Large organizations spend millions of dollars on marketing every year. Your cleaning business will probably spend a lot less. However, you must make sure that your money is being spent on things that will help you increase your sales in the coming months. Otherwise, you could end up on a list like this one.
While there are countless mistakes that all cleaning company owners eventually make, most of them will be a learning experience. As long as you refrain from any huge blunders, your mistakes are what will help you grow. Here are a few things that you should definitely avoid. Here are a few things that will be detrimental to your cleaning company if you include them in your marketing strategy.
Stop What Doesn’t Work
This one is simple. Many people decide to continue using a strategy that just doesn’t work because they believe that it will eventually pay off.
A perfect example of this is cold calling. While there are businesses that will benefit from cold calling, your cleaning company may not be one of them. If you are using a strategy that just doesn’t seem to pay off once you look at the costs, then it is time to stop.
A good idea is to analyze your current strategy and see which parts of it working and which ones aren’t. Replace the ones that aren’t working with better alternatives.
Avoid Bragging About Your Service
This one is slightly obvious but needs to be stated, nonetheless. Even if you are sure that you are better than all of your competitors in the area that you operate, even if you have the highest market share, never brag about yourself.
This is because the purpose of your marketing campaign is to let the customer know that you are there to help them. In order to do this, you must first truly believe that the purpose of your business is to provide maximum assistance to the customer, not just sell whatever it is you are selling.
Lastly, bragging looks extremely unprofessional. This is not a high school competition, and you should behave accordingly.
Avoid Speaking Ill of The Competition
While we are talking about being unprofessional, this is another huge mindset that you must avoid. You must differentiate yourself from the competition based on your performance and customer service. Trying to gain more customers by badmouthing others is only going to make you look insecure. There is a greater chance of harming your cleaning business than getting you more customers when going down this path.
This does not only apply to your marketing strategy either. Even when speaking to customers while on the job or over the phone, avoid badmouthing your competition. In fact, a great strategy is to look humble and praise your competition. However, provide valid reasons why you think you are better.
If You Are a Small Business, Do Not Spend Big on Ads
This is something a lot of small businesses do that have access to a lot of capital. You may think that renting billboards and running ads on local TV is the way to go, but that is probably not the best idea.
While the aforementioned methods offer a wider reach, chances are that your cost per customer will be a lot higher using these methods. If you are a small business that is just starting out, using online marketing is probably the best way.
While the growth may be a little bit slow if you utilize modern marketing methods, it will still be more than enough to propel your business forward.
If you really do have a fair amount of capital and want to spend it to grow your business at a fast rate, then hiring a professional marketing firm may be the best idea. For example, Auguste Global’s Rocket Fuel is a great hands-off approach to marketing that costs $1977 a month plus ad spend and fuels your cleaning business to reach the next level.
Creating Filler Content
The last mistake is something that is quite common among cleaning business owners that do not understand marketing. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Whether it is putting out ads or writing blogs, make sure you only publish content that is relevant to your business and adheres to your marketing strategy. It may seem like a good idea to write 10 blogs a week just because you can afford 10 writers, but that doesn’t mean that you will reap 5 times the benefits that you would with two blog posts. In fact, pages with similar content actually rank you worse on Google.
The same goes for ads. One good ad is much better than 5 mediocre ones.
Lastly, if you are thinking “How many blogs should I publish weekly?”, a great starting point for any business is two. After a while, you can reevaluate your needs to see if you need more.
Conclusion
We just went through 5 marketing tactics that will not yield you the best results. There are many others, of course, but these 5 are good ones to avoid.
As you continue to grow your cleaning business, you will begin to see what works and what doesn’t much more clearly. Once your marketing strategies are based on experience as well as knowledge, you can really take your business to the next level!