We’re happy to be talking about how to get clients for a cleaning business. It’s true that new clients are a crucial piece to make our businesses a success. When you are a business, you first have to get and retain customers, no matter what size your business is or how many clients you want. Subsequently, you want a way to do that methodically and reliably.
How to Find Clients for a Cleaning Business
The name of the game is running experiments. Indeed, to find clients for your cleaning business, you should experiment with various forms of outreach. First, you should find what works. Then, you can create a process for the steps that work for your business to get new customers.
A word about focusing your efforts around a single demographic
Cleaning is very much a local business. If you’ve done a good job identifying your customers, then you know they probably cluster in certain parts of your town or city (IE neighborhoods).
Think about picking a few strategies and focusing them on a single neighborhood or demographic.
I’ll give examples as we go to illuminate this strategy.
First, Let’s Learn Some Basic Math of Cost Per Acquisition
Wait! Don’t leave 😬
I assume that you want to make money, amiright?. Without a doubt, it’s too easy to waste money on advertising that doesn’t work. By contrast, the real question should be asking is How do we inexpensively and reliably get clients for a cleaning business?
The following basic formula will help you do just that, and keep more of your money.
If you are going to get clients quickly, then you will want to quickly establish your return on investment for any client acquisition strategy. In other words, what are you getting back from the money you spent on finding clients?
Take door hanger fliers as an example. Imagine that you pay $1000 for the printing and distribution of 10,000 fliers to residences in desirable areas. If 1% of fliers called you back, you’d have 100 leads. If you could get 50% of these leads to turn into a paying customer, you’d have 50 customers, at a cost of $20 per acquisition.
Now imagine each one of those cleanings made you an average of $40 in profit (this might be low, but for the sake of an example). So for the initial cleaning, you would be paying 50% of your profit.
Counter-intuitively, it’s too complex to call the 50% figure either high or low in terms of advertising spend. For the purposes of argument, let’s just say that in our example, we want better performance.
If, however, you ran a special and got everyone to sign up for 4 cleanings, you’d be making $160 profit ($40 profit/ cleaning * 4 cleanings). To be sure, your $20 acquisition cost looks (much) better next to $160 in profit.
Now that $20 per acquisition is 12% of the profit from that campaign. That’s much lower than where we started.
If you were able to serve all 50 people for 1 month from the cost of acquisition example above, you would make an $8000 return off a $1000 investment (if only it were that easy).
$160 in profit over 1 month x 50 people = $8000
$8000 profit – $1000 investment = $7,000
In this example, your take-home profit is $7,000. Regardless, we won’t get into net and gross in this article, but as you start getting consistent cash flow these are great concepts to know.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Now you have a simple method for calculating cost per acquisition. Going forward, you’ll be able to understand if an advertising method is sustainable for your business and your budget.
Now that you’re fortified with a basic formula to help you decide if the various methods are worth your time (and money!), here are 7 ways to grow your business through client acquisition.
Ask for Referrals
Hands down, the best way to acquire customers is to ask for referrals from your current clients. Don’t wait for them. Indeed, word of mouth is one of the best ways to get new clients because you have already built trust and a relationship with the referring client.
Why is it better? First, the potential referred client will be more likely to work with you based on that relationship. Second, they’ll start with a better understanding of your services, and your pricing. Third, (and probably most important), you will start with a foundation of trust that a personal recommendation can bring.
To ensure the referrals you receive are valuable leads, establish a referral program that tells your customers the type of referrals you need. In my case, I like to create these on note cards that you can leave with a customer or hand out when appropriate. But don’t stop there – find other businesses you can work with to send you referrals. Learn more on setting up a referral program.
Surprisingly, there’s a major problem with this amazing method. You first need past clients. If you are new and just starting out, this is less applicable.
Pass Out Doorhangers or Fliers
I keep up with Reddit on r/sweatystartup, and I often find examples of cleaners finding success with fliers like this thread (there are many examples like this on r/sweatystartup, a great community for cleaners).
As with all methods, you need to experiment – and ensure you are passing out enough fliers to know if it works.
You might see around a 1% contact rate from fliers, so you’ll need to pass out fliers to at least hundreds (if not thousands) of residences to get a sense of whether it can work for you as an acquisition channel.
My advice is to stay lean. Don’t over-invest in any one method before you’re sure it works and you’ve developed a system. You will feel confident investing larger amounts when you’re seeing promising results from small tests.
Network Out in the World
Network with other home cleaning agencies to find clients. Many service-based businesses often turn down clients for various reasons. They will refer these clients to a new company in their network. For instance, all my jobs were completed by a cleaning team of two people.
Not everyone wants a team in their home and I didn’t take on leads that were not my target market. That’s when I used my business network and a basic referral fee.
Having a referral process to get commercial and home clients will make this much easier for you and your business. Once you have this in place, you could have a network of local businesses referring you.
