012 — Favorite Sources For Estimate Requests (Residential Cleaning)
Need to drum up some new business? Here are our favorite places to generate new residential cleaning estimate requests. Keeping your sales pipeline full is of the utmost importance.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So let's say you just started your residential cleaning company. You have the, the business formed, you have the LLC or the corporation set up. You have everything ready to go, uh, ready for your launch date. And, and it's time to, it's time to start collecting your estimate requests. It's time to start filling that calendar with estimate requests. So I'm going to share with you, uh, five of my favorite sources for generating estimate requests, for generating leads, for generating estimate requests and for generating clients. The five of them are, the first one is, uh, local service ads. Google's local service ads is a bit different than Google's search ads or PPC ads. It's still pay, it's you're paying per lead instead of per click with Google's local service ads. But you're not allowed to advertise unless you are eligible with their program, and you have to be vetted by them.
(01:06)
Um, honestly, it is a very simple process, but, uh, it will weed out people, um, who, or companies who are not legitimate. So if you have your, uh, your businesses formed and you have liability insurance already, you can go ahead and apply, uh, for Google's local service ads program and you, it's really a cheat code as far as client acquisition. Um, cuz you're only paying for the lead when someone actually reaches out to you. You're not paying for, uh, useless or clicks or anything like that. It's, it's, it's an actual lead. It's usually a phone call. Uh, next one is Google's search ads. So this one is ppc where you're paying for every single click. Uh, you're targeting certain keywords, um, that you think are going to convert best and, uh, go from there. So we have ours, ours pretty nailed down over the last few years.
(02:05)
We have a lot of data inside our Google Ads account that we can use to make better decisions. Um, in terms of, uh, deciding which keywords to target and which ones to kill. Um, the proof is in the pudding. We, we may think a certain keyword is, is perfect <laugh>, as it will, will be conducted by a, a perfect client. Um, but that's not always the case. So it's, it's really important to go back into your search ads and seeing, uh, which, which keywords are, are, are performing at an optimal rate and which aren't. Cuz being able to double down on your winners is just as much of a skill as, uh, cutting your, your losers or vice versa, whichever way I meant that. Um, my third favorite source is Facebook ads. Um, can notice a trend here.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I like paid ads. Um, simply because you can just, if anyone can really just throw up a few dollars and start advertising and generating new business right away. Not anyone with local service ads, but any eligible business owner, the, the barrier to entry has been completely eliminated. Um, and anyone can learn to do this. It's just a matter of, uh, having the time to do so. Whereas before you had to know the person, um, years and years and years ago in terms of marketing and having the connections you needed to know these people to be able to get you those marketing slots where now you can just set up an account, create an account, and, and build out your campaigns and go from there. Uh, Facebook ads is just, it, it's, to me, it is so easy, uh, because you're, you really just have to put yourself in front of all of the homeowners in your area.
(03:55)
Like, that's it. Anyone who's a homeowner is for sure a potential client. Now, you can't really pick out your perfect client from there because some people are just jerks. But really, if you put yourself in front of homeowners in your area, you're, you've got a good bet. You're gonna be generating leads pretty quick. Uh, with Google search ads, of course, those same people are going to Google and making that specific search. So they're already in the mindset of, of, of transacting. Basically, they're already in the business mindset of, you know what, I'm, I'm looking for a cleaning company, I'm probably gonna hire them as well. Uh, so being able, if you show up in the places where people are searching, you have a much higher advantage. I think I talked about that briefly in, in, in the very last episode here. Um, but whereas Facebook ads, you're just always being, you're, you're, you're doing whatever you can to stay top of mind, uh, to every homeowner in your area.
(04:57)
It's very easy to do. Uh, bark.com. B a r k.com is one that I stumbled across about three months ago. It's a website where, uh, homeowners or just, it's not just homeowners, honestly, they got a ton. Anyone can go to bark.com and find a contractor or reputable contractor. You can find web designers, landscapers, cleaning companies, um, plumbers, electricians, HVAC photographers, all sorts of service based professionals. But what you're gonna do as the business, you're gonna join as the professional. And so now Bark is gonna be able to find leads already submitted leads in your area for the, for the designated services that, that you provide. So we do residential cleaning. We, the first day I logged in, there were like four leads already in there. Uh, bark.com is generating these leads themselves and basically reselling it to people like us. Um, so we're just leveraging their traffic.
