Online Marketing is the key to success for cleaning businesses
Here at LinkNow Media, we talk to a lot of small business owners who are thinking about finally creating a website for their businesses. We’ve noticed that when we talk to people who own cleaning and janitorial businesses, there is a perception that these kinds of companies don’t need a website.
This is just flat out wrong.
In today’s world, 90% of consumers are going online to check out companies and products before making a purchasing decision. Any business that doesn’t have a strong online presence is simply going to miss out on 90% of their possible business opportunities.
But while virtually every business should be online these days, cleaning and janitorial companies can benefit even more than companies in other industries. Here are the top 5 reasons your cleaning business needs a website.
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They let you show off your work
The cliché is that a picture is worth a thousand words, but when you’re trying to convince potential customers to hire your cleaning business, pictures on your site can be worth thousands of dollars instead.
Photos of your work demonstrate that you know what you're doing and you're not just some amateur.
When people are hiring a cleaning service, they may not be able to picture the difference a professional cleaning can make. If you take photos of the work you’ve done, you can show them exactly how much of a difference they can make, especially if you have great before and after pictures where you’ve made a huge difference in a dirty environment.
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They let you show off your happy customers
Surveys show that over two thirds of all consumers consider online reviews to be an important part of their decision-making process. You can appeal to these people by placing positive reviews directly on your website in the form of testimonials from your satisfied customers.
People trust testimonials from real people much more than they trust advertising.
People don’t believe much of what they see in advertising anymore. You could pay for an ad saying that you will do a great job cleaning someone’s home or office, but people are much more likely to believe a testimonial that says you did a great job. And the benefit of putting these testimonials on your website is that you control them. You don’t have to worry about someone posting something rude or offensive about your business like you need to worry about on public sites like Yelp.
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They let you show off what you know
As we’ve written here before, blogs are one of the best ways to bring new visitors to your websites. If you’re running a cleaning or janitorial business, you’ll have an easier time creating a useful and interesting blog than most people!
People read blogs to get useful or entertaining information, and as a cleaning professional you can be a great source of extremely useful information. Offer your readers cleaning tips and they will come to see you as an expert. Then, when there’s a big cleaning job they can’t handle, they’ll be more likely to turn to the company they already trust.
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They can make your life easier
One of the most frustrating and time consuming parts of running a cleaning business is dealing with scheduling and customer quotes. If you put a contact form on your website, it can make the entire process of dealing with your customers much more efficient.
You won't have to worry about missed calls while you're taking care of other work.
You will likely still get phone calls, but more and more people prefer to deal with services digitally these days. If they can get a quote for a cleaning job from your website instead of calling you, they’ll be happy about it. And it also lets you deal with communicating with potential customers when you have time instead of being distracted from the other aspects of your business.
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It’s more cost effective than other advertising
In an industry as competitive as yours, it’s important to make every dollar count. If you have to choose between investing in a website and online marketing or continuing to invest in traditional advertising, what should you choose?
Study after study have given us the answer: online marketing is about 3 times more effective than traditional marketing. If you want to make your marketing budget count, your best bet is to invest in a high quality website, build a blog, and start bringing in customers.
What are your experiences with online marketing?
If you have a cleaning or janitorial business and you have experience with online marketing, we want to hear about it. Did you have trouble at first? What has been the biggest surprise about marketing your business online? Leave a comment or drop us a line on Twitter.