Another way of thinking about networking, from Reddit:
Your target demographic likes meeting people. Door to door still works. Door hangers can work, but you might need to offer a free (or heavily discounted first cleaning to get more response.)
Check Job and Discussion Boards
Browse job boards like Indeed.com to find jobs and new projects. Here’s a few more to review:
- TaskRabbit – They match service providers with customers for a percentage of the fee.
- Handy – They specialize in connecting home service providers with new clients and gets paid by taking a percentage of your fee.
- Thumbtack – Connects cleaning professionals with customers but charges businesses a flat fee to send a cleaning quote to a customer.
- Housekeeper – This site is based in Canada, but posts jobs and help wanted from everywhere. They are merely a posting service. It’s up to you to quote and process the payment.
- Craigslist – Many cleaners have reported success with this method (see this r/sweatystartup thread for more discussion).
- Angi (formerly Angi’s list) –
- Nextdoor – You must live in the area (by Zip code) which gives you an advantage if you live close to your target customers
- Facebook –
I’ve seen a few posts on Reddit regarding the ineffectiveness of Facebook, much like this:
Facebook, imo, for cleaners, is the worst. There are tons of cleaners on there willing to take jobs for rock bottom prices, I can’t compete with that. I stopped trying with neighborhood groups and stuff and have done fine.
– Reddit user KatieLeeHaw
The caveat here is that you need to be running experiments. Don’t take anyone else’s word for what works or doesn’t.
There’s no system out there that anyone will just give you. You have to go out, run small, inexpensive tests, and see what signals you find in the results. If you start running small tests, you will find one that’s effective in your area.
Re-Engage with Inactive Clients
Follow up with inactive clients or previous clients that you haven’t spoken to in a while. Send them an email or text and ask how they are doing with their home cleaning needs.
Reconnect by being helpful and showing them that you care about them as a client. A simple way to do this is with a monthly newsletter.
A good principle here is to give 5 or 10 times more value than you ask for. This approach works beautifully for building a long-term sustainable business.
Build Authority
Add a blog to your website and start blogging and networking on social media. This is what the franchise cleaning businesses have done because those blog posts get indexed by the search engines and bring new visitors to their site.
Blogging is a great way to begin building your authority and getting the attention of potential clients. Blogging and social media helps you build relationships when you use these platforms to provide helpful information which builds your expertise in the community. What many people don’t realize is, you don’t have to do all this work yourself. You can hire someone on fiverr to write posts for you.
Claim Your (Free) Google Business Profile and Ask for Reviews from Clients
Another way to build authority is to claim your free Google Business Profile. Google always gives preference to businesses using their tools and will display them prominently on Google Search and Google Maps.
Here’s an interesting subReddit about Google Business Profiles and how various businesses are combining it with other approaches to find success.
As I mentioned at the top of the article, you need to be focusing on your customer. Think about all the touchpoints they have during the research/consideration phase of their buying journey.
Which is to say, if they are thinking about hiring you, and your Google Business Profile comes up with 10 5-star reviews, they will be that much more likely to hire you.
And of course, you’ll want to get listed on Yelp. People love this site because they monitor reviews to ensure they are from REAL people.
If you want to learn more about starting a house cleaning business, check out our comprehensive guide on starting a successful house cleaning business. We cover everything you need to know to start and run a thriving cleaning service.
Solve a small but important problem for free
Write a short report that solves a challenge your potential client has. Then, post it to your website as these can often be discoverable.
For example, maybe scheduling a cleaner on a certain day of the week is difficult. Maybe it’s finding someone to clean an elderly relative’s home. These kinds of niche offerings can be powerful motivators.
Give it away in exchange for their eMail address or sell it on your website. Again, you can use fiverr for this.
These are just a few ways to find clients.
Offering Cleaning Services – Getting Their Attention
Once you find clients you want to work with you need to get their attention. One way is to send a cold eMail to them. You can do that by making your eMail personal. That means using their first and last name. Include something about their personal interests such as sports or hobbies. This is a useful tactic for building B2B relationships either for networking or for taking on commercial work.
How to Find Commercial Cleaning Clients
Cold Contacts
You’ll want to connect with potential clients in some way. Mention how you discovered them and how it connects to you. Do some research and find more information about your prospects. Look at their website, their social media public profiles, search LinkedIn for their professional profile. Then use one small tidbit to connect with them.
Your cold eMail should be brief but offer enough information that the potential client understands what you want.
If you don’t get a response from the first contact, don’t hesitate to send a follow up eMail. Keep it short. It can as simple as saying, “I forgot to tell you about. . .” This eMail can be sent a few days after the initial eMail.
Business and Social Organizations
Joining and participating in business and social organizations. Besides referrals, this is the fastest way to grow your business. Join the Chamber of Commerce if you have the budget. Look into the business groups in your city that are on meetup.
