Starting a carpet cleaning business

[savefox]

Ah, that explains why it's so close to what we do!



We mostly do one keyword per adgroup.

If you served four cities then I'd have 5 campaigns like this:

View attachment 47104

You might find more keywords to bid on, and there's canabalisation with Google's fuzzier keyword matching.

Add negatives of course such as:

• "job"
• "jobs"
• "course"
• "courses"
• etc.

Meh. I don't care about Google's warnings. We have one ad in the ad group and often have 15 headlines, but we pin "SERVICE LOCATION" and "LOCATION SERVICE" to headline 1, and maybe pin CTAs to headline 3.

I did an experiment and tried to get a rating of Excellent for our ads instead of our usual Poor ratings. CTR fell off a cliff so we reverted back. Bear in mind this is a sample size of one and we didn't run the test that long (since the client's visitor volume dropped too much).

thank you, that's very helpful. Do you create a separate landing page for each headline or do you use dynamic keyword insertion?

 

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[Andy Black]

thank you, that's very helpful. Do you create a separate landing page for each headline or do you use dynamic keyword insertion?

We don't use dynamic keyword insertion. We pass the headline via a parameter in the URL.

 

[fosterzz]

@savefox what's your current update on your job?

If it was full time and you cut down your hours, on average what would you be doing a week now?

 

[Paul David]

It's winter time and the business is super slow right now. The ads that were bringing several customers per day just a couple months ago aren't really working. Nobody wants to have their carpets cleaned right now, so I'm only doing 2-3 jobs per week. Got my hours cut at my job, too. Should I still try to advertise a lot? What do you guys do when it's slow? Go door knocking? Send postcards?

Send me your ads and I'll take a look, the 30 carpet cleaners I work with are all busy.

 

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[Paul David]

Thanks Paul,

I'll definitely implement the ones I'm not doing, especially replying to reviews. By the way, most of my reviews don't even show up on my profile even though I know for sure that a customer left one. Is there any way to fix it? It looks like it's a common problem

They'll show up at some point, that's Google for you!

 

[Paul David]

It's winter time and the business is super slow right now. The ads that were bringing several customers per day just a couple months ago aren't really working. Nobody wants to have their carpets cleaned right now, so I'm only doing 2-3 jobs per week. Got my hours cut at my job, too. Should I still try to advertise a lot? What do you guys do when it's slow? Go door knocking? Send postcards?

Facebook ads. I've still got campaigns running with the same ads since COVID!

 

[savefox]

Send me your ads and I'll take a look, the 30 carpet cleaners I work with are all busy.

I'm not running Facebook ads at the moment, but the last time I tried it looked like this:
(city) home owners!
Is your carpet feeling a little dull lately? Let us bring it back to life with our fantastic carpet cleaning services! Our team of local experts uses the latest technology and eco-friendly solutions to get rid of dirt, stains, and allergens deep within your carpet fibers.

Imagine a clean and healthy home with carpets that look and feel like new. That's exactly what you'll get with our thorough and effective cleaning process. And the best part? You can book your appointment today and receive a 10% discount on your first cleaning with the promocode "new".

Don't wait, bring the sparkle back to your carpets and enjoy a fresh and clean home. Book now!

(before/after pictures)
link to website.

I got some cheap clicks on it but 0 bookings

 

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[savefox]

@savefox what's your current update on your job?

If it was full time and you cut down your hours, on average what would you be doing a week now?

I'm working like 15 hours per week at my job right now with an hour commute each way. I'm probably going to quit in the next couple weeks. I will do Amazon flex deliveries until carpet cleaning picks up so I could work whenever I want and make more per hour.

 

[Parks]

I will do Amazon flex deliveries until carpet cleaning picks up so I could work whenever I want and make more per hour.

Are you only doing Google ads for advertising? Have you tried knocking doors yet or fliers?

That could be one skew right there in a way. If your only waiting for Google ads to get your customers, then they will be exposed to all the other companies with higher reviews when their searching for that service and exposed to your ad.

Versus if your the first one at the door you will be the only one in their mind at the moment

 

[savefox]

Are you only doing Google ads for advertising? Have you tried knocking doors yet or fliers?

That could be one skew right there in a way. If your only waiting for Google ads to get your customers, then they will be exposed to all the other companies with higher reviews when their searching for that service and exposed to your ad.

