Often in small businesses achieving sustained, long-term growth can be a challenge. When you are in the early days of your new cleaning small business, growth may be easy to achieve and gaining your first few customers will mark a milestone for your up and coming cleaning business.
However for many small businesses, sooner or later organic growth may stagnate. As the business owner, it will be up to you to develop proactive strategies to sustainably grow your cleaning company over time. Part of that may include introducing general cleaning innovative ideas to your business such as partner cleaning services.
While you may not think that your cleaning business needs marketing to grow, when guided by a clear marketing strategy and great cleaning job ideas, you may be surprised at just how fast your cleaning business may grow. Indeed, marketing can become as essential to the success and longevity of your cleaning business as cleaning business insurance.
Here are six ways to grow your cleaning business and set it up for long-term success.
1. Introduce a referral program
Popular opinion is a powerful thing. This is especially true in today’s digitally-connected society where opinions can easily be shared online and gather consensus via social media and news aggregator websites. This is one reason why so many review websites online and consumer product review sites exist.
People will still listen to other opinions about your services, even in this age of digital technology. Many people may consider what they see online to be gospel without verifying the validity of their claims.
You can turn this around as a business owner by creating a referral program to help grow your cleaning company. Asking satisfied customers for reviews and testimonials and getting their permission to post their feedback on your website, company emails and social media pages can make it simple. Asking for permission to use their real names will give your cleaning company more credibility.
2. Join a leading cleaning franchise
If you are new to the cleaning industry and have yet to establish yourself as a cleaning expert, there may be no greater way of doing just that than by becoming a franchisee with an established commercial cleaning franchise, where you may be able to promote your own cleaning service ideas to your fellow franchisees.
There can be numerous advantages that make joining a franchised cleaning business attractive, including access to industry training and courses tailored to your individual needs. As part of a cleaning franchise network, you will also benefit from tapping into a network of other business owners who have already achieved business success.
While joining a franchised cleaning business may not be the right fit for every cleaning small business owner, for some it may be just the helping hand that you are looking for.
3. Embrace email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to communicate with customers on their terms. It also allows you to see where your customers are browsing, i.e. in their inbox. This is a popular form of marketing communication for small businesses. If you aren’t already doing it, you might consider adding it to your cleaning company.
While not everyone on your marketing mailing list will open every communication you send them, they will likely open some of them, especially if your email marketing provides value to them.
Email marketing is a great way to build trust and rapport with your customers by sharing helpful tips, industry trends, discounts, trend information, content marketing, or industry updates. Include information about any new services or products your cleaning company has created, and any announcements that might be of benefit to your subscribers.
Ask for the email addresses of all potential customers you interact with. This will allow you to send them an email inviting their consent to receive email communications from your cleaning company. Start by sending out a monthly marketing message to your list. Then, monitor the results and continue building from there.
4. Optimise your company website
SEO (local search engine optimisation) is a way to make your website more easily found by people and businesses searching for cleaners in your local area. SEO makes it easier for people to search for cleaning professionals in their area using search engines like Google.
To ensure that your SEO investment pays off, you might work with a digital marketing agency or an SEO specialist. You may decide to redesign your company website to make it faster to load, easier to use, and optimised for mobile devices.
Your company website is often the first interaction potential customers have with your website is your first impression.
5. Manage your online reviews
Negative online reviews about your cleaning company can be very frustrating for small business owners trying to establish credibility. However, people and businesses that have never done business before with your cleaning company will often search online for reviews before they contact you.
This is a serious problem and could result in you losing new business. It’s because customers who have had a negative experience online are twice as likely to leave a negative review than those who had a positive one.
Customers care about reviews and will read them before making a decision to work with you or take their business elsewhere. Claim your Google My Business page to manage reviews about your cleaning company. This will give you the ability to respond to customer reviews. When you have the time, reply thoughtfully to customer reviews about your business.
6. Grow your cleaning business by reducing your risks
Cleaners may be required to hold cleaning business insurance to be eligible to accept certain kinds of commercial cleaning jobs. And even if your painting business works with residential clients, given the nature of the work (working at heights and working on construction sites) there is a strong business case for reducing your risks with cleaning business insurance
The three types of business insurance cleaners who operate their own business may consider as part of their risk management strategy include:
Public Liability Insurance
Public Liability insurance provides cover for you and your cleaning business if a customer, supplier, or a member of the public is injured or sustains property damage due to your negligent business activities. It can be as simple as:
- forgetting to display a ‘wet floor’ sign and your customer slips and injures themselves;
- a passer-by tripping over the vacuum cleaner cord that you didn’t pack up; or
- spilling industrial cleaning products that leave permanent damage to carpet, furniture, or floors.
Business Insurance
If you rely on essential cleaning equipment that you’ve purchased for your cleaning business, what would happen if that equipment was stolen or damaged? How would you continue to run your business?
This is where Business Insurance can help by covering specific items essential to the running of your business, such as your commercial cleaning tools.
Personal Accident and Illness insurance
As a professional cleaner, you rely on your health and your physicality to provide your cleaning services to your clients. What would happen if you were to injure yourself or become sick and need to take time away from your business to recover? Try as we might, accidents can and do happen – anywhere, and anytime.
Personal Accident and Illness insurance can provide cover should you become permanently disabled or pass away as a result of an accident. Cover can also include a weekly benefit for loss of income if you are unable to work as a result of an unexpected injury or illness (even if it occurs outside of your employment).
BizCover helps cleaning small businesses Australia-wide to reduce the risks to their business via cleaning business insurance* made easy. Whether you are looking for cleaners insurance or self-employed cleaning insurance, or other types of business insurance for your cleaning business, with BizCover you can get your business covered and get on with your day. It’s that simple with BizCover. Call us on 1300 920 863 if you’d like to speak with the BizCover customer service team.
