Are you looking to increase your business? Who isn’t, right? There’s a lot you can do to help your business increase sales, leads, and conversions.
We’re very aware of how competitive the commercial cleaning market is, and devising a strategy to stay ahead of your competition is essential to get more clients and grow your company. At Cleaning in Motion we have devised eight key steps that will help you get more customers. These are the result of strategies we have implemented to help our janitorial and cleaning clients gain more business, referrals and improve their and our reputations. Read on to learn more!
1. Run an aggressive local campaign
Local marketing is the strategy of targeting audiences close to your business with messages reflecting the local market. The messages using this method rely on proximity. Local marketing engages with the communities to build a presence. The best ways to reach local communities are:
- Local SEO: Set up and optimize your Google My Business listing. If done right, this should be one of the primary sources of leads from your business location.
- Google ads: You can target the location you serve with paid advertising which will appear on local searches because everyone uses it. Paid ads are a great way to make your business grow fast. It can become costly, but it’s worth every penny! You can get qualified leads for less than $150 per lead and you can select the industries and locations you want to target.
- Post Cards: The snail mail approach is more effective than you may think! Choose zip codes where you know there are lots of businesses, which you can find through Google (see?) and send them promotions and offers they can’t refuse; rinse and repeat, constantly.
2. Networking with the right people and networking groups
Business networking means establishing mutual relationships with other business people. Sounds simple, right?
Though the benefits are often intangible, the contacts you make and the top-of-mind status you can achieve from the communication you establish with other professionals in the commercial cleaning or janitorial industries are vital.
This networking is all about conversations and creating the right messages that click with them. This not only generates a higher conversion rate but can also gain amazing referrals for more work.
If you’re wondering where to look for these business owners and representatives, here are some ideas:
- Eventbrite is a service that allows users to browse, create, and promote local events. They charge a fee to event organizers in exchange for online ticketing services, unless the event is free.
- BNI – Business Network International is a franchised networking organization with over 275,000 members.
- Chamber of Commerce or board of trade
- MasterMind Groups are peer-to-peer mentoring groups used to help members solve their problems with input and advice from the other group members.
- LeTip is a business networking group for businesses of all shapes, sizes, and industries.
- LinkedIn is a business- and employment-oriented online network, but you probably know that.
- Facebook Groups related to your business and organizations.
- Women In Business Networking is a group of diverse women in business who encourage one another’s professional growth and success, made up of female entrepreneurs, business owners and key players in B2B services and the nonprofit environment.
- Local Business Groups, which you can find on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social networks or live gatherings.
For a peek into the best business networking groups to join, this article should be a big help.
3. Build a list of ideal clients
That sounds easy. But how do you make the list?
The first step is to find a database. Most databases are paid and it really makes sense because a good and verified list is no easy task. In our experience D7leadfinder is an excellent example of this, but Data.com offers clean and curated lists as well. LeadFerret is a free database, though the accuracy is not very consistent.
Most of these databases will let you search within certain industries, sizes, locations, and workforces. For commercial cleaning, you should be looking for doctor’s offices, dentist offices, clinics, hospitals, schools, office buildings, government buildings, or even churches.
Do your research before contacting them so you know what are their needs and how your cleaning company can help them. Then, as we have set it up in our No Leads Left behind webinar, it’s just a matter of sending the right message, at the right time, to the right person.
Remember: contact the people who make decisions about cleaning contracts. Everything else is pointless if you reach the wrong people.
Regardless of the database you choose, work it! Find the prospect’s social media, email, Linkedin profile, phone number. Anything you need to set up a robust pipeline that will enable a strong follow-up system.
4. Follow up with an attractive proposal, but make it personal
In order to make a sale, you might need to follow up with someone at least 5 times. Most salespeople give up after the first follow-up but it can take 5 to 10 follow-ups to get a customer to hire your services.
What you need to do here is propose a cleaning service plan that will be attractive to them. It also helps to make these as personal as possible. Sending gifts and handwritten letters with the proposal is a great way to take it to the next level. You’d be surprised to learn that a lot of commercial cleaning companies don’t get more clients because they use the pray and spray approach to outbound.
5. Offer actionable incentives to encourage them to act fast
Limited-time deals, coupons, and discounts are a way to get people to try your cleaning service. It makes them more likely because it will seem more exclusive. Plus, not having to spend as much money as a regular customer can make a new one feel special and important.
Offering discounts through social media or by visiting your website can help you attract new customers. Plus, it can also make your business more relevant online and score higher on Google. You can do this by creating messages that focus on your customer support, quality of service, or customer satisfaction.
6. Create a cold calling campaign to encourage interaction
Cold calling via phone call (as opposed to door-knocking) still remains an important skill for any commercial cleaning company looking to increase its leads. The importance of cold calling boils down to this: it’s a cost and time-efficient method of targeted, human-to-human lead generation.
The downside of cold calling is that many salesmen don’t like to do it. However, human interaction in today’s social distancing, and mainly texting society can sometimes be more valuable than you think.
Cold calling is an excellent tool for your salespeople to master their sales pitches. But it also can help you gain relevant information and make human connections with your customers, gauge the prospect’s personality, sense of humor, and so on, which you can’t always do over other media, and can go a long way toward starting a business relationship.
7. Use LinkedIn to find the best tools and the ideal people
Other than being a great social network, LinkedIn provides valuable tools for researching not only potential customers but also competitors. Understanding your prospects is half the battle, and through LinkedIn you can gain insight into what makes your prospects tick, what they’re involved in, and who they know.
LinkedIn will likely improve the quality of your connections with prospects in the cleaning market, which will eventually lead to better customers and bigger sales. This will help you determine what to offer and how to outdo the competition in terms of meeting the customer’s needs.
Perhaps one of the most important social selling points is that buyers want to do business with people they trust, and when you share connections (“friends” on LinkedIn), groups, or interests, with your prospects, it will likely identify you as someone who can be trusted.
If these connections can write and post recommendations sharing how you and your cleaning services are outstanding, that’s a great backup. These reputation builders offer you a priceless edge over the competition and can provide the nudge it takes to turn your prospects into customers.
8. Create cold email campaigns to generate new leads
Cold emails are one of the most effective outreach methods for generating new leads in the cleaning business. Thanks to the widespread availability of email automation and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, cold emailing is a less resource-intensive process than cold calling.
But cold emailing remains as one of the best one-to-one outreach tools, with the goal of building an ongoing relationship with the recipient when used in the right strategy, and as part of a larger plan, it can sometimes be the main source of leads and conversions.
9. Create a Google My Business profile. Now.
When looking for a cleaning business that will offer what a customer needs, 92.47% of people will use Google. The highest-rated search results will give enough information to pick the best option, like reviews, ratings, photos, and location information. Additionally, Google Maps is six times more popular than other navigation apps.
Given its popularity, it is critical to optimize your commercial cleaning business to appear in Google Maps search results. Google My Business (or GMB) lets you enhance your cleaning company profile to rank higher in search results. This means increased business visibility and higher revenue.
Google My Business is a free tool and your profile typically includes your business’ name, location, and hours of operation. You can invest in local search ads that will boost your business’s visibility in Google Maps search results by taking it to the top of search queries for the relevant keywords to your janitorial business, which is where SEO comes in.
So there you have it! Nine tried and tested methods at Cleaning in Motion that have increased and improved our commercial cleaning business clients.
Either of them alone can do wonders for your cleaning business, but when used together and with a sound strategy, they can be the most powerful set of tools that will get you more cleaning clients, grow your business, and boost your revenue.
Check out our commercial cleaning success stories if you’re still unconvinced.
If you’d like to schedule a talk with us, just click here.
