[Russ Chadd]

Lots of competition out there for sure...
Depending where you live and the type of customer you are trying to attract will depend on what type of marketing will work for you...
For example your more affluent areas will have customers who will be searching for carpet cleaners using the internet on ipads and smart phones, whereas in other places where the price is more of an issue fliers may work better... this is just what i have experienced...

[feldon]

Do any of you chaps use door2 door for your leaflet delivery...(I think that's the  name), its a franchise......they are always advertising in our area for distributors...
 

It is a franchise and each franchisee is responsible for the a particular postcode area so you will not be dealing with a national company who will sub-contract it out.  I nearly brought a franchise a few years ago and was impressed with the set up. The one negative I would say is that it is expensive, at least for solus.

[AshWhite]

IIRC, it's called Dor2Dor - yes they are expensive, but I suppose it might be better paying to get 100% of 5000 leaflets delivered than 50% of 10,000.

[Ian Gourlay]

referal rate is 35-40% of my initial work
[/quote

I would buy a ticket if you ran a session on how to acheive this provideing you offered a double my money back guarantee.

Worked with some of the top Direct Selling People in Uk and no one ever acheived that.

[Craigp]

This is the misconception newbies have, they think, well, if I work for next to nothing or do Groupon Il get x number of repeats and referals and make money on those.

In actual fact reccomendeds are so small you wouldn't believe. Also I find recomendeds happen mostly with very close people, eg. you do the Mothers then the Daughter calls.

Plus for a newbie repeats are going to be like 5% when they start out as they are not doing as good a job as a seasoned pro. and that 5% will not repeat for 1 or 2 years, maybe 3

[Allan Simmons]

Our repeat rate varies between monthly 45 and 55% of turnover, and in January is as high as 70+%, and referrals around 8 - 12%, but we have been around almost 24 years.

Mailing/emailing existing clients is what generates most of that repeat work.  The rest comes, as Mike said very early on, is from previous customers who get our leaflet through the door and that prompts them.  After doing them for leaflets for 20+ years we still hit each area every 12 - 13 weeks and we find previous customers are waiting for the offer to arrive, some even call to ask when the leaflet is coming again. If I just looked at how much new business we get from leaflets it would be a very expensive way of advertising, but when we add in the repeat and referral work it generates then they are cost effective.  It's tricky what to suggest as we are very lucky that we have an established client base, so although it's not a walk in the park easy at the moment there are enough loyal long established clients coming back to make it okay times.

I'd go visiting Estate agent's, retailers and HAIRDRESSERS.  Offer to clean the owner of the hairdressers carpets annually at home for free if you can put some of your cards on their counter.  Hairdressers are great to get in with as they are chatty with their clients and have a very personal relationship with them.  If they recommend you then they will be chatting about you in the shop and there will be a 'buzz' generated in the shop about you.  It's not easy to do, but works.

Al.

[Hilton]

IIRC, it's called Dor2Dor - yes they are expensive, but I suppose it might be better paying to get 100% of 5000 leaflets delivered than 50% of 10,000.

Exactly,  If you want to get them done properly then you are going to have to pay for it.

Friend of mine bought one of their franchises, (they are quite cheap) in Surrey and uses it to promote his landscape gardening business while delivering other people leaflets, and getting paid for it, he has about 10 part time delivery staff all monitored and checked, he is guaranteed that all of his leaflets and brochures get to where they are intended.

His landscape gardening business is flying, the leaflet business breaks even or makes a small profit,

[Phil @ Extreme Clean]

Mate iv'e struggled for the 2 years iv'e been on my own iv'e had 1 job in the last 2 weeks iv'e scraped to go in local paper and leaflets but the phone just won't ring i just keep going in the hope eventually i'l get there i added gutter vaccing and get the odd job from that but only enough to keep the business running it will come in the end just got too knuckle down and keep at it.

[jim mca]

If you are struggling but want to keep going here are some options that dont cost the earth

Window cleaning ( regular income )
Oven cleaning
Office cleaning ( regular income )
Pressure washing
or get a part time job to take the pressure off a bit

And put up your prices so you can discount and run offers

[M.Acorn]

Been up and down for me this year too, lost an agency that I was doing about 1.5k pcm for ,as they found someone else who will work for a third of what I was charging them, but I have done less jobs, with bigger tickets since.
My worry is had a really good year last year, come Jan Mr Tax man is going to shaft me...

[*Hector*]

come Jan Mr Tax man is going to shaft me...

Buy some vaseline ... bend over and take it like a man.... 
 

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

your doing something wrong we working in the same town and four the last 5 weeks we been flat out !

[Carpet Dawg]

Yeah great, rub it in the guy face Susan 

[wynne jones]

So the moral delima is Susan, do you help out a local carpet cleaner, or offer him a few quid for his van? 

[Dave_Lee]

If you had say 2 or 3 vans with operators, going out there every day (getting lots of calls because you are maga cheap, compared to solo operators) doing the actual graft for you, and after they are paid and ALL expenses taken off you make £25 per van per day clear profit. That's £75.. per day, or £375.. per 5 day week. Not a bad extra income.
However using the same cheap priced tacticts as a sole trader, one man band like most of us are, with just the one van, your income would be 1/3rd of that = £125.. per week profit.
If these rough profit figures are on the low side, even if they were trebled, with both examples working flat out.The cheap multi unit operator would be making  over £1,000.. per week while the one man operator would be making only £375.. and doing all the work.
That's why 'cheap' can work well for multi units but not so good for solo's.
Obviously there's more to it than just that, but it is generaly true.
Dave.

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Getting the work for a multi van operation and keeping it all year long is the hard bit that's why Allans marketing budget will be higher than most peoples turn over although I do know of a cleaner in Sheffield who has 3 vans and is very cheap IMO half my prices or less and is mainly pulled out with work.

Shaun

[John Kelly]

I used to run an active referrall campaign. It worked really well and cost very little. Everyone tells you you've done a great job and they are going to pass your name on. They don't, you may get the odd friend and family member but thats it.
So make it worth their while to actively refer you. I used to hand them a sheet of vouchers, signed and dated with the customers name on. When I got 3 back from new customers the original one got 20 quid, that was 10 years ago.
The beauty of this is that I used to gets lots of ones and twos but only a few threes so over the couple of years I did this it didn't cost me much.

[AshWhite]

I wonder how the OP is getting on now, 3 weeks later?

[Allan Simmons]

I think I know who you mean Shaun, they have a reasonable reputation too, not one of the many we hear about regularly.

Every business has a different structure and costs associated with that, so one size does not fit all.  One thing is certain, there are clients out there at every price level, you just have to decide where you sit and go out after that work, not worry about the rest.  No matter how bad things get in the economy there will always be those who want really cheap and always those who are willing to pay.  Domestic carpet cleaning is a little recession proof in that those who would never consider having cleaned and would just replace perhaps cant afford to just replace so now clean instead.  This means if you work at that 'higher' end of the market they would never choose the cheapest cleaner as that just goes against the grain.  To clean, let alone use the cheapest cleaner is just something they would not do.  So you could say the 'higher' end of the market is less prone to the recession than the 'cheaper' end of the market.  Add to that that some people start up carpet cleaning when they've been made redundant as they think it's easy and flood the market with cheap prices, that just adds more competition at the cheaper end.

If any of that makes sense?

[Craigp]

No not really Allan.