Here is the beautiful thing about home cleaning you can build up a highly successful cleaning service with little to no marketing. Word of mouth is powerful, you actively let customers know you are seeking new business.

Start with friends and family in your area. Tell them you are starting a cleaning business, Once you iron out the kinks of your operation, friends and family can help propel the first wave of customer referrals.

1. Referral Discount

Encourage referrals by offering a 20% discount on current customers’ next cleaning. This is a great way to grow a loyal client network and make known your intention to grow your business.

Benefits include:

• Geographical concentration (neighbors telling neighbors)
• Scheduling flexibility (I have had several instances where two clients communicate independently of me to swap days during a certain week saving me administrative time).
• People love the extra sense of security referrals offer. Customers who hire you through referrals are already broken in so to speak, and are more willing to trust you with keys to the house.

At this time, begin setting up your web presence.

1. Website

2. Choose a website builder. I recommend using either www.wix.com or www.spuarespace.com to design your website. This will cost around AED 500 annually. Or design one for free at 000WebHost.com. No coding skills are required each platform uses simple drag-and-drop technology and handles your website’s hosting.

Add your website’s content (Service, price, etc.) and you are good to go.

2. Buy a domain name (cleaningsite.com) through the hosting site (above) or www.GoDaddy.com. This will be AED300-500 a year.

3. Register your business with online business registries and review websites:

• Google (and Bing) Local Business Listings (show up organically in a web search when prospective customers search “home cleaning” in your area).
• yelp.com (expect a tremendous response from yelp.com once a few positive reviews are posted, particularly considering the importance of character and reputation in residential cleaning. I had to contact the website at one point to have to contact the website as I could not keep up with demand).
• Manta.com is a free business listing platform that offers free daily tips and insights to help keep your marketing strategies up to date.
• Once you have your web foundation in place, add a few tweaks to ensure the optimum performance of your website.

1. Free Estimate

• Create and estimate request forms on your website through www.form2go.com or www.wufoo.com free form building websites.
• A functional website technology in converting new business online. Aside from listing your phone number and email on your website, an online form is appealing to an increasingly teach-savvy prospect, and formulate a thoughtful and cleanly articulated response before getting back to the customer. Also, this is a great opportunity to collect emails for your online newsletter, which we will get to later. Be sure to ask customers if they would like to opt in before adding them to your email list.
• How it works using the form building websites listed above, create a questionnaire collecting customer contact information. Carat the following question fields.

What city and state do you live in?

what is the square footage of your home?

Several bathrooms?

Number of bedrooms?

Number of bedrooms?

What frequency of cleaning do you need?

Do you have any specific requests?

Would you like to receive our free monthly newsletter?

Once completed add the form to your website by copying the HTML generated by the form-building website to your site ( this part is not as difficult as it seems to follow the instruction at www.form2go.com or www.wufoo.com )  After a potential customer fills out the form on your site an automated email response is sent thanking them for the inquiry and telling them you will respond shortly. Coming home after a day of work to an inbox of multiple estimate requests is a rewarding feeling but you had better not wait too long to respond precious time is ticking for other cleaning service to come into the picture.

1. Online Newsletter

Create an online and announce your launch. Distribute it freely among family, friends, former teachers, or professors any contact you may have. Scan your email contacts, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and make a list of every email you deem relevant. Remember everyone needs cleaning. (Use www.mailchmp.com)

A monthly newsletter allows you to express specific changes and promotions in front of a targeted audience month to month. Everyone loves following the growth of a well-intentioned start-up. Include useful general information too (not specific to your business) to keep non customers subscribed I added one or two handy cleaning tips per newsletter that received great feedback. the free Mailchimp platform allows you to track every newsletter’s performance providing real-time statistics on the number of clicks who opened your email and any resulting action(i.e. how many people clicked on the gift certificate link you included). See sample emails below.

Benefits include:

Ability to stay in front of your audience monthly.

Creative articulate the changing landscape of your startup (did you hire a new cleaner? Introduce him or her here)

Communicate promotions and holiday specials via PayPal.

Establish in the eyes of your local audience that you indeed are the cleaning expert(the internet is filled with free cleaning tips and methods that you can relay to your customers).

Note: To comply with anti-spam laws ensure all email contact have given you written consent to send them your newsletter. Make sure your physical address is visibly located at the bottom of all marketing emails as well as an unsubscribe option.

Add a subscribe section on your website where email addresses are collected. Also, generating a terms of your website, including any payments made via PayPal, and implied consent to receive marketing email contacts will prove invaluable to your marketing efforts down the road. Include seasonal discounts, introduce new workers, and free cleaning tips in your newsletter.