The good news for cleaning company owners out there is that you don’t have to be a marketing maestro in order to develop an effective campaign. Check out these top tips to get started. While you don’t need marketing expertise, you do however have to set aside a budget for marketing. While that is a good start, where do you go from there? Which types of commercial cleaning marketing strategies are worth your time and effort and which ones are best left alone?

This article provides a series of powerful ideas to help you develop an effective commercial cleaning marketing plan. Remember that everything still depends on the type of customers you want to attract, the number of people you want to reach, your location, and other critical factors. Nevertheless, if you use the following suggestions to lay the groundwork, you have the potential to see a sizeable increase in the number of leads from your chosen demographic.

The following is a list of top 6 ways to effectively market your commercial cleaning business.

1) Determine your target audience

The first important marketing technique is more of a pre-marketing technique. Before you start investing time and money, determine what you want to achieve and who you wish to target. In terms of quantity and frequency, office cleaning and school cleaning contracts are often the most profitable, but sometimes warehouses and multi-function facilities can generate considerable revenue.

This is not to say that you should not set your sights on medical institutions or dental offices. The primary takeaway here is to focus your marketing efforts on different platforms for different types of companies. Take some time to learn which method is best for the customers you want to attract.

2) Build a referral campaign to bring new customers

When we talk about commercial cleaning marketing, it must be noted that word-of-mouth or verbal recommendations are still better than other forms of marketing. But how do you ensure that people tell others about your business?

The answer is to conduct referral marketing activities. Referral marketing is where you attract recommendations from others, often through the use of incentives. For example, when a current customer recommends another company that has contracted with you, you can provide them with free cleaning services.

Moreover, you may ask customers to leave online reviews. Just be sure not to incentivize online reviews, as this is illegal. You can even ask people who are not your customers, to send recommendation letters and provide gift cards or other related benefits and discounts to encourage them.

3) Use social media to your advantage

Everyone seems to be interested in the value of social media marketing these days, and with good reason. Your social media channels are your personal referral marketing channels where you can communicate directly to your followers. Therefore, your social media channels are free marketing channels for your business. In the same vein, paid channels (sponsored social media advertisements) can help you target other audiences.

Perhaps, the best social media platform for commercial cleaning marketing is Instagram. You can post professional photos of your work and tag them with relevant tags to attract new customers and entice people to talk about you. (Don't forget to link to your website in your resume!)

When you invest in social media marketing, don't ignore analytic tools. Both Facebook Ads and Google Ads are useful and relatively cheap platforms that provide powerful insights into your online advertising campaigns. Through the data obtained by each of these tools, you can quickly gauge what is and isn’t working in your marketing campaign.

4) Print marketing isn’t dead – use it!

Although all forms of publicity is now related to social media and digital marketing, print marketing is still very useful, especially if your local business is small. Distribute pamphlets and deliver postcards directly to potential customers in a portion of the target market. Leave your business cards as much as possible. Post your ads and brochures onto community bulletin boards.

Increase incentives in print marketing through coupons that include discounts or free services. Although not as effective as in the past, the power of printing is still relevant. Therefore, you should take the advantages provided by printing.

5) If your website is outdated, get a new one

Back to the Internet. Since online advertising is the overwhelming favorite where marketing is concerned, it is important to keep your website up-to-date and professional in appearance. If it’s been a number of years since you last had your website designed and it’s beginning to show its age, customers will notice. Part of the commercial cleaning marketing budget should be spent on the cost of creating a new site and keeping it regularly updated.

Engaging an SEO (Search Engine opt Optimization) company can also help keep your website at the top of the Google search rankings. SEO mainly uses blog posts to keep you relevant in search rankings and show customers your latest industry news and trends.

6) Consider updating your existing brand

Rebranding is a very strict marketing tool. But if you have been in the cleaning business for a long time and want to attract other customers, you have leadership changes, or you just need to re-establish and reposition your company's value, purpose, and mission, rebranding may be useful.

In conclusion, the above tips will help you position your commercial cleaning business for growth by adopting an effective commercial cleaning marketing budget strategy.