenty of pages that rank for the search term organically, these two suppliers show up above their competitors as sponsored ads.

To set up a Google Ad, start by selecting keywords that are relevant to your services and locality. Variations of “[service type] [location]”, such as “carpet cleaner Austin,” are a good bet.

Then, you’ll want to work on optimizing your ad to improve your click-through rate. You can do this by using emotion-based strategies like:

• Applying a “relationships formula” that connects your ad to things customers like (pets) or things they don’t (pests) to increase emotional appeal
• Using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues (such as talking about the sight of a cockroach in a kitchen) in your copy
• Specifically targeting pain points and desires (such as the desire to protect one’s children from itchy bites) 

You can set up A/B tests to try out different messaging strategies, reviewing the performance of each and doubling down on the tactics that deliver stronger results.

Grow your company with cleaning business software

If you’re looking to grow and scale your cleaning company, implementing the marketing strategies we discussed above is a great place to start.

So is checking out GorillaDesk, our specialized cleaning business software platform. 

Ready to take your cleaning business to the next level? Start your 14-day free trial with GorillaDesk today.