Versus if your the first one at the door you will be the only one in their mind at the moment

I'm doing Google Ads, Google local services ads and I'm getting some leads from GMB + referrals and some repeat business. I think if I master these channels, I'll have enough work to fill the schedule. Especially in the busy season.

 

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[savefox]

@Andy Black the lead form didn't work for some reason. I think I only got 1 lead from it for the week

 

[Andy Black]

@Andy Black the lead form didn't work for some reason. I think I only got 1 lead from it for the week

1 lead out of how many visitors?

 

[savefox]

1 lead out of how many visitors?

About 50

 

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[Andy Black]

About 50

Are the search terms visitors used good?

How many people started the leadform vs completing it?

How many calls did you get in that time period?


Tip: Don't say "The leadform didn't work". Say "Only 1 out of 50 visitors completed the leadform". This will get you to take a step back and thinking about your visitors.

 

[savefox]

Are the search terms visitors used good?

How many people started the leadform vs completing it?

How many calls did you get in that time period?


Tip: Don't say "The leadform didn't work". Say "Only 1 out of 50 visitors completed the leadform". This will get you to take a step back and thinking about your visitors.

I think the conversion rate of the form was about 15%. Actually 2 visitors with hopes and dreams completed the form, but one of them was a repeat customer. I also got 1 call from the website. As soon as I returned online booking I got 2 leads so maybe people want to see the prices before contacting us.
I'll probably leave the online booking feature and add a "call us" button right beside it

 

[savefox]

It's been a challenging two months. Spending $100 on ads every single day while working for 12 hours without any return was pretty depressing, but the hard work is finally beginning to pay off. Something changed. The phone started to ring. I've been consistently making $500-$800 every day 5 days a week for the past couple of weeks. If this trend continues, I'm on track to hit at least $10,000 in April, which was my goal for June.

What I've improved:

Pricing. I was pulling prices out of my a$$ and didn't have any system in place. Now they are set in stone. I offer 3 tiers of service. When offered 3 options, customers are less likely to shop around for a better price, and most often choose the middle one. You just have to clearly communicate the value of each option. When you give them only one price, they'll keep searching and getting bids from other companies. I was able to increase profits by 20-25% by doing that, and there's still plenty of room to raise my prices.

Follow ups and customer retention

Every customer who gets a quote and doesn't book right away receives 7 emails and 2 text messages over a 20 day period with a personal message and a link to book their appointment.
Every customer who books an appointment, receives a confirmation, a reminder one week prior to their appointment, a reminder one day before their appointment, an email requesting a review after their appointment, as well as follow-up messages at 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year to get repeat business. I'm giving out 3 $30 dollar gift cards to every customer that I like that can be used towards future purchases or shared with friends and family as a way to encourage referrals. I'm also going to mail a gift card to every customer that I've had who paid more than $200 for their service.

Google my business, website, ads, etc

Post an update or upload a picture on your business profile every day. Make sure to get reviews and reply to every single one. Don't just say "thank you", you have to use your keywords in your replies. Download a QR with your review link onto your phone and have the customer scan it before you leave and then email them a link to leave a review. I'm getting reviews from 80% of them that way. Just asking to leave a review doesn't work that well.
I also improved the speed and design of my website, uploaded a bunch of real pictures and a video. You have to build trust and pre-sell them before they call you.

Quality of service

I got some new tools and YouTube training to make the work easier and get better results. I'm actually doing what I'm expected to do. Providing a quality service. You have to be at least decent at what you were hired to do. Be friendly, polite and personable. Get some uniforms and wrap your truck to look legit. Walk in with a nice tool bag and a tablet to show them their estimate and get a signature. Do a good job, get a review, give out gift cards. Repeat. If they really liked the service, your business will grow exponentially just from that

Don't try to sell your service to everyone. Focus on your target audience. Don't waste your time on cheap asses. Their houses are the dirtiest and they don't want to pay anything.

