Any business that wants to grow and thrive needs to generate a steady stream of leads. When you’re in the house cleaning business, you may lose current customers for any number of reasons. A customer may move, decide to handle cleaning themselves, lose their job and need to reduce household expenses—the list goes on. To replace those customers who leave, you need to maintain a pipeline of house cleaning leads: People looking for a service provider like you.
Here, we’ll explore 12 of the most effective ways to get house cleaning leads.
Table of contents
- Try Google Local Services Ads
- Experiment with search ads
- Market on social media
- Get on local listings sites
- Generate more online reviews
- Start a referral program
- Offer a discount code for new customers
- Incorporate chat into your website
- Design a subscription service
- Create a custom promotion
- Get engaged in neighborhood forums
- Strengthen your site’s local SEO
12 ideas to help get house cleaning leads
In the modern era of digital marketing, there are dozens of ways to connect with homeowners and renters in the market for house cleaning services. This is the first crucial step in your process of leading new people along the journey from stranger to customer.
1. Try Google Local Services Ads
Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) are available to service-based businesses, including home cleaning companies. There are several benefits to running Google LSAs:
- Google Local Services Ads appear at the top of search results, above other sponsored results, maps, and organic search.
- Most search ads charge you for clicks (hence the term pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising). But Google LSA users are charged for leads—you only pay when someone contacts your business through the ad.
- They have trust signifiers built in. Google LSAs incorporate your online ratings. Plus, you can apply for Google Guaranteed status, which adds a badge to your profile. These help you stand out immediately as a trustworthy provider.
Google LSAs are a great way to reach high-intent searchers. When someone types “house cleaner near me” into Google, you want to be one of the first businesses they see! With Google LSAs, you increase your chances of landing at the top of the results page.
🛑 Running Google Ads and not sure how they’re performing? Find out with a free, instant audit >> WordStream’s Free Google Ads Grader
2. Experiment with search ads
While Google LSAs are an excellent advertising tool for service-based businesses, house cleaners can also benefit from running traditional search ads.
Google, Bing, and other search engines offer various advertising options. Most traditional search ads are pay-per-click, meaning you pay for ads whenever someone clicks the link to your site.
Paid search ads appear immediately below Google Local Services Ads.
While Google LSAs put searchers directly in touch with your brand via phone or message, traditional search ads allow you to engage with other searchers who may not be ready to make an immediate purchase.
Plus, by running a range of ads on search engines, you can appear in multiple spots on the results page. The more times your name appears, the more opportunities leads have to click on it.
You can see what results you can expect in our search advertising benchmarks.
3. Market on social media
With more than 91% of the US population on at least one social media platform, taking your lead generation efforts onto social is a wise move. Social media allows you to use paid and organic tactics to connect with new house cleaning leads.
Organic social media is about the long game. Connect with new people over time and continue to create educational, helpful content that positions you as a trusted provider. When your followers are ready to hire a house cleaner, they’ll know where to look!
Social advertising can expand your reach more quickly. All social platforms allow brands to target their advertising to people based on demographics, location, and other key attributes. If you’re looking to connect with millennial homeowners in your metro area, social advertising can help you reach those people! Some social platforms, like Meta, even offer ads that are specifically focused on lead generation, like Facebook lead ads.
4. Get on local listings sites
One of the best places to generate home cleaning leads are sites where locals head for advice from their neighbors—namely, local listings sites.
Local listings sites include Yelp, Angi, Better Business Bureau, Yellow Pages, and Houzz. Local listings also include directories managed by search engines, like Google Business Profiles and Bing Places.
These sites are often a first stop for homeowners looking for a service provider. By establishing your profile on local listings sites, you give your home cleaning business the chance to be found. And when you create a complete profile with accurate information, great photos, and strong reviews, you stand out as a professional brand.
Once you get onto local listings sites, it’s vital you keep your profile uniform and up to date across them all. Using a local listings management tool provides you with a bird’s eye view of all your listings and makes edits easier.
📍 Are your listings up to date? Find out with our free business listings grader!
5. Generate more online reviews
One of the biggest hurdles home services businesses face with digital marketing is building trust. After all, your audience is looking for a stranger to come and clean their home—you need to quickly communicate the honesty and professionalism of your entire team.