(06:11)
I mean, if people come, come to us interested in house cleaning services, we don't really care where they came from, but I'm finding that bark.com does a really good job of, of generating this interest. And again, you're not, this is a pay per lead as well. Like, you're not paying for anything other than a lead. Like you're getting, you're getting their name, then their contact information. It's not like you're paying for a click or just to show up in front of a thousand eyeballs, you know, you're getting the actual lead. And then my, uh, fifth, uh, favorite source I kind of cheated because it's all in one. I don't really know how to categorize this, but I'm just gonna call it inbound or content. But I could also call it like, you know, social media content or, uh, website content or seo. What I mean here is like content is stuff that you create and then publish online to educate or provide value for your market.
(07:20)
A blog post on your website. So, or a cleaning company will say, you know, how to get red wine stains out of Shaggy carpet is one of our blog posts. The blog post is gonna tell that person how to get red wine out of shaggy carpet and help them do the best job at it. Right there. We helped them out. We deposited a little bit of value. They're probably not gonna hire us cuz they don't need a house cleaning service. They just need to know how to get red wine out of, out of their carpet. But now that they remember that we did this, they, they know we're a cleaning company. They came to our website, they know we're a cleaning company. We helped them get their red wine outta their carpet. Eight months later, they decide, you know what I really knew, I would love to have a biweekly, a a cleaning company come in here, uh, every other week, biweekly cleaning service.
(08:08)
They're going to remember us. They're gonna go to Google and they're gonna search it and they're gonna come right to us and call us, or they're gonna fill out the form. When that happens, if people have search intent and they're specifically searching for you, every other business stands almost no chance, even if they show up ahead of you in the search rankings, even if they're buying ads, uh, on Google, because that person is, if they go in and type in custom mades, bay City, Michigan, they are looking for custom mades. They are not looking for speedy cleans or Mary MAs or two, two maids in a mop or whatever. They're looking for custom mades. So even if they were to submit a form and that company calls out, reaches out to them, and it's not custom mades, they will say, I'm sorry, I'm going like, we're moving on.
(08:54)
So they already, you've already helped them out there in the way before, eight months prior. So now you're being rewarded with that opportunity now. So if you have, let's say, 500 to a thousand of these pages on your website floating around on the internet working for you 24 7, you don't think you're going to have sales opportunities coming, coming from places you didn't even know existed. So that, that, that's why I, I kind of cheated with my fifth source because it's hard to wrap it all in one. Like if you, you can take one blog post and cut it up into a Twitter thread or multiple Twitter threads or Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, uh, videos. So you can use one article or one blog post for many different things. You don't have to create seven different pieces of content to just hit all of these areas.
(09:45)
You can repurpose and redistribute all of this stuff and use it over and over and over again. Just make it really valuable. And, and you're gonna see six months from now, you're gonna see it, it, it gained traction. Um, but the thing with content, the thing with this fifth one is that most folks don't have the patience. They don't have the time for it because, um, if anyone could go and publish for just a week straight about their business and, and build a, a huge empire would be a piece of cake. But no, the universe, God puts out the persistence test for reasons like this. Many, many other reasons as well to see who's gonna provide the value and who's gonna do it consistently enough and long enough and who deserves to be there, who deserves to soak up all of those sales opportunities. The persistence test is used to find that out.
(10:44)
So you're not gonna get it if you just publish for a week or a month or three months and say, you know what? I'm not getting any business. You will get business, but you don't even know what it, what it'll be like a year from now. It's, it's wild how once that start, that stuff starts take, getting, gaining traction. But at the end of the day, I'm a paid ads guy just simply because of how quickly you can drum it up. Um, but once you marry that with your inbound, with your SEO and your content, it's wild. Um, you're pushing your ads to find, uh, new, new fans, new new prospects and, and your content then sells, sells, whatever it is for you, sells what you're selling. Um, it nurtures that relationship. It builds that trust. And eventually, someday that person is going to decide that they need you or that they need your services. And because you were there, you helped them out, they're gonna choose you. Uh, if you have any questions about content, any questions about paid ads, generating leads for home services in, in a local market, anywhere in the US or anywhere, really reach out. You've got our email address, you've got our contact information. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to help you out. Talk to you soon.
