Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Robin Ray on July 03, 2010, 10:43:07 am
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As ive mentioned before Im Window cleaner considering carpet cleaning as an add on. I dont advertise at all at present apart from offering different services to my existing customer base. So i just wondered:
What do you all find is the best way of getting work?
If your way isnt listed tell us what it is.
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I use all of them, all with varying degrees of success.
recommendations are very different and by far the best way of generating work and will lead to more work but only affective if you are competent and do a good job, if you dont :(
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the best form of advertising without a shadow of a doubt is doing an amazing job while being polite and friendly to your clients, for that reason i clicked recomendations. 65% of my work this year has come from repeats and referals.
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Recommendations have got to be the best but I confess
65% of my work comes from paper ads and roughly 25%
from t'internet the rest is recs at the mo.
John
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Must say got to agree with derek and repeat anr rec,s are the way to go to build up a business mate..Just takes time and there is no instant solution mate..
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I notice going out and talking to people yourself isn't on the list. ;)
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Talking to people is how I initialy got my window cleaning rounds. What im interested in is carpet cleaning specific advertising.
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To give you a straight forward answer Robin, there isn't one great form of advertising you need apart from regulars and old customers and recommends that come with time, a select set of adverts to pick up new customers. Window cleaning is different there you have a customers that have you every month and are more or less locked in, you can door knock successfully as people need a regular window cleaner where as door knocking carpet cleaning customers is no where near as successful and you need to keep going as customers may only have you once a year if you are lucky.
Shaun
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Can't help you there then Rob, sorry. :(
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Im a firm believer in leaflets, only just got a website so cant comment on that but ya def need one. Had a few jobs lately from my free listing in yellow pages been local jobs a few streets away obviously like buying local as i do, wish i had an address in every town 8)
Recommendations is def the best, I hit lucky with this 1 leaflet he was very happy with the clean and the custys just keep on coming. He turns out to be very well known in the area and he even put my leaflet up on the notice board in the local garage, a couple of people have lost my number and they go to the garage for it.
Then again you can go 1000 leaflets without a call.
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I did 4000 in one hit in Jan had one job so far :'(
Did 1000 recently got four jobs from them ???
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"Piece of string" Springs to mind!
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Why does a peice of string spring in to your mind? ???
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he question is a bit of a How long is a piece of string question.
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The answer might be in another thread ( tongue in cheek ) ........cheapest ever.
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Robert you are going to have to spell it out for the likes of me! ???
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recommendations = advertising?
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Wynne
My post was " tongue in cheek " as I was referring to the post titled......" cheapest ever "
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recomendations = customers advertising for you = Advertising
Maybe I should have re-frased the question
"how do you find most of your work comes to you?" ;D
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Repeats and recs all the way ;D
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Robin,
Why not do a leaflet drop to your existing window cleaning clients?
A-side... Your anticipated window cleaning dates for the next two months (hopefully, they will keep the leaflet for that time).
B-side... "New carpet cleaning service starting up in 4 weeks (or whatever time period). Get your existing client's discount"
If they trust you to go around the back of the house to do windows, then at least you have "one foot in the door".
Garry
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How many people here have had their websites optimized, for the areas they cover? The bloke who made up my website wants £500 to do it, over two months.
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Robin,
Why not do a leaflet drop to your existing window cleaning clients?
A-side... Your anticipated window cleaning dates for the next two months (hopefully, they will keep the leaflet for that time).
B-side... "New carpet cleaning service starting up in 4 weeks (or whatever time period). Get your existing client's discount"
If they trust you to go around the back of the house to do windows, then at least you have "one foot in the door".
Garry
Hi Garry
That my idea I only really want to work my existing customer base without doing any other advertising at all. Im glad to see most people get work via recomendations and repeats. Its the same with window cleaning, just down to doing a good job really.
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It has to be the best way.
This way it's just you, chatting to your existing customers, rather that a salesman trying to flog them something. Hope it goes well.
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hope youve got a big database robin, i would guess for every 250 people that have there windows cleaned, 1 of them will have there carpets done as well. carpet cleaning is rare'r than you think.
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Robin,
In fairness, Derek's made a good point there.
Steve W,
How many people here have had their websites optimized, for the areas they cover? The bloke who made up my website wants £500 to do it, over two months.
I'm not sure there is a simple answer to this. Depending on where you are and what the competition is, this could be a bargain or a rip off.
Does he mean optimising the site itself (which he should have done already) or is the money for on going promotion (link building etc)?
If you could post the site here, I'm sure quite a few people will take a look at it for you.
