Internet Marketing For House Cleaning Services
Do you own a house cleaning website or offer house cleaning services? Are you looking for an Internet marketing strategy for your house cleaning business? I’ll share some of my tactics, which have come with experience in marketing websites, both old and new!
I am not going to discuss building links to your website, because we know all that. Instead, I’ll focus on what is more important.
1. Structure
As you are go to market your house cleaning service, which is going to keep things neat and clean for those you serve, your website needs to reflect this both to the user and search engines. Here’s how!
First, organize your content into separate sections on separate pages. DO NOT add up all information on the main page as it will look bulky. Your target audience is not on your website to read essays, so keep everything organized, short and in small blocks of text, preferably.
Second, you can add new pages to your website for this purpose. For example the main page of your website should have information about your company (and services) , and another page could be titled “Why Choose Us?” or “Why Our Services?” or “Why + Brand Name.” Here is an example of what you should be doing:
1. Home page (i.e., information about the business and services – summarize your website)
2. Service page(s) … Include descriptions of what you offer in short paragraphs (3-4 sentences max per paragraph, use lists and bullets whenever possible, and 1-3 pictures to show people what you do, etc.).
3. Pricing/Rates page … provide detailed information about your rates on this page.
4. Why Us? page … Why should the customer opt for your services, or what makes your service better than others? Why do they need cleaning in the first place? Outline the benefits, costs/damages/loss if they don’t, etc.)
5. FAQ page … Provide answers to your customers’ most frequently asked questions related to your services.
6. Request a quote page … This page might have a contact form for prospective customers to fill in, or a telephone number to call you.
7. “Cleaning Tips” blog/articles … Here’s where you could write short articles about different aspects of your cleaning service business. Take customer questions, and turn your answers into blog articles. People searching for answers to their cleaning needs might discover your site on a search engine because you wrote about it. No write – no find (you)! So, write!
8. Testimonials Page … Who loves you? Ask your customers for testimonials. Offer them a 10% discount in return for one. Offer a few customers the opportunity for you to perform specific cleaning services you provide (for free, no charge) in exchange for a rich, glowing testimonial/interview with tons of feedback. Use these testimonials to sell future prospects (and old customers) to buy/repurchase your services.
It’s also a good strategy to keep the contact form present on the sidebar on all pages, similarly a subscribe to newsletter form should also be present.
So, your website should have at least the above mentioned pages. From my experience in internet marketing, the foundation of any business has to be strong and well-built. Otherwise, there is no point in marketing something that is not worth the effort, time and money to promote.
You can always hire an SEO Expert who will make sure that your website implements specific on-page ranking factors the way they are supposed to be implemented. I believe in step-by-step marketing, and covering all “marketing bases.”
2. Presentation
So you have added necessary pages and kept everything where it is supposed to go. Now here are some tweaks you need to do to make things sparkle.
Use images on your website, it has to be pictorial (i.e., images) and not only text. Customers will be eager to see how you present yourself, like the logo you market with will have a definite impact and the first impression matters the most. If you look good, you have created at least 50% trust in your customers mind. Remember you are marketing something that is supposed to clean (something)? If your website, logo or any other aspect of your website is dirty, grimy, filthy then why bother? By that I mean your website/service, of course.
1. Use a well-designed logo. They’re not that expensive to have created anymore. Think creative, think out of the box. Study other logos you like, and have the designer include those in your design.
2. Add images of your staff on your website. Say, “Cheese, everyone!”
3. Add images of the equipment you use. Show people you have the equipment to take care of their needs.
4. Add images of the rates/offers/bonus/incentives on the main page. You don’t have to give all your pricing away, but entice people to read further, or give you a call. “Call For A FREE QUOTE!”
5. Optionally, you can add images of your staff at work with the consent of your customers. This will present a sign of trust to anybody who is visiting your website.
6. Add staff introduction videos where you ask staff to talk about themselves, how they love helping customers, what they do for customers, and the services you provide. Give a tour of your business, and/or interview those who will be performing the service.
7. Similarly, you can add videos of the staff at work. This will present your customers with the message, “What you see is what you get …” At least it will create a sign of trust.
3. Marketing
From a marketing perspective, the very first thing that will benefit your website is choosing a great domain name. It has to have the keyword “cleaning” or similar in it. Search engines give a lot of preference to the domain name and age, use it to your advantage.
1. Keyword related domain name. This means, choosing a domain name with keywords in the name. Such as, BestHouseCleaningServicesInSanDiego.com. Sure, it’s long, but the search engines will love it, and your potential client will too.
2. Because your website is service-oriented, testimonials and reviews matter the most. Customers will not just hire you because your great ability to write great content about your services. Uh, no. Instead, they will definitely search for feedback of your services on your site or on other websites. Create a presence on several major review websites. You can read more about Online Reputation Management in this article at my website.
3. Gather as many testimonials from customers as you can, and add them to your website as a scrolling list on the sidebar, another presentation, as well as marketing.
4. If your business does not cover a large area, or is not inner city operated, then you need to go for local business SEO. Create a presence on Google Places, and add maps and directions to your company on your website. Submit your website to local business directories online. You can read 6 SEO Tips For Local Businesses here, as I have covered several tactics for local business SEO.
5. Leverage the power of social media to your advantage; social media is the backbone of your business. Why? Because people talk. Yes, they talk and post about their experiences and join pages/communities that they interact with in daily lives. So, create official presence on major social media platforms, join related communities and groups and share what you have to offer. You can use social media as customer support service and it will play a vital role in maintaining your websites reputation. You will keep your customers updated via social media, like updated pricing plans, promotions and discount coupons.
6. SEO, be it local or global is not the only solution as there are other routes to take when the local competition is very hard to beat. The solution is paid search results or PPC, which is entirely dependent on your budget. SEO can be cheap, but PPC on the other hand is usually a bit expensive. For example, if your website is organically ranking on the first page of the search results but is way down the page then PPC can help you show up on the top.
So, basically the top section of this article, which I referred to being neat and clean, is on-page SEO and the latter sections are off-page marketing (SEO+SEM+SMM). There are numerous factors that simply cannot be explained in one article, but I have pointed you towards the right direction, the services you need, and where you need to target your business online. Hire an Online Marketing Expert to do all of this tedious work for you! You can also learn more about Internet Marketing by taking a few of my affordable marketing courses, which are delivered to you online, and at your own pace. They’re easy to learn, and very user-friendly to implement.