Conference or Networking Event
If you’ve met someone at a conference or networking event, send them an eMail follow up. You’ve connected with them and learned about their needs and their company. Follow up by offering them something useful such as a link to free information on their topic. You want to make it personal and show them you remember them by mentioning something they told you about themselves at the conference.
Reconnect
You may have gotten an initial consultation but haven’t heard anything from them since. That’s the time to send out a follow up consultation letter. In this you want to convince them to hire you by giving them the benefits of working with you and how you will help them save money, time, stress or whatever their need is. You’ll want to reiterate what you initially discussed and give them options for meeting times with you.
Client or Business Associate Referrals
Connect with potential clients by asking for referrals and testimonials from your current clients. Ask them to refer you to their clients or business associates who may need your services. Have them give you testimonials about their experience working with you. Make it easy for them to give referrals by providing them with marketing materials and links they can share easily. Send them links to your testimonials page.
Once you get a referral or an introduction, send the person an introduction eMail telling them about your services. Keep it personal by mentioning something about their business. Mention how you can help them. Don’t forget to include your contact information.
How to Find House Cleaning Clients
Inactive or One Appointment Customers
Do you have clients who aren’t active or only purchased once? Send them a re-engagement letter to get more work with them. Express how much you enjoyed working with them and that you would love the opportunity to do so again. If it’s been a while since you worked together, mention something personal about the person to remind them of the previous trust and connection you shared, as well as something you have in common.
Casual Customers
If you have a client that only uses you for one-off appointments, send them an offer to get them on a regular schedule. Mention how they can save them money by buying your packaged deal. As a service provider, you can save them time because they don’t have to get quotes. Guarantee them you’d be available when they need you month in and month out.
Make the Announcement
Let your existing clients, family, and friends know you are growing your business and looking for more customers. Ask for referrals, but tell them exactly what type of clients you are looking for. It makes no sense to ask for referrals and find out they are not your target market.
Family Connections
Don’t forget about all the social engagements and group activities you enjoy with your family. Take the time to converse with other parents when you take your kids to school or sports events. Get to know other people at your yoga class or at the gym. Find out what their issues and concerns are. You are in a service business so every contact you have, whether at the grocery store, the hair dresser, or in a restaurant, you are on display.
Take the opportunity to present yourself and your business in the best way possible.
Welcome Letter or On-boarding Process
Another way to connect is through a new client engagement letter. You send this welcome letter to new client after the client has agreed to use your service. It should include the agreed upon standard operating procedures, your policy on revisions and cancellations, payment information, common issues and how you address them, and what methods you will use to communicate.
Make it easy for the client and yourself. You are both busy so setting your operating procedures, will help you both be more productive.
A welcome letter is included in the Startup Business Forms bundle, but is also sold separately.
Build Relationships
Once you have clients, you need to build and maintain relationships with them. They may begin coming to you for products and services. As you work together, your customer will often seek your input as an advisor, teacher and problem-solver. They will ask you for other in-home service referrals. This is where your business network becomes a valuable asset to your business. Of course, you will refer one of those trusted businesses to your client.
Speak and act with confidence. regarding your abilities, knowledge, and growing skills. Your confidence is contagious.
Show your clients they can trust you by being dependable, that you follow through and keep your word. Demonstrate your expertise in your field and your services.
Be open and honest in your communications to foster a relationship with your clients. Have them be the same. If they are unhappy with a service, they should let you know.
Make it easy for clients to work with you. Give new clients guidelines for what to do if they have problems or questions.
Be you. People do business with people. They want to know about you. Show an interest in them as well. Be attentive to what they share and say and to their needs.
Once you’ve built a relationship with your clients, you can begin asking for referrals and testimonials. If you’ve built a trusting relationship, they will be more likely to share their friends and business contacts with you.
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember is that you have a service to offer and your job is to find people that need you. Everything you do and every place you go is a chance to connect with people to find your ideal client. You don’t have to be pushy or obnoxious… you just need to be sociable and helpful.
Realize that filling your schedule is a process; it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen the same for you that worked for somebody else.
That’s because this is a people business, and everyone is unique. You need to find what works for your personality and then use that consistently to grow your cleaning business fast.
FAQs
How to Get Clients for a Cleaning Business?
The answer is here in the question – you go out and you get clients. It’s a slow, messy process. When you start, nothing seems to work. This is why most people give up – it’s uncomfortable to spend time on something where you’re not guaranteed a good result. Then you get better and better, and your efforts pick up steam.
The way to get clients is to keep at it, and not quit. Use the 7 ideas above and get to work!
How to Get Cleaning Clients Fast
That’s actually not difficult. You can get more clients than you could ever ask for – the caveat is that you have to be willing to spend thousands and thousands of hard-earned dollars to get results fast. And even then, you aren’t guaranteed.
This article is written for people who want to build a sustainable side-hustle, or business. That is, finding clients has to be done within the budget that their business or personal finances allow.
This means moving more slowly, learned how these different approaches work, building on past experiments, and investing slowly over time to build a marketing flywheel.
blank line