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hope youve got a big database robin, i would guess for every 250 people that have there windows cleaned, 1 of them will have there carpets done as well. carpet cleaning is rare'r than you think.
Im hopeing my customer base will lend its self to this. Most of them are large 4/5 bedroom houses very hosue prowd people. Most of them have their facias and gutters done once a year. I have had most of the custys 8-10 years I also have acces to my fathers and brothers customers.
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Recommendation will always be the best way to get work........unless you're crap!!! ;D
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Recommendation will always be the best way to get work........unless you're crap!!!
That ought to be pinned on every office wall. Great one Ian.
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hope i'm wrong robin, let us know your convesrion rate.
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hope i'm wrong robin, let us know your convesrion rate.
You have me wondering if its worth it now.
Have you actualy tried this derek?
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Robin - you a window cleaner thinking of going into carpet cleaning.
When did you have your carpets cleaned?
"we" are a dirty nation, we wash our clothes very frequently, but carpets which have all sorts trod into them, and trap all sorts of allergies etc; barely get a look in.
Sure, we all have clients who are regular every 12 months or maybe 6 months.... but most dont have them cleaned at all!
"They dont need cleaning - they were only put down brand new 5 years ago" :o
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Sounds like you should all start window cleaning ;D
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Ive got over 300 window cleaning customers in my first 2 years of carpet cleaning i could count on one hand how many carpet cleaning jobs i done for my window cleaning customers to be honest i think it went against me kind of got the feeling they thought i would be offering to to do there grass cutting next.
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robin
no ive never tried and to be honest, you know your custies a lot better than i do, just given you some of my knowledge on how hard it is to find someone that needs there carpets cleaned, like joe said with his 5 year carpet, my wife had a call today today for a wine stain, "its been down 9 years and never needed cleaning and its worn well, i only want the wine stain out, noy a full clean"
why don't you survey 100 of your best custies and see what they think before you make any rash decisions?
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Robin,
Derek has said what I was struggling to. The leaflet suggestion was to guage interest. If you only had a few who were interested, you could always refer them to an existing carpet cleaner in return for a referral fee.
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Thanks for all your comments. Ill see how the interest goes.
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How many people here have had their websites optimized, for the areas they cover? The bloke who made up my website wants £500 to do it, over two months.
The key thing here is to pay to get SEO based on results- if someone wants money per month without guaranteeing eg top 4 for your chosen phrase then find another supplier. I have found a quote for results based SEO and gone ahead
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How many people here have had their websites optimized, for the areas they cover? The bloke who made up my website wants £500 to do it, over two months.
The key thing here is to pay to get SEO based on results- if someone wants money per month without guaranteeing eg top 4 for your chosen phrase then find another supplier. I have found a quote for results based SEO and gone ahead
all the bad seo's guarantee top 4 ;) good ones don't
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Roheapest is bin
How do you get paid/
Actually the best form of advertising and the quickest and the cheapest is to knock on your customers door dressed in smart casuals
Tell them you are introducing a new service offer a new obligation Free qoute for three rooms together with a Free Hall Clean for agreeing to have qoute
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all the bad seo's guarantee top 4 good ones don't
Spot on Adam.
If they guarrantee a position, then I would suggest that they lie about other things too!
The other thing is that if you try and do it too quickly you could well get G - slapped.
The only way to guarrantee a position is with Adwords.
Garry
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How many people here have had their websites optimized, for the areas they cover? The bloke who made up my website wants £500 to do it, over two months.
The key thing here is to pay to get SEO based on results- if someone wants money per month without guaranteeing eg top 4 for your chosen phrase then find another supplier. I have found a quote for results based SEO and gone ahead
all the bad seo's guarantee top 4 ;) good ones don't
But if you only pay them when they get top 4 they have an interest in getting you there?
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Would you take on a job if you only got paid when the site reached a certain position (at the whim of the search engines)?
The SEO guy would most likely use link farms or spam bookmarking for a really quick fix.
Then, a couple of weeks after they have been paid, the site gets slapped for violating Webmaster rules and drops like a stone.
The next SEO person would have to work longer and harder to get the site back to it's previous position.
I can see your argument but most decent SEO people would not get involved.
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getting to the top is not a problem, it's staying there which is what you want to pay for. as garry has said they'll most likely be using quick fix tricks which google will often see as black hat ways to improve serp. some will give good results, others will give terrible results.
read their terms and i bet it says they only need to get you to top 4 once. also what are the keywords used to find you? i love it when the cold call and say they'll get me found in top position for when someone searches for my business. well duh! if someone types in green clean solution i hardly expect to get much competition