 

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[Parks]

Quality of service

I got some new tools and YouTube training to make the work easier and get better results. I'm actually doing what I'm expected to do. Providing a quality service. You have to be at least decent at what you were hired to do. Be friendly, polite and personable. Get some uniforms and wrap your truck to look legit. Walk in with a nice tool bag and a tablet to show them their estimate and get a signature. Do a good job, get a review, give out gift cards. Repeat. If they really liked the service, your business will grow exponentially just from that

Don't try to sell your service to everyone. Focus on your target audience. Don't waste your time on cheap asses. Their houses are the dirtiest and they don't want to pay anything.

What did you end upgrading with? Did you get a CRB or OP?

 

[Roli]

Hello,

I'm 21 years old. After 2 years of wasting time and action faking I decided to start a home service business, specifically carpet cleaning. I will be doing hardwood, tile and upholstery as well. I chose this idea because it's pretty easy and inexpensive to start, doesn't require any special licensees or permits, and there is demand for this kind of service in my area. Also, my monthly expenses will be extremely low, so I'll get to keep most of the profit I make. I don't have any previous marketing or cleaning experience, except for running FB ads for some Chinese junk, so I'll have to learn everything from scratch. I hope this thread will be helpful for someone wanting to start a service business, and I will appreciate any advice from you.

What I have done so far:
1)Website with online booking and chat - Wordpress(divi plugin), zenbooker, tawk to. Hired a copywriter to do the content part, because my English sucks.
2)Google business profile with some pictures of my carpet being cleaned.
3)Bought cleaning equipment (175 buffer(used), oreck orbiter, good vacuum and some other stuff) - around $1000
4)Facebook business profile
5)Got a google guarantee badge which might help with getting more leads
6)Currently running a google ads campaign, $30 per day budget. I have 2 ad groups. One for exact match keywords and the other one for phrase match. Everything else is the same. Got 3 leads so far for about $15 dollars each.
7)Did 2 small carpet cleaning jobs by myself, the clients were happy with the result. They were just 1 room cleanings that took me about an hour to do. Charged $100 for each. I have my next job scheduled for next week. Missed a few clients by not answering my phone and not replying in chat. Missed a 4 bedroom house cleaning because of my full time job.

I think my main problem is that I don't have a clear USP and I'm having a hard time differentiating from the competitors. I have a good looking website with convenient online booking system and upfront pricing. My method of cleaning allows me to advertise 1 hour dry time. I have a 10% discount for new customers. But I feel like I can come up with something better, so I could justify raising my prices.

I'm tired of commuting to a shitty job every day and wasting my time there. But I'll have to keep it for some time to pay for my expenses.

It's funny because I've just come from @piano's thread, which I have been following from the very start.

He is a 16 year old living in Germany who has started a window cleaning business. At the start he was saying a lot of similar things to you, we encouraged him to just get out there and start knocking on doors.

@piano is now doing extremely well, he has a growing client list and is bubbling with confidence. Bare in mind he has no car or driving license, doesn't run Google ads and often gets the bus to and from work if he can't get a lift with one of his parents.

So yeah, go and have a read of that, it will inspire you to just get out there and do it. Don't worry about USPs, don't worry about your competitors, don't even worry about ads, you're already on the right track, just keep yourself out there.

Good luck!

EDIT: Just realised the age of your OP, anyway I see you are indeed pushing on. Good stuff!

 

[fosterzz]

It's been a challenging two months. Spending $100 on ads every single day while working for 12 hours without any return was pretty depressing, but the hard work is finally beginning to pay off. Something changed. The phone started to ring. I've been consistently making $500-$800 every day 5 days a week for the past couple of weeks. If this trend continues, I'm on track to hit at least $10,000 in April, which was my goal for June.

What I've improved:

Pricing. I was pulling prices out of my a$$ and didn't have any system in place. Now they are set in stone. I offer 3 tiers of service. When offered 3 options, customers are less likely to shop around for a better price, and most often choose the middle one. You just have to clearly communicate the value of each option. When you give them only one price, they'll keep searching and getting bids from other companies. I was able to increase profits by 20-25% by doing that, and there's still plenty of room to raise my prices.

Follow ups and customer retention

Every customer who gets a quote and doesn't book right away receives 7 emails and 2 text messages over a 20 day period with a personal message and a link to book their appointment.
Every customer who books an appointment, receives a confirmation, a reminder one week prior to their appointment, a reminder one day before their appointment, an email requesting a review after their appointment, as well as follow-up messages at 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year to get repeat business. I'm giving out 3 $30 dollar gift cards to every customer that I like that can be used towards future purchases or shared with friends and family as a way to encourage referrals. I'm also going to mail a gift card to every customer that I've had who paid more than $200 for their service.

