How To Promote Cleaning Service Facebook Marketing
How to get cleaning accounts with facebook marketing, avoid ad burnout by rotating value propositions.
This tutorial is on how commercial cleaning services and janitorial services can sell cleaning accounts with facebook marketing. Avoid ad burnout, campaigns going stale by rotating advertising messages, value propositions. In this sample we show several sample facebook ads.
Main Company Message versus Specific Message
This can be confusing to cleaning services and we want to start with pointing this out. A Main company message is something that would apply to EVERY single account regardless of industry, size, service, etc.
This is a core message or value your company is about, some examples might be: Best service, Communication, Greenest, Lowest Pricing, Family Owned, Been in Business X number of years. These are vague messages that would apply to every client or a company messages.
Specific messages are targeted to specific groups of accounts, some examples might be: Safety, safety is a great one for construction, manufacturing and larger businesses in general but might not apply to a retail or restaurant account.
Employee related messages are generally more important for janitorial or recurring specialty cleaning because they are dealing with our staff on a regular basis. One time jobs they often will focus more on solving the problem.
Table of Contents
No Pot Of Gold
Often When I speak with owners and managers of cleaning services they want to see creatives and then they decide arbitrarily “I like this or don’t like this”, based 100% on personal taste. A better way to think about advertising is going into it with 5,6,8 or even 12 different topics to talk about and then just tweak the creative.
Its completely unpredictable how prospects will respond to different pictures, headlines covering multiple services and parts of the country. There is no one size fits all ad that will apply to every prospect.
A better way to think about it is to rotate ads, every prospect has different motivations and likes, we want to bring them all in and that’s why we rotate topics. Over time then we optimize and spend more money on the best performing topics and keep the lower performing ones to 5% or 10% of total ads used in a year, for example.
8 Ad topics We Can Rotate
About Us/ Management 10%
This theme can cover several sub topics and is an introduction. This is who we are, how we started, how long we have been in business, what we believe in, etc.
Associations/Certifications 5%
In these ads we highlight what organizations we belong to, chamber of commerce, networking groups, trade associations. Also certifications the company or you, employees have.
Inspection/Process 5%
This will be a big topic for janitorial and recurring carpet/tile work. Not as much for one time jobs. How do we provide quality control, inspect after the job and follow up with customer surveys.
Safety 15%
Again this depends on the type of jobs you are targeting, safety is a big topic in the restoration world but not as much for a restaurant account 1x. Right now safety is a big one because of the virus, so I would highlight it a little more than usual. Large employers, industrial, construction are also prospects that place a lot of value on safety.
Service Mix 25%
Highlighting the different services we provide should always be a high percentage, prospects need to know if the services we specialize in matches up with what they are looking for.
Employee Training 20%
Training is a huge topic for janitorial and a good topic for recurring specialty services like carpet/tile.
Employee Recruiting 20%
Again this is a huge topic for janitorial, clients always want to know where you are finding cleaning staff and then number 2, how do you train them. Maybe not as much the platforms you use but the process of interviewing, scoring applicants, orientation , etc.
Equipment/Technical Problem Solving 10%
This is a category that is big for specialty services like carpet, tile, disinfecting, etc. Prospects often want to know what equipment you will be using, what cleaning solutions and if you can solve their technical problem.
How To Use Metaphors In Cleaning Service Advertising
This is a Sample social media ad where cleaning services can use metaphors for advertising. Often general managers, office, facility managers and building owners feel like its a balancing act when choosing a commercial cleaning service. This is what feeling we are trying to tap into with this social media ad.
This can apply to cleaning services, janitorial service and specialty like carpet & tile cleaning. They are not just focused on hiring a cleaning service but are also hiring dozens of other vendors and mainly trying to focus on their clients.
I like metaphors for commercial cleaning prospects and basically a metaphor in advertising is we don’t literally mean it. We are trying to get a point across, we are trying to tap into how someone feels.
Sample ad-Is finding the right cleaning service becoming a balancing act?
The starting point in social media is with the headline and image, we want to tap into that feeling a manager might have as quickly as possible with the image and headline. This is what draws them in the first place to learn more.
Most professional general managers, facility, office managers and building owners feel like it’s a balancing act keeping all of their vendors on track, on top of all the other tasks they do. If you have a conversation with most, they will say this is exactly how they feel or like they are juggling a bunch of balls in the air at the same time.
