How To Make My Cleaning Service Stand Out
This is a quick blog on How to use blue ocean marketing strategies for a commercial cleaning service. Now this can apply to a cleaning service, commercial carpet cleaning, janitorial or any specialty service for businesses.
You may have heard of the blue ocean concept or white space is another way I have heard. What this means basically is looking for opportunities that your competitors are not, going to digital platforms your competitors are not. Looking to add specialty cleaning services that customers place a high value on but have a low cost to us. This can be done through services, how we sell or what platforms we use
Table of Contents
The Four Basic Principals to Building This Marketing Strategy
Create Opportunities
Make the competition irrelevant
Capture new demand
Win the value versus cost battle
Creating Opportunities
The first step is creating opportunities, here are 3 strategies we can use.
- Service- in this example we used encapsulation or low moisture commercial carpet cleaning as our blue ocean.
- Now I understand lots of cleaners use encapsulation but you can take it to a whole different level and build a separate division focused on just this service.If you provide janitorial services also your blue ocean could be using this service to get your foot in the door with accounts and then introduce daily cleaning. This way you look like a hero first and solved a major problem for the prospect. The point is Blue Ocean doesn’t have to be unique but maybe just how you are positioning a service or using it in your marketing plan.
- How you sell the service, in this example we used door to door sales
- What platform you use to reach prospects and generate leads
Capture New Demand By Digital Platform
How many of your prospects are on LinkedIn right now? This is where professionals go to polish their resume and keep their eye open for future job opportunities. For commercial cleaning our contact person is usually a office manager, facility manager, general manager, etc.
Figuring out how to influence these prospects and ultimately get leads is another blog in itself but we know for fact the demand is there and the competition is very low.
Using a digital platform can be another blue ocean or how you use it can also be.
Win the Value versus Cost Battle
This is the biggest struggle for us all in the service industry. How do we provide a service that is of high value to a customer but still low cost to us. I used service as an example but you could also use Green cleaning or Training or 20 other things that people find valuable but has low cost to us.
Encapsulation or low moisture commercial carpet cleaning is a perfect example of winning the value versus cost battle. On the buyer side, most office’s biggest carpet problem is spills and spots. We have high buyer value in removing them.
On the cost side this service has very high margins and low labor costs, very low investment also.
In conclusion these are just a couple ways to build your own blue ocean marketing strategy. Really are only limited by your own creativity. Overall I do not believe you need to look very far, 95% of your competitors are doing and saying the same thing.