It’s hard for commercial cleaning companies to differentiate their services from competitors; few clients really know what you actually do, let alone take the time to assess the quality of your work. This leaves acquiring new prospects through targeted outreach campaigns as the easiest way to drum up new business. Fortunately, there are companies that can generate quality leads for commercial cleaning services, supercharging your marketing efforts.
How does all this work?
Keep reading to find out:
If you run a cleaning business, your revenue depends largely on how many contracts you can bid on and win. Though negotiating contracts with commercial entities is outside the scope of this article, we’ll show you how to get the ball rolling by identifying potential customers.
The commercial cleaning industry is worth around $78 billion annually. Given that staggering figure, it would seem like it’s easy to get a slice of that pie, right? Actually…no. Securing long-term cleaning contracts is often the hardest part of the business.
“Leads”, in marketing-speak, are the names – and, ideally, phone numbers, emails, and other contact details – of potential customers. Generating leads simply means prospecting for potential commercial cleaning opportunities with the goal of converting them into customers.
This information allows you to close deals with effective follow-up strategies. What you need to grow your customer base, then, is a sustainable strategy for generating these leads at scale, instead of relying on referrals or people contacting you to schedule an appointment on their own.
Commercial cleaning companies must determine what types of leads they are looking for. They must also decide if the leads are qualified enough to be worth investing time and resources into nurturing and engagement. The commercial lead qualification process involves the following steps:
Just think: what information do you need before you call anyone to talk up your services? Engaging prospects with tailored solutions, rather than relying on the same sales pitch each time, makes it that much more likely they’ll end up asking you for an estimate.
Since there are only so many hours in the day, you also want to maximize your chances of converting leads into loyal customers. This means you’ll focus your team’s efforts on “hot” leads, who are more likely to spend money on janitorial services in the near future. Aside from lead temperature, leads can also be categorized according to type:
Acquiring business-to-business (B2B) leads is often a priority, as these corporate customers have usually demonstrated some interest in providers offering competitive pricing for cleaning services. For best results, however, these have to be “verified”, which simply means that each email address and phone number has been confirmed to be valid.
In addition, it makes sense to divide them into niche-specific categories:
In general, it pays to include the most granular information available in your B2B lead database. By homing in on specific industries, you can use a relationship-focused approach to project the reliable and service-oriented image these customers are looking for.
Auto Cleaning Services: Car dealerships, rental agencies, and repair shops may require experience in cleaning vehicle interiors and exteriors in addition to general cleaning services.
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it…well, they are: it’s almost certain that all your local competitors prioritize lead generation. They may not be doing things efficiently or following the right approach to following up with appointments, though, uncovering opportunities for your business.
In the United States, every business is assigned a four-digit code representing their industry segment. Once you’ve generated leads using any of several tools, this classification can be used to sort leads by priority and fine-tune your sales tactics. If you have a lot of poorly qualified leads, you can quickly whittle them down to the most relevant using SIC codes.
By their nature, commercial cleaning leads are highly time-sensitive. This is an essential service for many companies. Their business, if it’s currently up for grabs, won’t be available for long. You can get a list of qualified leads, ready for follow-up, more quickly by simply purchasing them.
You need to be careful to get the greatest possible value for money, though. BookYourData, for instance, provides not only verified leads (with a guaranteed 97%+ accuracy rate) but offers a unique pay-as-you-go pricing model. This means you can get exactly the leads you need, just as quickly as you’re able to make sales appointments.
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It’s hard to tell, at a glance, which companies provide exceptional cleaning services that ensure satisfaction. This is why recommendations from existing and former customers are such an effective lead-generation tool. You can encourage referrals by offering discounts and similar benefits to anyone who promotes your business.
In general, inbound lead generation refers to helping potential customers find you (advertising, social media promotions, etc.) while outbound leads are gained by contacting prospects directly (phone calls, unsolicited emails, and so forth). Of all outbound methods, cold emails provide the highest ROI (Return On Investment) as long as you target the right companies with the right message. To do this effectively, you require high-quality leads.
One great thing about these platforms is that they allow for very accurate market segmentation: a cleaning company can reach exactly the audience you want based on demographics, geographic location, etc. This means that your money goes further: a larger proportion of people who see your social media ads will be those you’re trying to convert.
Another great platform for connecting with professionals in particular industries is LinkedIn. It allows for both inbound techniques (posting articles about the commercial cleaning services industry) and outbound marketing (i.e. contacting individuals about everything you can do for them). In addition, you can also take conversations off LinkedIn by using an online tool to match a lead’s name to an email address.
One of the features of online marketing is that you can choose to pay only for ads that are clicked on, not all those that are seen. Called PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads, leads generated through them have already shown an interest in hiring a commercial cleaning business and have very high conversion potential; they’re practically one step away from requesting a quote.
Ask yourself: assuming somebody needs outsourced cleaning services, what kinds of other products might they be buying? Actively look for cross-promotion opportunities with office supply stores, property management companies, and retail businesses in your area. Both of you can benefit if you team up and share marketing efforts. Chamber of Commerce events are also great opportunities to network and grab some leads.
Generating inbound leads online can be tricky, but the rewards are often huge. While there are various avenues to explore, these two are a good place to start. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to steps to make your page rank higher on Google results. Content marketing means engaging customers with meaningful and relevant written blog posts on your own website and other channels.
One of the keys to success in this business is to secure new jobs at a fair price, preferably long-lasting relationships that will keep generating revenue month after month. Far too often, the factor preventing cleaning service managers from doing so is their inability to source high-quality leads as needed.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution: buying verified leads tailored to your industry. BookYourData allows you to select the kinds of leads you want using various filters including demographic information, company size, and many others, ensuring that your marketing efforts get top results.
All of the above lead-generating techniques tend to cost at least some money. However, many lead providers offer free sample leads to demonstrate their databases’ accuracy and relevancy.
Sales intelligence software companies like BookYourData offer a number of useful tools to generate and manage leads. At larger scales, you may also want to invest in specialized applications like cold emailing software.
Email outreach can deliver impressive results, but requires careful planning. It’s essential to personalize messages to each prospect or market segment and clearly highlight your value proposition.
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