Remember they want to focus on their clients first, just like us and maintaining their building is not the highest priority.
Introduction
In this section we introduce ourselves personally, our business and what services we provide. They need to know right away if they even need this service and if they ever heard of you before.
Mission Statement
Here we come up with a mission statement, slogan, message, company value proposition. In simple terms, something that would apply to every business or service you provide. This is a broad, vague statement sharing what you value and believe in, in general.
Friendly service, most referred, most reviews, communication, green, largest, been in business since 1902, etc. These type of broad messages.
Safety
Third paragraph/sentence we are going to plug in something specific. This can be 50 different things and you can change it for different prospects.
In our example we are going to plug in safety, this is a hot topic right now and good time to layer it in after introducing ourselves, plugging in our main company value.
Main Topics To Cover
For this sample social media ad we used a checklist format, mainly because its quick and simple to read. Here we want to plug in some main topics prospects often ask about.
- Meet the team
- Hiring
- Training
- Supervision/ Inspection
- Safety
- Services
These are all the main questions prospects and leads want to know about a commercial cleaning service. Whether they always ask them doesn’t matter, they are in their head for sure.
Rotating Ads
I am a big proponent of rotating ads, this is what I would consider a general ad, this gives managers and owners an overview of your company. I would want to run something like this 1 week out of every 4 weeks and then cover specific topics the rest.
6 Call To Action
Last but not least is the call to action. We went with a long one of “ YES, send me more information about your services”. Hopefully this encapsulates how they feel in this exact moment.
Advertising Options
Boosting Posts
On your facebook business page whenever you make a post facebook will add the little boost post button to encourage us to advertise that post. Whenever you ask people in the cleaning industry about facebook advertising you usually will get a 50/50 response. Half the cleaners say its great and half say they receive lots of action but no sales.
There can be a simple reason for this and we are going to cover some of the basic objectives you choose and how they can impact your results.
The boosting was created for small businesses, it is created for us to make advertising simple and easy. The problem is if we don’t pay attention to the details simple can lead to us advertising in areas and audiences that do not apply to our service.
By default, facebook has some automatic settings and this is what most cleaners choose assuming they know best. Which can be true, the problem is algorithms don’t have any context so they don’t always understand this area is way out of my service area or even in another country.
Location and Service Area
A perfect example in this video is if I choose the city, with the city option we can only go down to 10 miles, this can be a big problem for me because it actually takes me into Canada but we don’t service Canada.
Facebook would have no way of knowing this and why I need a more detailed geographic tool and not let facebook decide.
Instead of using a city or more metro area a better option can be entering a specific address, it can be a local business, landmark, any address that will serve as the center. With a specific address we can narrow down the service to a mile, one mile is generally too small but I usually just keep expanding out from there. 1 mile,3 mile, 5 mile, etc.
Now you can see in the video we are no longer in a service area we do not cover.
Using Ads Manager
In this section of the video we are switching to a basic overview of using objectives in the ads manager. The purpose of using objectives is facebook is optimizing, searching for people and showing them your ad based on behavior.
This can have a big impact on your advertising campaigns, often you will hear cleaning service owners complain they receive lots of likes/ shares but no sales. There is a reason for that.
Brand Awareness and Reach
With this objective, facebook is optimizing for people who have a history of liking and sharing posts and ads. Not everyone likes pages, some people are on everyday and never like anything ever. Conversely some people are liking machines and like 50 pages a day for one reason or another.
This is a good option if you want to build a foundation of likes for your page or if you wanted to keep your name out there but the schedule was full.
Traffic Objective- Landing Pages
The traffic objective is generally used to send people to an outside site like a landing page or a page on your website. With this tool facebook is specifically looking for people who have a history of clicking on links to outside pages. For example, I rarely do because so much of my timeline is fake news, only do when it’s a source I really know and trust.
Another variable is the load time, some people will not wait the 5 seconds for a landing page to load. They are specifically looking for people who have a history of waiting and viewing outside pages.
Engagement
This is the tool most cleaners will be familiar with, often this is the default setting they use. Usually people will comment that they received 30 likes, 5 shares but no sales, but not always of course. With this objective it feels like a supermarket of stuff. They optimize for several variables, anything that creates engagement. That can be likes, shares, clicking on links, anything.
Engagement can be great to build out a community and play the long game, plus generate some sales but remember this is what you are optimizing for, a little bit of everything and not just direct sales. So don’t be surprised if you see 50 different types of likes/shares for every 1 sale because that’s what you are telling the algorithm to do.