Google my business, website, ads, etc

Post an update or upload a picture on your business profile every day. Make sure to get reviews and reply to every single one. Don't just say "thank you", you have to use your keywords in your replies. Download a QR with your review link onto your phone and have the customer scan it before you leave and then email them a link to leave a review. I'm getting reviews from 80% of them that way. Just asking to leave a review doesn't work that well.
I also improved the speed and design of my website, uploaded a bunch of real pictures and a video. You have to build trust and pre-sell them before they call you.

Quality of service

I got some new tools and YouTube training to make the work easier and get better results. I'm actually doing what I'm expected to do. Providing a quality service. You have to be at least decent at what you were hired to do. Be friendly, polite and personable. Get some uniforms and wrap your truck to look legit. Walk in with a nice tool bag and a tablet to show them their estimate and get a signature. Do a good job, get a review, give out gift cards. Repeat. If they really liked the service, your business will grow exponentially just from that

Don't try to sell your service to everyone. Focus on your target audience. Don't waste your time on cheap asses. Their houses are the dirtiest and they don't want to pay anything.

Boom @savefox absolute golden to keep getting updates from you and see how much sharper your thinking process is becoming.

Honestly really appreciate you sharing all this, looking forward to see how you keep scaling the business, keep it up mate and much love from Scotland.

 

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[savefox]

What did you end upgrading with? Did you get a CRB or OP?

A CRB +175

 

[savefox]

This week was the best so far
Monday - $730 from 3 jobs
Tuesday - day job + $450 from 1 job
Wednesday - day job + $230 from 1 job
Thursday - $700 from 3 jobs
Friday - $500 from 2 jobs
Saturday - $1000 from 3 jobs

Gross revenue ~$3500
Expenses ~$1200. $500 - google ads, $500 google local services, $200 - gas and chems.
I'm optimizing google ads and google local service ads right now, so I won't be spending that much on ads in the future. I'm hoping to bring down the marketing costs to 15-20%

I'm currently booking 1-3 jobs per day. Just booked a ~$1400 job. Huge house carpet cleaning + restretching. Taking calls while working or driving has been challenging. I tried using a phone answering service but it didn't work out. Should I just get a laptop or a tablet to keep in the van and just pull over to give them a quote and book real quick?

 

[savefox]

What kind of promotion would you run if you wanted to attract high end and middle class customers with google ads? What headlines should I use? I've tried focusing on premium services, high value, good reviews, quality work etc, but it didn't work at all. 0 conversions. Visitors didn't want fill out the form. The only campaign that did ok was something like "$149 for 3 rooms special ends in 5 days" and upsell from there, but I don't want to focus on the price in my ads and there's a bunch of people in my area who are using the exact same special right now. I've tried doing "1 room of carpet cleaning for free just to see the results and decide if you want us to do the whole house" and got a bunch people wanting us to do the 1 room for free and it's the only room in their house lol. I'm targeting top 50% earners and mostly middle class neighborhoods

 

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[Andy Black]

What kind of promotion would you run if you wanted to attract high end and middle class customers with google ads? What headlines should I use? I've tried focusing on premium services, high value, good reviews, quality work etc, but it didn't work at all. 0 conversions. Visitors didn't want fill out the form. The only campaign that did ok was something like "$149 for 3 rooms special ends in 5 days" and upsell from there, but I don't want to focus on the price in my ads and there's a bunch of people in my area who are using the exact same special right now. I've tried doing "1 room of carpet cleaning for free just to see the results and decide if you want us to do the whole house" and got a bunch people wanting us to do the 1 room for free and it's the only room in their house lol. I'm targeting top 50% earners and mostly middle class neighborhoods

Run ads targeting those locations only and see how that goes?

 

[savefox]

does it make a difference if I target a specific zip code only, or if I target the whole area and exclude everything except for that one zip code?

 

[Andy Black]

does it make a difference if I target a specific zip code only, or if I target the whole area and exclude everything except for that one zip code?

I don't know. I've only ever targeted zipcodes or areas. I wouldn't think it would make any difference, but haven't tried it and can't imagine what the difference would be.