Online reviews are a great way to do that. The more reviews you can amass, the better. A robust catalog of positive reviews shows that your team is consistently great, and it helps leads feel confident that you’ll do a great job for them, too.
Another perk that comes with accumulating reviews? Businesses with more online reviews tend to land at the top of Google Maps results.
What’s the best way to get more reviews? Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking! Include a link to review your business in digital receipts, and follow up with new customers, asking them to leave a review. (Just be aware that some platforms, like Yelp, do not allow businesses to solicit reviews.)
Once the reviews start rolling in, respond to them all. Even a bad review can become a positive for you if you handle it in a kind, professional manner and take steps to make things right.
6. Start a referral program
Often, the best new leads come from your existing customers. Research shows that customers who come to a business through referral have a 16% higher average customer lifetime value and tend to be more profitable than other customers.
That’s why launching a formal referral program can be a big win for your house cleaning business. Referral programs offer your existing customers some kind of incentive to refer their friends and family. When their contact books their first service, your existing customer gets a reward!
While the incentive may cost you a bit in the short term, remember that the long-term value of a referred customer is high. It’s worth it to spend a little today to earn more tomorrow!
7. Offer a discount code for new customers
Sometimes, all your new leads need to become customers is a little encouragement. A discount code can become that push a hesitant lead needs to book a house cleaning service with you.
When and where you choose to offer your discounts is up to you. You may advertise a specific holiday and post your deal online (“This Memorial Day, all new customers get 20% off their first service!”). Alternatively, you may offer it only to specific customers, like those on your email mailing list who haven’t booked yet.
Get promotion ideas you can use all year long in our Marketing Calendar Guide.
8. Incorporate chat into your website
How quickly you engage your leads matters. Research shows a 21-fold drop in the chances of qualifying a prospect if your response time expands from five to 30 minutes. That means finding ways to connect with leads lightning-fast is essential.
Enter website chat. By incorporating a chat function onto your website, you invite leads to engage with your business on a deeper level. And when your chat is automated to respond to basic queries, you ensure leads get instant service from your business.
9. Design a subscription service
People who are looking to book home cleaning services are seeking ease. They want a provider to take one of their many tasks off their list, and anything you can do to add even more convenience to your offering can help attract leads to your business.
A subscription service is a win-win for you and prospective customers. When leads sign up for a subscription service, you get guaranteed recurring revenue, and they can rest assured you have them on your schedule for regular cleaning service—one less thing for them to remember to book!
10. Create a custom promotion
Designing a sweepstakes or contest is another great way to grab your new leads’ attention.
Your approach can be as simple or sophisticated as you like. A social media contest is a fairly straightforward way to create, launch, and spread the word about your business. Alternatively, you can create a multifaceted campaign with ads, email promotion, and an event landing page.
People who head to this house cleaning site from Yelp are greeted with this promotional offer.
11. Get engaged in neighborhood forums
There are dozens of online communities where neighbors gather to connect. Some are on traditional social media channels, like a Facebook group that serves a town, city, or neighborhood. Others, like Nextdoor, are online platforms specifically created to bring neighbors together.
Either way, your business can benefit from joining these forums. Often, locals are looking for service provider recommendations. If you’re on the platform, you can offer your own services, or your customers in the group can tag your business in their recommendations.
12. Strengthen your site’s local SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of tactics that can help your website rank more highly in relevant search engine queries. Local SEO takes things a step further, and helps businesses that work in a specific geography to connect with a nearby audience.
Incorporating keywords like the city or region you serve into your website headers is an integral part of local SEO optimization.
Key local SEO tactics include:
- Ensuring your website is designed to offer mobile and desktop users alike a great experience.
- Including relevant local keywords in your website copy and blog posts.
- Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions on each page of your website.
👀 Want help finding the right keywords? Get our guide >> Complete Guide to Local Keyword Research
Start generating house cleaning leads today
If you don’t have a solid lead generation plan in place, today is the perfect time to start creating one! You don’t have to develop an entire strategy overnight. Instead, start with one of these tactics and see how it goes. Once more house cleaning leads start coming your way, you’ll gain confidence and likely feel inspired to implement other methods.
And if you’re looking for content marketing tips to help you nurture new leads and move them toward a purchase decision, check out this article on creating a successful content marketing funnel.