*** One thing I would like to point out about the above objective of traffic, sometimes you can have hundreds of link clicks but only a couple likes. Remember that is what you are optimizing for, people who click on links and not people who like pages. Don’t become surprised or upset with a traffic campaign if you only see a couple likes.
Facebook will do whatever you tell them to do.
commercial cleaning facebook marketing
Video Views
Similar to the above objectives, video views are targeted to people who have a history of watching videos, some of us do and some of us never do. One thing about video specifically is they do give a preference to videos to people who use the app. If you started using facebook on a browser and then switched to the app you will notice a lot more videos.
Lead Generation
Leads are the auto filled forms, this is geared towards people who have a history of filling forms out on facebook. Not to be confused with filling a form out on your website, this is the facebook version.
Overall I wouldn’t just use one objective or you are missing out on all these other people.
Message Advertising
Messages are targeting users who have a history of using messenger and replying to messages. Some of us never use messenger but others that is all they use. For example I rarely use it so I never see these type of ads.
Conversions
Conversions is the trickiest objective but one of the most powerful also once you get a handle on it. Basically, you will install the facebook pixel on your landing page or website page. A conversion can be any event including signing up for a newsletter, scheduling an estimate, booking online, requesting information, etc.
The theory behind this is they will look for similar profiles of people who have purchased from you in the past. And/or look for people who have a history of buying something from anyone on facebook period. Again some users will never fill out a form or buy anything off of facebook or maybe online in general.
PR and Marketing
In conclusion all the objectives work, the point is to explain that each of them will give you different things. Its important to decide what your specific objective is when starting a campaign.
I understand most cleaners will say sales but remember there is a long game involved in this also. We always want to be planting seeds for future sales along with generating sales today right now. This way we can avoid the feast/famine lifestyle most contractors face.
4 Sample Ad Templates
This is section and video on 4 Facebook advertising styles commercial cleaning services can use to gain more commercial accounts.
Every lead and prospect likes information delivered differently by creating 4 different styles and rotating facebook ads every week we can bring in the most leads.
This can apply to commercial cleaning services, cleaning services, carpet cleaning, commercial carpet cleaning and janitorial services.
- Images
- Videos
- Text short form
- Text long form
A lot of times what template to use will depend on what stage of the funnel the lead or prospect is in and how much money is the service.
For new leads that don’t know us, they may need more detailed information where a prospect that already knows us might just need a quick reminder with bullet points or a simple image.
When selling a $200 service images and short form would be fine but when selling a contract service that sells for $10’s of thousands of dollars we probably need to provide more details.
How To Create Marketing Metrics
How a commercial cleaning service can measure social media marketing. Each of these social media platforms have hyper-technical details specific to their platform, we are going to use facebook as an example.
This can apply to commercial cleaning services, janitorial and carpet cleaning
What we are trying to show is how to create leading indicators or how to predict success in marketing campaigns in social media. You might hear this term leading indicators when economists talk about the economy. They are looking for hints, predictors of what can happen 1 year, 3 year or 5 years later.
We can use the same concept in our marketing campaigns.
Four measurement tools we can use
- Connections, post likes, views, ads
- Qualified Leads
- Estimates
- Sales ROI
Also by segmenting in these 4 categories, we can pinpoint where are bottlenecks are, where are we getting bogged down. This way we can find solutions for that specific problem and not just trash the whole campaign.
Sales ROI
this is obviously the most watched number, how much revenue/profit are we generating for the amount of money spent.
Estimates or Sales leads
this segment is where we count the physical number of estimates given or proposals submitted.
Qualified Leads
this is a marketing qualified lead, basically when a lead identifies themselves. This can be by phone call, newsletter sign up, messenger, email. Often people will just start by asking a few questions but at this stage they are not ready for an estimate yet.
Connections, post likes, post views
This is the beginning or the foundation of any platform. Often before moving forward people will check out your profile first to see if you are legit.
Also this is an inexpensive way to keep in front of your key accounts and primary leads on a weekly basis.
Identify Bottlenecks
One of the reasons to break into segments like this is identify problems. An example would be you get a dozen qualified leads but no estimates from them then we know there is a problem there.
Or you are generating a dozen estimates but not closing any of them. Now we know to focus on the estimate and/or bidding process.