Don't forget to run ads for "carpet cleaners <location-name>" and target a much wider location, like the whole state or country. Your only worry is duplicate placenames.

 

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[Subsonic]

Hello,

I'm 21 years old. After 2 years of wasting time and action faking I decided to start a home service business, specifically carpet cleaning. I will be doing hardwood, tile and upholstery as well. I chose this idea because it's pretty easy and inexpensive to start, doesn't require any special licensees or permits, and there is demand for this kind of service in my area. Also, my monthly expenses will be extremely low, so I'll get to keep most of the profit I make. I don't have any previous marketing or cleaning experience, except for running FB ads for some Chinese junk, so I'll have to learn everything from scratch. I hope this thread will be helpful for someone wanting to start a service business, and I will appreciate any advice from you.

What I have done so far:
1)Website with online booking and chat - Wordpress(divi plugin), zenbooker, tawk to. Hired a copywriter to do the content part, because my English sucks.
2)Google business profile with some pictures of my carpet being cleaned.
3)Bought cleaning equipment (175 buffer(used), oreck orbiter, good vacuum and some other stuff) - around $1000
4)Facebook business profile
5)Got a google guarantee badge which might help with getting more leads
6)Currently running a google ads campaign, $30 per day budget. I have 2 ad groups. One for exact match keywords and the other one for phrase match. Everything else is the same. Got 3 leads so far for about $15 dollars each.
7)Did 2 small carpet cleaning jobs by myself, the clients were happy with the result. They were just 1 room cleanings that took me about an hour to do. Charged $100 for each. I have my next job scheduled for next week. Missed a few clients by not answering my phone and not replying in chat. Missed a 4 bedroom house cleaning because of my full time job.

I think my main problem is that I don't have a clear USP and I'm having a hard time differentiating from the competitors. I have a good looking website with convenient online booking system and upfront pricing. My method of cleaning allows me to advertise 1 hour dry time. I have a 10% discount for new customers. But I feel like I can come up with something better, so I could justify raising my prices.

I'm tired of commuting to a shitty job every day and wasting my time there. But I'll have to keep it for some time to pay for my expenses.

Hey man, reading this tread has been really motivating.
Your business is basically the same as mine, just a few level higher.
Good luck on your further journey.

 

[savefox]

Hey man, reading this tread has been really motivating.
Your business is basically the same as mine, just a few level higher.
Good luck on your further journey.

yeah, I skipped the door knocking part because it's not scalable and I didn't have time for that, and started focusing on internet marketing right away. It took me about 6 months to figure out what to do, and I'm still not there yet. Like @Johnny boy said, you need to be your own lead gen company. You can make 10s of thousands in revenue per month with an optimized GMB, Google Ads of Facebook ads, LSA, referral program for your customers, getting repeat clients etc. Are you doing just window cleaning? Can you buy a pressure washer and add that to your services? Or gutter cleaning? Roof cleaning? Combine them in packages (good, better, best) and upsell

 

[Subsonic]

yeah, I skipped the door knocking part because it's not scalable and I didn't have time for that, and started focusing on internet marketing right away. It took me about 6 months to figure out what to do, and I'm still not there yet. Like @Johnny boy said, you need to be your own lead gen company. You can make 10s of thousands in revenue per month with an optimized GMB, Google Ads of Facebook ads, LSA, referral program for your customers, getting repeat clients etc. Are you doing just window cleaning? Can you buy a pressure washer and add that to your services? Or gutter cleaning? Roof cleaning? Combine them in packages (good, better, best) and upsell

Yeah I'll do that when I can.
Since I have no clue about websites and online backend, that stuff will take me another week. Also flyers have proven to be alright but it's starting to get expensive now.

The upsell thing is great. I am gonna look for a safe way to work on roofs, since that has a high barrier to entry and I can charge way more money for that.

 

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[piano]

Man, I've only read everything until now.
You're doing amazingly bro!
I love that you're learning and improving in certain areas, "getting the hang out of it"
Good job!

 

[savefox]

Man, I've only read everything until now.
You're doing amazingly bro!
I love that you're learning and improving in certain areas, "getting the hang out of it"
Good job!

Thanks piano! Yes I'm getting better at it. I just need a little more customers and I'll quit my job!